cover image Vets Under Siege: How America Deceives and Dishonors Those Who Fight Our Battles

Vets Under Siege: How America Deceives and Dishonors Those Who Fight Our Battles

Martin Schram, . . St. Martin's/ Dunne, $25.95 (306pp) ISBN 978-0-312-37573-7

Former Washington Post correspondent Schram (Avoiding Armageddon ) airs a long list of grievances in this impassioned exposé of government callousness toward veterans. While including other issues, this indictment focuses on the Department of Veterans Affairs' slow, disputatious processing of disability claims, which can drag on through years of arbitrary decisions, byzantine appeals and lost paperwork, with claimants sometimes dying before a final ruling. Drawing on eye-glazing excerpts from bureaucratic reports, Schram blames these problems not just on red tape but on an adversarial mindset at the VA, where the operating principle, he says, is “safeguard the money and not the vets.” Schram unearths some egregious injustices: the VA declined one Iraq veteran's disability benefits because “ '[s]hrapnel wounds all over the body [are] not service connected.' ” But most cases involve disability claims for cancer, diabetes or psychiatric problems, where the VA puts on the vet the burden of proving a link with decades-past exposures to Agent Orange or traumatic stress; Schram contends these should get the benefit of the doubt from a revamped “Department of Veterans' Advocacy.” His is an eye-opening, if one-sided, j'accuse. (July )