VA

VA official showcased portrait of KKK’s first grand wizard

A senior official at the Department of Veterans Affairs said he removed a portrait of the Ku Klux Klan’s first grand wizard from his Washington, D.C., office after offended employees began signing a petition to present to VA Secretary Robert Wilkie.

Review of Mark Boulton’s “Failing Our Veterans: The G.I. Bill and the Vietnam Generation”

by Murray Polner

In his comprehensive and compelling legislative history, Mark Boulton ably details how ideology, economics and personal and political biases shaped the way veterans have been dealt with from the Revolutionary era to Vietnam.

Jon Wiener: Homeless Vets vs. the VA: An LA Story Continues

Jon Wiener teaches history at UC Irvine and is a contributing editor to The Nation.Greg Valentini is a homeless vet in Los Angeles who took part in the initial invasion of Afghanistan and participated in the assault on Tora Bora that sought Osama bin Laden. He’s also a plaintiff in the class action suit brought by the ACLU of Southern California (ACLU-SC) arguing that the VA has “misused large portions of its West Los Angeles campus and failed to provide adequate housing and treatment for the people it was intended to serve.” (See my Nation article “LA’s Homeless Vets.”) Valentini was a private in the 101st Airborne, and the lawsuit describes his service in Afghanistan: “He took part in significant ground fighting, under nearly constant sniper fire and mortar bombardment” and “witnessed the gruesome deaths of numerous civilians, including children.” He was redeployed to Iraq, where he again experienced heavy combat. He received six decorations for his service.