VA releases records following FOIA request

More than 425,000 Iraq and Afghanistan War veterans treated by Department of Veteran Affairs (VA).

from Veterans for Common Sense

September 9, 2009, Washington, DC – According to government reports obtained exclusively by Veterans for Common Sense (VCS), more than 250 new, first-time Iraq and Afghanistan war veteran patients flood into Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) hospitals and clinics every day. In the eight years after 9/11, VA has treated and diagnosed more than 425,000 Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans at VA facilities, an average of 258 new, first-time patients every day.

While the press and public are often focused on the more than 5,000 deaths from the two wars, a tidal wave of wounded, injured, and ill continue flooding into VA, with no end in sight. Beginning today, VCS starts publishing official VA reports obtained by VCS using the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

VCS's effort to obtain documents about VA is their second major FOIA campaign. In their first FOIA campaign that began in 2002, VCS teamed up with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to force the Administration to release documents about torture, as profiled on August 30, 2009, in The New York Times.

In the second FOIA campaign that began in 2006, VCS sought to determine the human and financial costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. After nine months of delay and denial, VA released the reports only after a threat of litigation. For the first time, VCS posts nearly all of the documents we obtained from VA using FOIA. VCS remains the only non-profit with a full-time FOIA campaign targeting VA, the government's second largest agency with an expected budget of $113 billion and more than 270,000 employees.

Read the article in its entirety here.