Sen. Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii) has introduced a new bill to extend from two years to five years the time during which a veteran with no service-related disability can obtain VA health care. The chairman of the Veterans’ Affairs Committee in a Jan. 25 statement said that two years is “insufficient time for symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and other mental illnesses to appear.” He called five years “a larger, more appropriate window in which to address these problems.”
Retired Col. Carlyle "Smitty" Harris, known for introducing the "tap code" by which American POWs in North Vietnam could surreptitiously communicate with one another, died July 6. Harris was brutalized by the North Vietnamese over almost eight years of captivity.