Transcripts For CSPAN Stories Of Women Veterans 20131229

Others in an transformation of the Ongoing Services in the transformation to this. Very Little Information was available with what was going on in iraq in terms of what the women were doing. They told us there were primary sources of information of the way the women were being used in iraq. Since then a new generation of combat veteran women have emerged welcome home from these conflicts. They have gotten organized and are changing the narrative. They are raising Critical Issues including Sexual Harassment. It is visible on the radio, television and film. But that i will like to get started in and have the opportunity to hear some more of their stories. I am going to introduce each panelist briefly and then we will start with the questions. Nicole beaudoin all the way down at the end. She listed in the u. S. Army in 2001. She was deployed to iraq in july 2003 for 5 months. She was featured in the documentary when i came home. She lives in new york city where she is raising her daughter and writing poetry, fiction and nonfiction. She graduated college in 2001 with a ba in english and it apology. Teresa grew up next to nicole and white plains new york. She served as a Communications Officer from 2002 two 2006, two point one to iraq. Shes writing a memoir. She lives and works in new york city. I you are that is a former Army Sergeant felt a technician serving on active duty from 20032008. I did shout from 2007. All touches a masters degree in International Affairs with a concentration on media and culture. Recently transitioned from the capital. She is currently working as the board exec manager she deployed here in 2007. While there she manage logistics to conduct intelligence operations across southern iraq. In 2000 and she deployed to kandahar as a unit Intelligence Officer for the air calvary squadron of the 101st airborne division. Ok. These are our panelists. I would like to start by asking you to talk about your experience. Can you talk a little bit about why you chose to enlist . The reason why i chose to enlist was the situation in my home. I come from a very impoverished, dysfunctional family. There were not as many options open for me to elevate myself at that time. I was very young. I was 19 going on 20. Its him at options had run out. Living in the south bronx and living this impoverished life and wanting more in the states is motivated me to search for a way out as soon as possible. That is why i enlisted. I also had it but of an economic motivation. I did to pay for college. I did rotc in undergrad. I probably would not have been able to pay for school otherwise. Every single male in my family is in the military. I saw it as an option. I grew up in a very religious environment where women were supposed to stay at home and get pregnant. It was not my thing. I decided that i wanted to pursue military service. It was interesting. I had open heart surgery without a little child. It did me two years to get a medical examiner to let me in the military. I ended up going into the bomb squad. I did a relatively challenging job. Economics plays a big role. That played a part in it. There was still a patriotism factor as well coming to what i would refer to as the deep south. Everything that everyone just said. This was a chance to travel. Though it is bearable to be taken out of my comfort zone. I join my summary here of college. It paid for school. It was great to think once i graduated i would not have any debt. When as a sophomore in college, that was 2001. Post9 11 that happened. I got a letter from the rotc apartments and will pay for school but this is the opportunity for you to serve after college. I thought it would be a great opportunity for me to be a bigger part of something bigger than me. I was searching for a way to give back and rotc was it. It turned out to be a great spirits for me altogether just being on active duty. I got everything i wanted and then some. Can you talk a little bit about how others reacted to your decision . The unit on my campus was pretty active. It is a small school. It is a Small Organization on campus. I was in a sorority. 11 my Sorority Sisters were shocked when i said i wanted to join rotc. Im five foot nothing. It surprised them. We had drills. We had to wear uniforms. At the time it was the olive green uniforms. I think they referred to me as the pickle. It was a joke. I wasnt being made fun of. It almost raised awareness that anybody can join rotc. A lot more people, we have a pretty good turnout next year for people wanting to become a part of that program. The could not imagine me a part of the organization. I was in a sorority, is share leader in high school and people in the army would he surprised once they saw me in the uniform. Its interesting dynamic. You shocked them both ways. I went to have each of you talk about what your m. O. S. Was, how you made that decision, and what sorts of skills you made in the process. As i said, i was in the bomb squad. Always asking what they have seen the hurt locker. That was me except it was not all that realistic. A Vantage Point to start from. Either respond to them when people found them far after they went off. Ieds are basically roadside bombs. I did a lot of work with explosives and then i did a lot of work when we were in afghanistan because i was the only female in the unit i was assigned and attached to, i did a lot of biometric Data Collection being a woman and having the skill set i have. You are a woman and you can disarm bombs. We will bring you and you will also mingle with the local women population that all of our men can deal with. I got cross trained in a lot of the different skill sets outside of my actual job description. One of the things i do miss a blowing stuff up. Its awesome and fun. I miss the challenges, everyday something different. You never knew what youre going to get yourself into. I relayed it honestly to be a policeman or a firefighter because theres a lot of downtime followed by a lot of weve got to go. Get your stuff and lets hit the road. One of the ironies about being in afghanistan and in the bomb squad is doing my actual job was not the most restful. Driving through the mountains was the most stressful. Driving a 20 ton vehicle on Mountain Pass with a 600 foot drop to your righthand side. Please, just get me there. I can deal with whatever i need to when i get there but i have to get there first. There were a lot of interesting contradictions and ironies associated with my position but about a. M. 20042008, there were about 50 women in the whole field in the army. Very infrequently did you ever see another woman who was in eod so that made me an anomaly. Sometimes just doing a woman in the military can be an anomaly in and of itself but its even more isolating in a sense which is challenging. I really enjoyed my job and i kind of miss it sometimes. It would be nice to make something go boom every once in a while. You were in a team of how many . Cliques teams of three to four. You were assigned to different locations. Most of the time he would send a whole unit over but our unit, a lot of people think about companies being a couple hundred people or so. Ours was 20 people. We were very small, very handsome in. Everybody knew at everyone but we were centrally located and we would disburse so you were only with two or three people that you specifically have deployed with from your unit at any given time. It is a very different set up than what we consider to be outside of the mainstream military and we did things a little bit differently. It was a unique set up at the time. And can you give us a sense . You would be told there might be something you need to go check out in this place and your group of three or four would be assigned that task . You never go out by yourself. You always have to have an escort. I work with Task Force Paladin, a counter ied task force. We had an Intelligence Officer and post blast analysis that would go out and collect biometric data from the actual blast site itself and then we had our team who would deal with actual ordinance or ieds that were not exploded. We would kind of sit around and wait. They were always outside doing this and all the time. We would get a call. We think weve found something. We need you to respond. You have to have an escort and a lot of times, combat engineers and military police were already out on mission and they would have to come back and get us in our two vehicles and escort us out to the site where we were in order for us to take care of what we needed to take care of. You were an Intelligence Officer. We worked with Task Force Paladin. I was not directly assigned with them but we did work with them. When i was in iraq, it was Security Force missions were the brigade and we ran convoys through the entire country starting in the south. Baghdad, back down. If there was a threat along any of the routes, they would assess those threats through what Task Force Paladin was able to preside. Indirectly, we probably supported one another. Can you talk about your training and what you did in iraq . That was my first appointment. I studied psychology in college. When i wanted to become an officer i was told that you should have a business degree and i used psychology every single day regardless of my specialty. First and foremost, i wanted to be an officer because i wanted to be a leader and intelligence happened to be the branch i chose going in. I liked intelligence because basically as a new officer, second lieutenant, i was responsible for a platoon, aerial assets. I was responsible for a 24 person platoon that operated these unmanned drones for the unit. Which part . This was seven iraq. Southern iraq. I was with a manned helicopter unit. I went in with some experience from that understanding more of the aerial respect they are and what needed to be looked at in terms of intelligence but we were in southern afghanistan during the same thing except now im dealing with pilots putting themselves at risk going out several times a day and flying helicopters themselves. These were small aircraft with two pilots, no passengers, singleengine aircraft. They were built in the 1970s and in terms of technology, it did not really improve from what was used in vietnam. It was an interesting dynamic between iraq and afghanistan and what my mission was all within the intelligence cycle. And afghanistan, where there are people flying at the helicopters during the reconnaissance . We had apaches and kyowas that went out. The difference between the two, the ability to target where as the other is the smaller craft going out not so much in an often several offensive role, but theyre looking for information, taking pictures, literally hanging their arms out. They were frequently targeted because they are small aircraft. They do not fly fast like an apache or an air hawk. It was up to my group to assess the damage to the aircraft and understand where they were being targeted and at what level. It was to identify the capabilities of the enemy so that we were protecting the ground troops. There were times when our pilots would go out every time they were directly supporting someone on the ground and often times they were shot at because they were supposed to disrupt those. Click sets interesting. Can you talk about your role . I was a Communications Officer in the marine corps. You dont get to pick. They picked for you. I saw that i had a technical degree from undergrad and they made mickey and indications officer. I worked with radio, satellite, wired telephone. I was deployed for seven months in 2004 and one of the reasons i became an officer also was the leadership asset aspect. Growing up with three younger brothers and having been a Camp Counselor was the best preparation for that ever except for in iraq with machine guns. The main role was to be on a base which did get mortared and lay cable underground. This was before the marine corps had a lot of multichanneled communication between different bases. Within our own base, we had to make sure all of the telephone, cable, and the fiberoptic was the difference. My marines were really hard working. They would go out there and dig trenches to lay cable underground. We would get the entire company, 200 marines, to help us out. They took out all of the old iraqi telephone wires and replaced it with 30 kilometers of cable all total through the base. Then we would get a mortar and the cable would you cut and then the repair marines would have to go repair it. Its being in charge of the whole cycle but i work with a lot of fantastic people. That was really great. My story, i guess, is a story of misdirection. Believe it or not. It, i wanted to be a journalist. The recruiter told me that i did not make the cut. I did not get the proper score to get that slot. I was like what you have to offer . You mentioned a few other ones. Then you mentioned supply. I have office experience. Supply and garrison versus supply during a deployment is really two different atmospheres, different tribes of stressors, whereas when i was and garrison in germany, it was a lot more fun. I felt like i felt very interconnected because i was doing supplies and i was in an ordinance company. I was in an ordinance unit, rather, and my company was the largest of the unit. I could order a pen. I could order a machine gun. I could order m 60s. I mean, these things were on the books and on paper. It is very interesting, the accounting for these incredibly massive and powerful weapons, and at the same time, i need a royal a roll of toilet paper, some tissue. Its ironic. At the same time, you have unit supply. You work with alphas. Alphas also work with the warehouse. Juliet was medical supply officers. It was a small world amongst the logistics family. We all kind of knew each other and knew how to get to each other, versus in different aspects of the military, the job can be a little more secular and separated. So this was more like, professionally, a bit more of a happy family. There were strange aspects of it, but then, when you take that to deployment, its a different situation, because the budget itself would fluctuate. There were times when we did not have the supplies to give the soldiers in a life or death situation. We ran out of flak vests to assign to different soldiers, and we had to scrutinize and rotate and come up with innovative ideas, how to protect whom, who was going on what mission, where can we borrow what we need . It was dire situation sometimes. It was very out very unspoken in my section, but i could constantly see that way on each others brains. If we run out of gas masks, what are we going to do if there is a biochemical attack. That conversation puts you in a strange dichotomy in relation to the rest of your unit, in relation to other supply officers and your position in the hierarchy of the military. It is an aspect i have not been very open about because people think well, it is only logistics, but the quartermasters and logistics, supplying the military, these are things that are life or death situations and something you cannot really teach in training. It kind of just happens along the way. I think seeing that aspect, that hierarchy, those echelons, that latter go up and down, really made me the person and the writer i am today. You spoke like you are at the center of the circle in the sense that people have to come to you. Very much were at the center of the circle, and again, this was never really spoken about. I think a lot of people, even the media, when it concerns itself with war and sensationalism, there were times when my job was pretty mundane. I was just sitting in the office and no one was there. 95 and no one has picked up a lock today, and then two of my friends in a section would say we have to get to camp anaconda. We have to get to the fight alley. A lot of our job is literally pushing pencils, but at the same time, supply is an essential part of operations, and we were kind of an son because we were not the ones through the door first. It is an aspect that is never really played up. I also wanted to have you talk some more about your experiences in iraq, particularly, tell us about maybe one of the more memorable stories where you felt that your skills and the things you were trained to do really paid off, that you made a difference. It sounds like you had that awareness every day that you are doing your job. At times it might have seemed out of sight, but you were not. You were an underpinning of how the operation was going to be supplied. Can you talk about that . Sure. I was in the first battle for falluja in april, 2000 four. A lot of people remember the second battle when we actually took the city. In the first one, the marines went in for a few days and then pulled back to try to let the iraqis do their own thing. We had just gotten there about a month before and it was really crucial that we made sure that everybody had conductivity and could talk to each other. Sometimes, we would call each other electron warriors, kind of jokingly, because we would be talking on the radio or trying to connect a satellite, and i do remember when a succession of different Medication Systems broke and we had to find different ways to talk to the base about 50 miles away. We were trying to translate between one thing, how we would dial on the Satellite Phone and then get to talk to a different base so that our higher commanders could be able to talk to each other and know what was going on. Cable undergrounds of the people could have electronics flowing instead of having and actually be able to communicate via email and with images. Sending images for drones was a big thing because we need a lot of and with for that. We need to be able to shoot, move, communicate. So, some would be shooting, some would be moving units back and forth and we would be helping people communicate. At what point would you say the infrastructure got up, the Communication Infrastructure . Was after 2004 or right after that time . For our particular job, my particular unit, it was still come veritably early in the comparatively early in the war. I the time by the time we left in september and on into the winter, the infrastructure was far up on that base. In general, throughout a rack, we had Satellite Communications and throughout a rack, we had satellite medications and things like that. Rebecca . My story is extremely graphic. So, be forewarned. Again, we would respond to scenarios that sometimes included suicide bombers. If someone blew themselves up, we would go pick up the pieces. In doing things like that, you tend to develop somewhat of a we could call it a warped sense of humor. You find ways to make things less intense. Having a morbid sense of humor was a way that a lot of me and my guys and the people i worked with kind of work. We got a call one day and there had been a suicide bomber who had blown himself up in one of the main cities and it was the first suicide bombing that i had been called out on, so i did not really know what to expect. Ordnance is one thing. Blown up people are another. I am with a lot of infantry guys, and one hands me a stick of gum and he is like here, chew on this, it actually has it actually helps with the smell because these bodies have a distinct sense of smell. And my team leader was not a frantic person. We did not get along, so i was not relying on him was not a friendly person. We did not get along, so i was not relying on him for device. I do not watch horror movies because i have seen what that stuff looks like in reality. Basically, when someone blows himself up, usually all that is left is part of their head and part of their legs. I was searching for secondary devices. Hey, here are humongous boulders. Could you please go check these boulders to make sure there are no secondary devices . I was like sure, whatever. I am walking over these very unstable walks, huge rocks, and i slept because i was carrying like 40 pounds of gear and slipped because i was carrying like 40 pounds of gear and a weapon. And i slip and put my hand in this pile of do, and i was like, what is this . And it was the guys face. And it was like, yeah um, here is a piece. Lets take this back for analysis. These are the kinds of things i dealt with on somewhat of a daily basis. Its kind of like playing a videogame. Im not going to live. It was kind of third person, i am kind of outside my body now, watching this stuff happen, and i am not sure how i am going to deal with it, so im not. I am going to put that in the back of my file cabinet and deal with that when i get home. So, those were some of the stuff and that was my First Experience with those types of situations. There were guys who had seen those things multiple times and had dealt with way worse stuff than that particular situation, and things got even more intense after that. There were three months when it hit the fan for a while and we were up to our eyeballs in missions and absolute craziness. Talking about these kinds of things and what we did, i am sure we will get to this in a little bit, but i want to touch on it quickly, its like, what do people really want to know . When you are out there in the audience thinking about, what am i going to ask a veteran or what should i say, sometimes im like, this is an stuff that i talked about a lot. I am perfectly comfortable telling some of these tories stories and you can see on the receiving end, of the response are the recoil of i dont know what to say to this story. Its interesting when you talk, what are you proud of in your service, what made you this person, those are the kinds of things that of made me kind of who im and given me some of the perspectives i have. I come back and we see things and we do things and people get uptight about stuff and its like, nobody died, chill out. Its not that serious. You know, slow your roll, bring your bring it down and not show. Lets relax and figure out what we need to get done. Those situations that are gruesome and intense take some time to process and get through once i had some time to process. That they are Still Critical in crafting a perspective about life in general. I can imagine. Do you want to jump in . And i was in afghanistan, it was the beginning of the surge for the u. S. We went into southern afghanistan, and at that time there were multiple ground units. We are looking of 400 soldiers, 200 soldiers per so many square miles, and not every battalion belong to the same overall brigade. There was a lot of fragmented communication going on, different standard operating procedures, so was really difficult to operate when you are not all train together. We were supporting multiple Ground Forces who are having difficulty communicating. Some of the different Communication Architecture was in place but they had not train together in these states. We hit the ground running and had been looking at intelligence for the year leading up to this, and i was stressed with my soldiers for being able to support multiple units on the ground and try to direct or at least make recommendations to my commander on where he would direct aircraft and who to support. I just felt this immense pressure to be right. Intelligence is supposed to drive operations. That is what we were aiming toward. It is not what always happens. It is one of those things where you are dammed if you do and dammed if you dont. If you are predicting future enemy operations, my commander would want to counter that. The enemy may not actually be successful. Thats good news. But in can be frustrating. That could be frustrating. But i think a moment in afghanistan where we were there in the winter of 2010, and the vegetation is very bare during the winter in the south. The enemy was relatively quiet. There we got into the spring of 2010, the budget station starts to come back the vegetation starts to come back. This is an area where growing poppy was really important to the local economy. It also helped to give the foreign fighters cover and concealment to be able to move freely through southern afghanistan. So, i went out on a flight with the commander of one of the units to be able to see what they saw and how much they could actually detect. We flew through there and it was incredible. There were areas where these were five feet high. When the enemy has the advantage, the Friendly Forces have a disadvantage in that they get there and there are these five foot high grade rose they have to navigate over grape rows they have to navigate over that the enemies have to navigate through. We got into the fall were the vegetation started to die out and we realize through almost a full year there that the enemy had these underground tunnels and that there were huge cash lights. Some was with medical supplies. Some was with weapons, ammunition, and we realized that there were multiple firing positions what we thought were multiple firing positions were just the enemy navigating underground. We said this is what we think is going to happen at this location because last spring we saw this and now were realizing they are navigating from one position to the next underground. It was one enemy fighter. The ground units started to trust us through this nearly yearlong relationship we established, so they started exploiting the underground sites and pulling a lot of ammunition out of potentially pulling it out of enemy hands. We started to see success there, and it was really nice to feel like the work we had been doing, that it taken so long, was actually paying off. Every time we had either an aircraft that was shot at or hit or you sit in an Operations Center and the soldiers would day in and day out look at reporting. They would look at significant activity is a cayman. To them, it was just statistics, as it came in, and, to them, it was just a test experience this unit ran into ieds and lost five people. To them, it was just statistics. This unit ran into ieds and lost five people. Thats devastating to a small unit. When we were in the center sitting behind computers it felt more like a videogame than reality. We started to ask, are we sending these people into harms way . Did we miss something . Pulling ammunition out of enemy hands was really polling ammunition on of enemy hands was a really rewarding moment for us. It was a way for our analyst to engage and support the guys and gals that were going outside the wire every day. It also helped to build the confidence in what we were doing. We felt that relationship was really important so that intelligence would actually drive operations. Interesting. Can we now turn to talk a little bit about the skills you learned and how you transitioned into civilian life . Nicole, can you talk a bit about what you fell you gained from your experience and how your transition went . My story is a very strange arc. I always considered a continuous, build upon and read transforming myself. I dont want to say i didnt learn any skills. I reinforced who i am as a person being out in iraq. Again, my job position in the psychological connections to my job position, i got to see many aspects of iraqi people and my fellow soldiers in the military. The tricks that played on my mind was very difficult, even now, to explain to many people. I think one of the things that helped me cope and filter out and decipher, constantly modify my perception about my relationship to my deployment was that i am an avid reader. I am an avid writer. And the skill of doing my job. The routine of that, helped keep me sane in that situation. It was very difficult for me because, again, being the supply, i got to stay behind a great deal, but at the same time, the fact that there were so many people in my unit constantly task out to different portions of the military, like, we supported tankers and infantrymen, and i had many friends that were medics. They were constantly sent out on missions, and then we had iraqis come in and they had jobs on our post, while we were stationed there, so they ran the laundromats and built the cafe. It was estranged economy because on one hand dichotomy because on one hand you see the situation as this is the enemy and we are here to liberate. But on the other hand, you see the position of there are people here who are not the enemy who are of this collective and this ethnicity that look like me, being an African American woman, so there was a social aspect there. They are risking their lives to feed their families, to feed their children, and share this experience with me in a way that you come to the states, and wherever they were stationed from, they cannot explain that to their civilian counterparts, whether it be their families, their spouses or their children. I think that played a huge psychological placed a huge psychological burgeon upon me for many years. How do you explain burden upon me for many years. How do you explain this experience to people that do not want to hear all the bad . They want to hear you file for your country, your home, your safe, they want to hear you fought for your country, you are home, you are safe, you are alive. I was when he three and a rack. I had a birth a. I turned 23 in iraq. I had a birthday. I had to celebrate my birthday in a situation that was constantly reminding me of my own mortality. I had my daughter in march of 2003 and redeployed to germany in april of 2003. I met up with my unit in iraq in july of 2003. I did not see my daughter until nine months later. The kind of personal separation and personal experience, that really placed a huge psychological word in upon me because it is such a remote experience burden upon me because it is such a remote experience. Coming back home, i really wanted to start where i thought i had left off. I had a lot of College Friends around me and they would never they wanted me to talk about my experience in the military and i pretty much was like no, lets just pick up where we left off. For many years, thats how i dealt with it. These are my experiences. I kept them in a box, and this was the person i wanted to be again. Transforming from that and realizing that life had gone on, and you are a mother now and not the young girl that went away even though i was much older than a lot of the enlistees i knew. I came in at 20 and got out and turned 24. There were so many dynamics of change that happened in that short span of time. It took me so many years to digest it and to deal with this concept of ptsd and depression and anxiety, and all of these labels for Mental Illness when it really is about a person having a dynamic experience that is very convoluted and cannot be explained as good or bad, living with ambiguity, and realizing that there is so much that is america is really isolated, culturally, to this concept of war, more than any other country in the world, in my experience. Going back into school, going into a routine and reestablishing my connections to my older self, who i was and my interest, and combining that with my experiences, and the confusion of it all, and is building upon that as a person, that is where the transition, the positivity of the transition really began, but that took 10 years. It took 10 years, and i was a lot of downward slope it was a lot of downward slope between those two years and the acceptance of help from the Harlem Vet Center where i still receive treatment. Building a support system, and realizing that where a lot of my anger came from, and a lot of these concepts of misunderstanding, and realizing that there are going to be people who want to listen but they are not going to want to hear everything, and thats ok too, but being willing to tell it anyway. So future generations like my daughter wont just read a paragraph about iraq and think that is the whole story. So, i think now it is going on about 11 years since my enlistment. It has really been a journey. And realizing that there is nothing about that experience, not labeling a good or bad, but saying this is my perspective and this is a part of me, and i am not necessarily proud of my position in the war, but i am proud of the person that has come out of my perspective from that experience. As you say, you have learned to live with that. Teresa, can you talk a little bit more about your leadership skills and your transition . And i joined rotc i was a quiet kid. I stayed quiet pretty much until i had to lead large groups of people. Thats when i became a platoon commander. I got plunked down into deployment. I deployed after being in my unit for about four weeks. The first day i showed up, my commander was like great, welcome aboard, dont unpack, youre leaving soon. I got over there and they had shuffled officers because they were short staffs. I did not even know i would be leading marines until i stuck my boots in the sand. What i learned over there was how to talk to anybody, because i grew up kind of nerdy and i was kind of quiet. I was talking about a lot of math and physical stuff, communicating architectures and things like that, but i was leading people. So i had to talk to my marines. And everything from the 18year old whose already married with a pregnant wife to my 35yearold senior enlisted who would give you advice on what we are supposed to do next and i would be like, great, thanks, and then go tell the rest of the platoon, this is what we are doing now, being able to gather information, listen, talk to all of your troops and everyone around you, and then be able to tell everybody what to do and execute afterward was something i learned during that compressed appointment, because deployment, because when you are doing all the training, yeah, it is kind of real, but nobody is actually firing at you. Or is not all that pressure. There is not all that pressure. That was a huge thing i learned over there. Just to be able to be comfortable to walk into a room and realize that youre going to have to Work Together and talk to each other. So after the deployment i served in california in the marines for two more years and then i went out got out and went to graduate school. I was in phd program that i have since finished. Being at her being around people after the marine corps who were like four years younger than me and right out of college and going to school right afterward was really difficult for me for the first few years. I had to be a teaching assistant, and it turns out that undergrads dont salute. Funny thing. Who knew . That was really hard because i would want to reach across the desk and choke the kid and then realize that would get me arrested. Its a mere few years to dial down the pressure, and the pressure it took me a few years to dial down the pressure, and the pressure on me, to. As a team, you will dig through the night, build a bridge, l . Vesque lay the cable, whatever you have to do. In grad school, i would look for people to tell me what to do, and that is not the point of doing scientific research. The point is to learn what the science has to tell you. It was hard to make friends initially. Bit by bit, i started making friends, but that only happened after i came forward a little bit with my story and started confiding with my class mates about what had happened in my deployment, the experiences i had had, what it was like to be on a base. I met an army officer who was getting a masters in physics to go back and teach at west point. He was still on active duty and we became friends. From there, i developed a good cadre of people to hang out with, and from there, that helped a lot. But, yes, the writing has helped too, but i gather we will talk about that in a future question. Rebecca. Learning how to blow stuff up does not really translate to civilian life. What i gained most from it was of sorts. I grew up pretty sheltered. Was perspective of sorts. I grew up pretty sheltered. I have been an over achiever. What i learned was how to chill out, but even that is hard. I just started graduate school and i am taking for graduate level classes and him up to here with papers due on monday and tuesday. Good luck. That has been, as you are saying, there was kind of a when i got back, i always kind of felt like an outlier. Being a woman in and of itself is hard enough, but being a woman in an apartment where you dont see other women, ever. And i kind of got dealt a bad hand as far as my first unit went. I had a pretty crappy experience and so many things i dealt with from the man that i worked with. One of the things i learned, and it was a hard lesson, but well learned, was that i can take care of myself. I dont need anybody. That was definitely one part of it, but on the flipside of that, part of that, too, is that i learned that i do need people. And actually coming to the realization that i have to be willing to accept help sometimes and it isnt just about me. I can do my damnedest to get through things on my own, and i dont need any assistance, but when it came down to it, i really did need assistance. I needed help. I was unemployed and bouncing from couch to couch for quite some time and it was really tough for me to look at my best friend and be like, hey dude, can i come home with you for six months . I need a place to stay. And he would be like heres a couple hundred dollars. You need to get back to the gym to work out. Just being able to look at people and say thank you without having to say anything else or feeling like i had to apologize for where i was at, i still a lot of times feel like i am an outlier. I did not have a very good experience. A lot of times i do not relate well to that are in. Well to veterans. A lot of times i am very wary of veterans because i was burned badly by the people i worked with so i am very sensitive to people who tell me they are veterans. My walls go up and i act tough. Theres kind of that play in that dynamic. I moved here for a job about two and half years ago. I love new york city. I want to stay, and i found roller derby. For me, that has been a little bit of the place, but at the same time, im a roller derby referee, so i am still on the french. On the fringe in a manner of speaking. I have to learn how to navigate coming out of the fringe in a sense. That is been interesting, and doing it completely, 100 on your own, having to navigate that and then figuring out, i cant do this on my own. It is about finding a path. It is a journey. Every day reinventing yourself sometimes, where youve been, where youre now, and where you want to go. Rebecca, i want to just, specifically ask you, because when you came back you joined the classaction suit against rumsfeld. For those of you who dont know, there was a classaction suit against defense secretary gates and the pentagon for not taking note of the Sexual Harassment charges that women had been sexually harassed. 17 former and current members of the military suit sued, claiming that this behavior, this not paying attention by the pentagon had led to violence against women being tolerated. The suit was dismissed, and then in the spring of this year you testified in front of the Senate Armed Services committee. And you discussed your experience of being raped in afghanistan and your feelings about the military criminal Justice System and i wanted to just ask you about your decision. These were big steps to come forward, to go public, and to testify about your experience. Can you talk about this decision, and your decision to become an advocate . Like i said, i got dealt a bad hand. Just because i had a bad experience in the military does not mean that everyone else had. Sometimes i feel like in the talk around this issue of Sexual Violence in the military, a lot of the get stereotyped. I try to debunk that. Yes, there are dynamics in the military that make this an issue that is challenging to deal with, but that does not mean that everyone acts this way. There are good people in the military. There are good men. There are good women. That being said, the bad apples have a lot of leeway to get away with the crap they get away with because of the way it is set up. I think that dynamic is difficult when you are trying to talk about how do we fix this, how do we adjust it, how do we talk about it . Is it gendered. Is it not gendered. I was raped by a guy i worked with a week before i came back from afghanistan. I initially decided i was not going to say anything, i just wanted to get out. Now the military has two types of reporting. You can do a restricted report or an unrestricted report. I did a restricted report, which basically just makes you a statistic. Nothing really happens. After i got out of the military, i did not want to talk about it. Just wanted to move on. I was approached by this team. In the end, the approach was to challenge the doctrine that does not hold the military accountable for anything. Under the premise that most of the time, when youre suing the military or trying to sue the military, they usually come back with the idea that you cannot sue us because this is something that relates to military service or there is a function of the military environment, or because, when this started, they gave the guys lsd without permission. And they said no, we gave you lsd to see what would happen in a military environment and this has a function it is serving. So rape serves no function. It has been thrown out. One of my biggest irks of the whole thing is the judge basically called it a hazard of service. Rape is a hazard of service. That is written in the legal documents that were handed down by the judge. Again, the whole idea is when i first decided to speak about this, it happened unexpectedly. I signed on to this lawsuit as one of many participants and then got thrust into the media spotlight kind of lastminute. They called me on a friday and said can you come film with tbs and i was like no, probably not, why . And they were like, though we had somebody drop out. And i was like, i have to take kids take care of kids. They put me on a flight, did the interview, put me on a flight and gloomy home. The interview aired Tuesday Morning and then they dropped the lawsuit about an hour after the segment aired, which then kind of pushed me into a whirlwind of stuff. I ended up working for an organization here in the city that deals specifically with the issue of Sexual Violence in the military and trying to adjust policy. It has been interesting because it has been about three years since i started speaking publicly about the issue, and there has been a major uptick in Media Coverage of awareness around this issue of men speaking out about their experiences as well. A lot of you probably heard if you heard about these types of things the children will brand introduced a proposal Jill Hillebrand introduced a proposal to take Sexual Assaults out of the chain of command. I support this because an infantry commander is not a lawyer and he is probably dealing with the accused and the accuser, and you cannot be objective in those situations. Again, without going into too much detail, there definitely needs to be something that gets done, and the only way you can change the military is literally through an act of congress. And the mbaa. So, these types of things have been in the works for a while. People ask about the combat exclusion policy. Doesnt that just mean more women are going to get raped . No, it does not. Women are just as capable of doing the things men do, and the standards need to be said. I honestly believe the leadership you have is where the line is going to be drawn. Good leadership, this kind of stuff doesnt happen. Bad leadership, anything goes. And you have to hold people accountable for their choices. I know there is some leadership that chooses to sweep this under the ride and pretend it doesnt happen. But again, my perspectives are, i still have very strong feelings about the military. I believe it was a good thing for me. There is a lot of cognitive dissonance there. I can do the veterans day parade. There is an overwhelming sense of pride i cannot do the veterans day parade. There is an overwhelming sense of pride and then this. And i cannot reconcile that. May be i will get over that one day. I believe those who choose the military should have the best experience possible. There is a lot the military can offer, your views on war aside. People choose for different reasons. But whatever your reason, you should be able to serve with that serve with honor and come out of the other person on the other end. And if there is violence, those people should be rightly dealt with. We have some work to do, but social change takes time and we are doing it. I think we are getting there. Can i piggyback on a lot of what she said . Can i piggyback on a lot of what she said . Like you, i was raped in iraq. For seven years, i suppressed it. I never reported it to my unit. My unit did not have my back on many issues, so i knew the minute if i decided to even say hey, i was raped. This concept of nonviolent rape does not exist in peoples minds. It is an oxymoron, so that dynamic, i was like, look, i am in it. I have to get out. I have to make choices and sacrifices. I constructed my brain to think, well, it was just sex that i didnt like. For many years, several years, you know, i just harbored this resentment and all these emotions and all this pain, and i even got into a relationship that spiraled freely downward, and for many years the depression got worse, where it would go from three days of like, hey, i am just laying in bed for no reason to six months of geez, what did i do for six months . And this overwhelming cloud of sadness the blocked everything, and i cant recall six months of my life. It went from six months to a year and a year to another year, and it got to the point where in 2010, my depression got so bad my apartment was a mess, and i literally my daughter was taken away by acs. She was removed from my home for six months. It literally was so bad for me that suicide was a huge option. And then, instead of that, you know, the resiliency of people is amazing, and my resiliency to say no, you know, i am not a bad person because these things happen to me. To start digging into ask for help, and for help to actually be there i think one of the biggest issues with military Sexual Violence in the military, especially when i came back, is that there was no help. Everybody was like ok, you have ptsd, but mst wasnt even considered back then. It took seven years for the program i went to in new jersey for women who suffered mst, and there were just be women who suffered from mst and were not just part of the population of tts steve of ptsd to come about. Seven years. Just for the dialogue to happen, it was almost a decade. And for these issues to take precedent in the eyes of the media is still a fight, because women are constantly associated with rape in the media, with Sexual Assault in the media, and then when you are in the military its like, well, its a mans world, you had better suck it up. Just the dialing dialogue of saying rape is wrong. And rape does not just happen to women. There were many male soldiers who experienced Sexual Assault and Sexual Violence who have not come out at all because of the dynamic of well, you are a man, this doesnt happen to men. So the misogyny and the stereotypes in getting rid of these things and gender in grape is still gendering rape is still a dialogue that needs to happen. I have read articles about women who came out and said i was raped in my unit, and every single woman in that article experienced some type of blame and shame. This is not to say every woman in the military is going to get raped. Absolutely not. It is just saying that this culture has been placed in a hidden light, and it is unfair i mean, we would not tolerate this in the civilian world. Why is it in the military covered up and protected . That is a dynamic i never understood, and it does not translate. For pioneers like you to sit there and say hey, i am going to talk about this. It is uncomfortable, and i totally understand, when youre just a normal person and you get thrust into this situation you never asked for, that is the hardest thing to do. That in itself is bravery. These are just things that i challenge people, civilians and veterans alike, and people still in the military, to contemplate. I think by talking about these things and doing efficacy around them and advocacy around them, you are going to change. I wanted to ask rhiannon about your transition, and then i want to talk about your creative works and how your writing has helped you deal with some of these things. Transition is very near and dear to my heart right now. I have only been out a year, last october. My husband is an army that. An army vet. Raise your hand. He is right there in the fourth row. We met in the military and decided to get out and wanted to pursue business school. He was accepted to columbia business school. I had a great experience in the army. I loved being a leader. I loved the people the most. There were a lot of skills that i acquired, and i loved it. But tom and i had goals together of a family and wanting to be colocated as a family together. We had gone through the deployment after we first started dating. He was stationed in germany and then deployed to iraq for a year. Three months later, i moved to fort campbell, kentucky, and the move to afghanistan. So we knew that was at least 18 months apart. We came back from deployment. We had leaders who really worked with the organization to get us colocated, and we spent time together back at fort campbell. Once tom got accepted to school, i decided to get out as well. So here i am in new york. I was from a small town in kentucky. The transition really require something. These ladies understand it. But i think it is really something that we tell the story of our transitions so the people who are not in new york city where veterans do want to speak and people want to listen and the rest of the country, i think veterans are isolated area at isolated. If veterans are not self identifying as thats as fats, and for various reasons some dont as veterans, and for various reasons, some dont, if they hear stories that are similar to theirs, i think they become more comfortable speaking out. I think veterans are incredibly resilient just by virtue i am not sure if its by virtue of the type of people who want to serve and feel called to serve or the experiences they have in the military that shape and mold them into the people they are. But i have learned that we are great at overcoming adversity. We are really good at working with people that are not too much like ourselves because of the dynamic of bringing people from all different walks of life together, and focusing on accomplishing a mission. You have problem solvers. You have people who are really good at, under pressure, being able to make very difficult decisions using discretion. It is an incredible set of skills that veterans acquire through service and then they come into civilian life and feel alone, and i think the rest of society never gets to benefit from that. To be honest, youre paying our salary. I think its important, i mean, these are skills that you pay for. I have been focused in transition on trying to sit and do some analysis of what skills do i have, who am i today because of the military . Being able to speak to that and then being able to just find veterans who, you feel like you have a common language. You can use acronyms and understand what they mean. And it feels good to tap into that comfort zone, but at the same time, it would be a disservice to our service if we did not reach out and challenge ourselves to get to know someone who is not of that. I think that is how we start to bridge the gap between the services and the civilian population. Through my time since deciding to join rotc until now, people have been very supportive, whether it was friends, people at home who may be disagree with or have been nothing but respectful of me and the time that i served. I think it is important that we talk about that and that we are able to feel welcomed when we come back or when we get out. It is a totally different lifestyle. I am learning that now. I will finish year with one small piece. Somebody asked me, what is the biggest thing you have learned since transitioning, and this was more of a professionals capacity. It was the idea that i could wear it rings to work and let my hair down. Hearings to work and let my hair down. That i could wear earrings to work and let my hair down. I felt comfortable in a Job Interview if my hair was pulled back and there were no wispy hairs flying. About eight months over on the job, my boss said she had noticed that i had transition to over the last year. She said i noticed you are wearing more colors. Your hair is down. Youre curling it now. She had no idea why. That was just a tiny piece of my transition that really shed some light on it. She was like oh, that is pretty cool. A reminder, you can see this discussion again tonight on c span beginning at 11 00 p. M. Eastern. Thank you all for joining us bride saturday. Thank you for coming here and listening to our women warriors. I am the founder of women veterans. We do a couple of different things. One of the things that we have been more active on his connecting with veterans and the best amount of services that are thehere in we realize that Mayors Office has a lot of. Ervices to provide and a lot of other nonprofits out there that want to help women but they are having a difficult time finding these veterans because, as rebecca said, she didnt really affiliate with the Veterans Community because she had a tough time in the military. For us, we realize that not Everyone Wants to come out and be engaged in the Veterans Community. One of the things that we realize that there is a very high statistic among female veterans who are unemployed, who are homeless, or single parents, who are divorcees and they are having the toughest time out of this will transition process. Out of this whole transition process. And that transcends age groups. If you look at these outrageous statistics, they are much higher than their male peers. One of the reasons why we rhian isur nonprofit, on the board and it helped her transition into the civilian world. Because of her success, she wants to share that with all the veterans, specifically female veterans, so they can come out and learn about these amazing services. My question for the panel, it is really not that different from male peers, right . All the folks. Im sure there are tough guys who talk about heads then picking up body parts and folks who are in telecommunications who dig the trenches, just like you. Me, i would want to understand a little bit more how you would go about reaching out to those female veterans who dont want to talk about their experience . Job ofe done a fantastic being here and opening up and sharing your stories with everybody. I am pretty reticent, too, when talking about my expenses. It took me a few years to open , let aloneiends veterans. One of the scariest experiences was less than a year ago, walking into the veterans writing workshop at nyu, which is a free not half an organization. [laughter] it was my very first day there. I didnt know what to expect. I didnt know if we were going to share our own stories and writing, but i had the feeling that, like in all the other veterans were going to judge me for what i had done or not done in the military. I think an attitude of acceptance is really important for any organization that is reaching out. The folks there, both male and female, everybody was just really cool. If you wanted to talk, that was cool. And if you didnt feel like talking, that was fun, too. So if you did want to share your writing that they are anything like that, you didnt have to. As it happened, i did. I was shaking was i was shaking as i read it, but that was ok. That whole process has been therapeutic, writing about stuff that happened in iraq. My particular experience was that i had a relationship with a guy who was the Mortuary Affairs officer in my unit. Consensual. Hip was but writing about it has helped on a whole lot. Just the attitude of acceptance has been really great. First of all, the fact is that me and teresa were in the same workshop. See another woman that another woman veteran there, that was amazing. And then you keep it all inside. For me, i think one of the that reallyvations interest me that really encouraged me to tackle this beast of redefining what it is was that ieran accepted my experiences and i accepted the uniqueness and the similarities of my experience to other veterans. And the questions that arose from that, i accepted those, too. You have to have this ability of selfacceptance and that comes with time. What i encourage to a lot of civilians is, how can we help veterans . How can we get in contact with female veterans . Just think this idea that they are always around you come even if you dont know it. Encouraging thought of giving it time is universal. You are going through this hard situation. I dont necessarily know what it is, but give it time. Give it time and things change. Changes. Arance the way you look at the situation changes. Your perspective changes. You grow. There is a lot of growth in suffering. And a lot of people dont know that. But you have to give it time. Veterans i dont think are encouraged to give it time can you let people are, like, well, i need to know what happened to you now. Adjusted now. There is an immediacy to the situation. And transitions sometimes are gradual. Sometimes just being there and not saying anything means so much more to a person than just saying, ok, well, i want to hear your story, just a mere story. Right now, i do want to speak about it. Like everything in life, you have to have strong roots in , to blossom into something resilient and profound. I mean, give it time. We are always around. The just put that out there and somebody will eventually respond. Want to say one thing as to the whole veterancivilian divide concept. I had discover station wednesday night who is a with a girl who is a therapist. Ill rethinkg veterans can help veterans and im, like, youre wrong. [laughter] everyone in this room has experienced something that i know nothing about and i have experienced something that you know nothing about good but that doesnt mean we cant really to each other as human beings. Some of the best feedback i got was from civilians who were interested enough in trying to help me make transition, help me be successful its like trying to tell a therapist come unless youve been raped, you cant work with rape victims. It does not work like that. So, yes, it is helpful to understand military culture and we want to try to be able to empathize with some of these experiences, but just because youre not a veteran doesnt mean you cant help veterans or be friends with veterans or lend guidance if they need assistance. The whole concept of veterans are the only ones who can help veterans, i 125 disagree. Absolutely disagree. Yes, there are ways im going to relate to the women appear a little differently than those who maybe havent been in the military but that doesnt mean im not going to gain something from the other relationships or other communities i build. I always try to throw that out there with people. Something unique about having military service in your background, but that doesnt mean we are our own Little Islands to be left adrift forever and to never be a knowledge or reintegrated. It takes some time and sometimes civilians we dont know what we are doing. We will figure it out together. We are all on the same playing field. Everybody is trying to find a to to find that happy medium reintegrate into communities. The people i meet are the people that care. If you showed up, you somewhat care about hearing about what we had to say. Embrace that. This of us that have to do will understand there may be some awkward questions and hurt feelings when i tell you im not interested in talking to you about that right now and you will be like did i Say Something there is still that interaction and without that interaction, there will be some fumbling, but thats where it starts. Im so sorry i have to make this announcement, but the building closes at 6 00. I wish we had another hour to be able to have this conversation. Its truly an honor to have you all here. I would like to invite you to make some closing comments if you have them. Time to theld my person with his hand up . Very briefly. [inaudible] my last job in the military was as a commander. I had soldiers who we were focused on the top down from the top of the division, focused on how do we address this issue and it is happening throughout the military and across the country. Unfortunately it is increasing. But the way we try to address that is through exactly what we are saying, through people talking and people who have had issues and have overcome those other soldiers or people realize they are not alone. It has a huge start but to be something embraced by the chain of command so the dialogue becomes more common. That is in any sector or any population. Talk about people who have issues we have all had our own set of issues and some have had more than others. It is a topic that is discussed to think about suicide, or taking your own life, people who talk about that, you will have more people who will come forward and seek out help. Having the conversation that the help is actually there so that when they do come forward, they are listened to. It is so common because everyone is carrying a weapon alltime. It is so easy to think about and someone no one talks about. If you are having a bad day, its easy to have that spiral in your mind. Having the dialogue of everybody has thought about it but no one talks about it and very few people admit to having thought about it makes it more of a Community Thing and everybody empathizes with each other. Engagement is really good. For me, when it comes to the subject of suicide, is it a personal one . I attempted twice after i got back. What has insured my survival is the fact that my work through art and writing starting on that everythingldnt say i wanted to say but i had it down and got it out. Outlets,ng different to keep a diary or journal and to be able to put it away and come back to it later, they that becauseof some of these topics are too uncomfortable to share right away. This is how i felt a few days ago and im able to look at that and say those feelings passed and they were not as resilient as i thought they were be. To be able to look back on that and it is real, what its on paper, its just as real as talking to somebody and at the same time, it is not as powerful as keeping it inside. Medium, reading artistically and being able to express artistically was a healthy medium for me i was able to build on overtime. There. Ave to stop it thank you to our panelists and thank you everybody for coming. [applause] im very impressed with each and every one of you. [inaudible] [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2013] several News Agencies are citing a new Intelligence Report on the afghan war that warns the gains made by the United States and its allies in the country will be significantly eroded by 2017. The news comes from the National Intelligence estimate which includes input from 16 u. S. Intelligence agencies. You can read more about the report on the Washington Post those quote website under the National Security section. , book tv is in prime time. Tomorrow, we will look at the law and the courts. First, the Roberts Court and the struggle for the constitution. His thomas healy discusses book, the great dissent about Oliver Wendell holmes. A look at Guantanamo Bay and the book the terror courts. Watch book tv all week in prime time on cspan two. Rex i think they are moving extremely fast. Mine expires after five to 10 years. The cloud is new, facebook is new, twitter is new historically what we have done is slice human life into four slices. The play phase and then they learn phase, a work phase and then a resting phase afterwards and maybe eventually dying. What i think we should be doing is interweave these and have them all at the same time. We should play, learn, work and rest at the same time. The world moves so fast. We have to stay up to date. New years day on cspan, just before 1 00 eastern and throughout the afternoon, ceos of several companies on the future of higher education, robotics, and data as the new Industrial Revolution as book tv Kay Bailey Hutchison on the women who helped shape texas at eight 45. On cspan three, daughters of civil rights leaders share their memories of the civil rights era. Now, testimony from the chair and vice chair of the Bipartisan Commission on longterm care. They outlined the groups report on the nations longterm care financing and Delivery Systems as well as various insurance policies. From the senate aging committee, this is one hour and 50 minutes. Good afternoon. Longterm care is an issue that comes up repeatedly and an issue at all of us have a every every one of us have a personal interest in legislative interest in as well. We have spoken about caring for our parents and banning for our some ofres to alleviate the decisions for our children. Currently, about 12 million have longterm care needs and that number is rising rapidly. Across the country, middleclass families are going to the same tough choices on how best to care for overly parents. Medicare and most Traditional Health insurance plans do not cover longterm care expenses. While private longterm Care Insurance is available, most people dont have it because they see longterm care as something they will never need. Additionally, who is going to deliver longterm Care Services . Do we have the right workforce with nursing home costs rising . Some families are turning to assisted living facilities or trying to provide care at home. All of these situations raise additional questions and potential challenges. Us have heard from constituents about the trade offs they have to make to provide care for their loved ones. I will give you an example. Word fromngle inglewood shared she is a full time caregiver for her 79year old mother who is paralyzed after a stroke. Haverote that every cent i goes into helping my mother at home. Her mother cannot cook, clean or even wash herself. I am sure many of our colleagues here would share similar stories they are obviously quite common. More than half the longterm care in this nation is delivered to family caregivers. Cbo estimates the value of such 234 billionly annually. Despite these enormous costs, most americans have done little or nothing to prepare for their future longterm care needs according to a recent study. So our Current System is unsustainable both for the government and families. Cbo predicts expenditures for longterm care are likely to to asse from 1. 3 of gdp much as 3. 3 of gdp by 2050. As we continue to struggle to find ways to address it, lets not be naive to believe we are going to find a solution in just one hearing. But we need to start. The panel we have assembled will give us a wide array of ideas for us to debate as we strive to find a bipartisan solution. So i want to thank our witnesses. I want to thank our bipartisan coleader, senator collins. If you could share with us. Thank you very much, mr. Chairman. As you have indicated, more than 12 million americans rely on longterm Care Services and