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Four-term lawmaker calls for increased veteran care
By EDWARD MARSHALL / Journal Staff Writer
POSTED: January 21, 2008
SHEPHERDSTOWN Sen. Jay D. Rockefeller IV called for better health care for veterans returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan during remarks made in a pre-campaign rally press conference and subsequent speech announcing his candidacy for a fifth term in office.
In the last two years, really in this last session of Congress there was a real volcano of dissatisfaction and anger on the part of all of us in the way that we were ... failing to take care of our veterans, Rockefeller told reporters prior to an appearance before supporters at Shepherd University.
Rockefeller, D-W.Va., the Senate's chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence and member of the Committee on Veterans Affairs, vowed that stricter scrutiny would be placed on the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Defense. He also called for better treatment of veterans returning home with diseases such as post-traumatic stress disorder.
We don't understand that somebody can come before you with a suit and tie like myself but is being shredded inside by something called post-traumatic stress disorder, Rockefeller said. We're going to spend a lot more money, we're going to be a lot smarter and we're going to pay a lot of attention to them so they can come to us and they can get help. The Veterans Administration, which is as large or is larger than the Department of Defense, is going to have to undergo a new kind of scrutiny.
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