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In-Depth Interviews, Veterans Day: Adm. Joe Sestak (ret.) and Staff Sgt. Stanford Mendenhall (ret.)

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For Veterans Day, we talk with Joe Sestak, retired Navy Admiral and former Congressman, now running for US Senate in Pennsylvania; and Sgt. Stanford Mendenhall, a fully disabled vet who served in Iraq and at Ground Zero in NYC after 9/11.Sestak talks about his strong support for veterans, public and private–including annual visits to Vietnam vets in prison.  He smacks his opponent, Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA) for voting to send troops to Iraq, and more recently voting against funding and fixes to the Veterans Administrations 12 times in the Senate.  We discuss our obligations to vets, and that war funding should include allocations for the future cost of supporting veterans.  We also talk about the shameful abdication of Congress in failing to debate and pass war powers resolutions for the new war in Syria and Iraq; Sestak compares it to Libya, an intervention he opposed.

In our second segment, starting at 25:25, former Staff Sgt. Stanford Mendenhall joins us.  He emailed your humble host, and asked to speak to you, my listeners. He was in the Army National Guard, and was deployed to the World Trade Center site after 9/11.  Later, he was sent to Iraq, where he was exposed to the residue of depleted uranium.  He explains that he’s had to wage his own private war against the military and the VA, including a lawsuit, to get the medical care he needs, and how they try to blame pre-existing conditions and other nonsense factors for injuries sustained on active duty.  Mendenhall urges vets to keep fighting, and to sign up for the DU registry at the VA.