Episode #29-Votevets.org, Operation Anaconda. The VA and PTSD, and Andrew Lubin

During this week's show we will be talking with Brandon Friedman, veteran of Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan and the initial invasion force into Iraq. Brandon is an outspoken advocate of soldier's being active in the political process of this country. Brandon wrote the book, "The War I Always Wanted: The Illusion of Glory and the Reality of War", and has served since 2007 as the Vice Chairman of VoteVets.org--a 100,000-member organization dedicated to getting veterans elected to public office. We are also talking with Professor Andrew Lubin, a proud member of the distinguished USMC Combat Correspondents Association, Andrew has spent much of 2006 and 2007 in Iraq, and Afghanistan. Embedded with Marine - Army - National Guard units, he's out in the field with the "boots on the ground," and covering the story with the 0311's and 0811's in Ramadi, Mahmudiyah, and the Khyber Pass who are getting the job done. Prior to those embeds, Andrew was one of only 5 journalists on the beaches in Beirut with the 24 Marine Expeditionary Unit as they evacuated the American refugees, and earlier he was in Okinawa with 12th Marines. Andrew is about to go back to Afghanistan to do another embed so we are touching base with him before he does. In addition to those great guest we are talking to Clint Van Winkle, author of "Soft Spots: A Marine’s Memoir of Combat and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder". SOFT SPOTS moves effortlessly back and forth across time and continents as war scenes in reality are intermixed with war ravages remembered. Van Winkle desperately sought help from the Veteran’s Administration, but each trip to a VA facility would be another maddening adventure into bureaucratic red tape and ineptitude. He discovered it was an indifferent system that gives lip service about their concern for veterans but in reality seems to abandon them.