On This Veterans Day

Please take a moment to remember and thank those who have served and are serving in our military. May our active soldiers return safely and may we as a nation never again send them unnecessarily into harms way to fight an illegitimate war as we have in Iraq.

I also want to share some information for our returning soldiers and their families. The Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) and the Ad Council are launching a campaign to help the men and women who have served and are serving in these conflicts.

The campaign directs veterans to the first and only community exclusive to Iraq and Afghanistan veterans through a new social networking website...where they can listen, share their experiences and access resources. The PSAs are being distributed to media outlets nationwide this week to coincide with Veterans Day (November 11).

The campaign aims to address the mental health consequences of combat, which threaten to overwhelm a new generation of veterans. The 1.7 million men and women who have served, or are currently serving, in Iraq and Afghanistan are facing an increased risk of mental health issues. Nearly 20 percent of military servicemembers who have returned – 300,000 in all – report symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or major depression, yet only slightly more than half have sought treatment, according to a RAND Corporation study released in April 2008. Untreated mental health conditions can cause or aggravate other debilitating problems in the veterans' community including high rates of unemployment, suicide, homelessness, substance abuse, divorce and child abuse. [...]

Most Iraq and Afghanistan veterans are married, and 700,000 children in America have had at least one parent deployed during the conflicts. It is therefore a conservative estimate to predict that those immediately affected by these wars will number at least three million people. More than 60 percent of these veterans are under the age of 30.