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UPDATE: DoD IS SHOOTING THE MESSENGER --
Pentagon attacks author who cited
high casualty figures.
Story on high and low casualty figures
here...
http://www.vawatchdog.org/07/nf07/nfJAN07/nf013007-8.htm
Linda Bilmes' article that started this
fuss here...
http://www.vawatchdog.org/07/nf07/nfJAN07/nf010607-1.htm
Story here...
http://www.insidehighered.
com/news/2007/01/30/injuries
Story below:
---------------
Shooting the Messenger
by Scott
Jaschik
Linda J. Bilmes, a lecturer in public policy at Harvard University,
calls her latest paper “pretty dry.” That hasn’t prevented it from
riling high-ranking Pentagon officials — who called her and her dean to
complain about her work. When they questioned her sources of material,
they ran into a bit of a problem: She did most of her research with data
on federal Web sites. So what did the Pentagon do? It changed the Web
sites, and now continues to trash her research.
Bilmes has become a leading expert on economic questions related to the
war in Iraq, and her experience the last few weeks demonstrates how
social scientists can end up in the line of political fire when their
findings — however dry — offend government officials.
The story begins with a paper Bilmes wrote last year with Joseph E.
Stiglitz, a Columbia University professor and Nobel laureate in
economics. In their study, they found that the Bush administration has
seriously underestimated the economic costs of the war in Iraq. After
the study was publicized, Bilmes was approached by some experts on
veterans’ benefits who said that one cost of the war hadn’t received
enough attention in their work (or from the government): the costs of
caring for veterans injured in the conflict.
And that’s the question that led Bilmes to prepare a 21-page study that
she presented this month in Chicago at the Allied Social Sciences
Association meeting. The presentation of “Soldiers Returning From Iraq
and Afghanistan: The Long-Term Costs of Providing Veterans Medical Care
and Disability Benefits” went off without controversy and might have
escaped Pentagon notice. But Bilmes also published an op-ed version of
her findings in the Los Angeles Times. The Pentagon did notice that
piece.
The central argument of the new Bilmes paper is that so many soldiers
are being injured that the costs of caring for them over their lifetimes
is likely to be $350 billion, or up to twice that, depending on how long
the war lasts. The high cost is the result of huge advances in military
medicine that have greatly reduced the chances that a soldier injured in
Iraq will die. As a result, the ratio of injuries to deaths — 16:1 by
her estimate — is higher than in any other war in U.S. history. (By
comparison, in Vietnam the ratio was 2.8:1 and in World War II the ratio
was 1.6:1.)
Bilmes uses a series of calculations based on the types of care those
injured will require over their lifetimes to offer various scenarios for
the costs of the care, and she also argues that the current veterans’
health-care system is not ready for the influx of injured or the
associated costs. She offers suggestions for streamlining the process of
getting injured veterans the benefits they have earned. And while both
her studies and the op-ed are critical of the Bush administration’s
response (or lack thereof) to the veterans’ health needs, the tone is
academic, not polemic.
What set off the Pentagon was Bilmes’ estimate for the current number of
injured of 50,500. William Winkenwender Jr., assistant secretary of
defense for health affairs, called the Los Angeles Times, Bilmes, and
David T. Ellwood — dean of Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of
Government — to complain that the real figure is less than half that —
just over 22,000. When Bilmes was asked where she got her data, she
pointed out that it came from the Department of Veterans Affairs, which
in turn gets its data from the Pentagon.
The Pentagon investigated further and found that the VA “misunderstood”
the Pentagon’s reports, according to Cynthia Smith, a Department of
Defense spokeswoman. She acknowledged that the VA had been using numbers
consistent with what Bilmes reported, but said that once the Pentagon
explained “the error,” the Veterans Affairs department changed its Web
site so its injury numbers are consistent with those of the Pentagon.
Why the misunderstanding and the “error"? The original figures from
Veterans Affairs were for “non-mortal” injuries. But that doesn’t
include only those who are shot at in combat. That includes people who
get sick, people who are in accidents and so forth — a group of people
that is as large as those injured in combat. The Pentagon doesn’t want
those people counted.
Bilmes points out that a soldier in an accident in Iraq is as entitled
to health care as a soldier who is shot. And she points out that she
wrote an economic analysis looking at the question of how much all of
this care was going to cost. Leaving out half of those injured would
have resulted in seriously flawed numbers — when the whole point of her
work in this area is to help people figure out how much money will be
needed for the U.S. to meet obligations it has made to its soldiers.
Smith, the Pentagon spokeswoman, does not dispute Bilmes on the point
that soldiers are entitled to health care regardless of how they are
injured. “They are all cared for,” she said. So if Bilmes is correct
that she’s counting injured veterans who are entitled to health care and
the source for her data is the U.S. government (before the Pentagon had
the public data changed), why is Smith issuing statements saying that
Bilmes is engaging in “gross distortion,” as she said in an e-mail? And
why is a top Pentagon official calling Harvard suggesting that numbers
are erroneous when they are just not the numbers the Pentagon wants out?
When pressed that Bilmes was just using a more inclusive definition of
injured, and not making any mistake or distortion, Smith suggested that
she hadn’t revealed that she wasn’t using the only definition of injured
possible, asking twice: “Does she say that in her study?”
Actually Bilmes says exactly that. And she does so in her paper’s first
footnote, in the introduction of her study. In that footnote, she writes
that the Pentagon tracks injuries in several ways, and that one count it
uses covers only those wounded with bullets, shrapnel, etc. And Bilmes
writes explicitly that this would result in a ratio of injured to killed
of 8:1 (although she notes that even this ratio would be larger than
that of any previous U.S. war).
To Bilmes, what’s infuriating is that the Pentagon is saying she is
wrong on points of fact when they aren’t dealing with what she actually
wrote. “I have no problem with them calling me or anyone to talk about
my paper,” she said. “But what I think is inappropriate is that they
seem to be responding without having read my paper.”
While the Pentagon was entitled to its view of which figure of injured
it wanted to focus on, she said, it was also unfair for it to object to
others’ arguing that other numbers were worth examining. “I think it is
inappropriate for the Pentagon to put pressure on a junior faculty
member doing a piece of scholarly research on the somewhat data-driven
subject on disability costs just because they may want to have a
different number in public.”
Bilmes said that she thought the military should look at the issue from
the perspective of making sure that soldiers get the help they may need
in the years ahead. While she worked in the Clinton administration
(rising to the level of assistant secretary of commerce), she said she
viewed this project and her interest in these issues as “nonpartisan.”
She stressed that she wasn’t writing to criticize the Iraq war, but was
doing economic analysis — analysis designed to help those in the armed
forces.
Harvard has been supportive, Bilmes said. The university is featuring
her research on its home page.
While the Pentagon continues to attack, others in Washington are
praising the paper.
U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, the Illinois Democrat exploring a run for the
presidency, was briefed on the findings and cited them in introducing
legislation last week to demand better accounting by the military of
casualties in Iraq and improvements in the health benefits offered.
“The Pentagon and VA need to come clean on the true costs of the Iraq
war on our troops,” Obama said in a statement. “It doesn’t make a
difference whether you were hit by enemy fire, or injured because your
vehicle crashed, or got sick because of serving in a war zone. The
effects on the soldiers and their families are the same. And the impact
in terms of the current fighting force and future demands on the VA are
also the same.”
And the veterans groups that asked Bilmes to explore the issue are also
backing her.
Stephen L. Robinson, a Gulf War vet who is director of government
relations for Veterans for America (formerly the Vietnam Veterans of
America Foundation), called her findings “incredibly valuable.” The Iraq
conflict is unusual, he said, in that so many soldiers are being injured
out of combat. There are all kinds of reasons for that, he said, but
it’s a reality.
“We think it’s reprehensible that the Pentagon would call Linda Bilmes
and bitch her out over the phone and put pressure on the school” about
this, Robinson said. “I want to ask the Department of Defense, ‘Why
aren’t you doing reports on why there are so many injured and on their
care?’ It’s ridiculous to be ignoring all of those [non-combat]
injuries. Why are they attacking this research?”
---------------
Larry Scott
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