According to Congressional Quarterly, Inc. the TSA put out a November 15 request for database contractors to construct a means of screening additional passengers.
From CQ: "Up first are the files of the Defense Department (DoD) and Veterans Administration (VA), which the TSA says it wants scoured for "mental defectives."
http://www.cq.com/public/20051209_homeland.html
DoD spokeswoman Lt. Col. Ellen G. Krenke flatly declared, "There is no such category" in military records. But, she added by e-mail, "The only area where information such as this may be contained is in the section for standard separation program designator codes. However . . . this information is stamped `For Official Use Only' and will not be furnished to any agency or individual outside the Department of Defense." (Except perhaps to the TSA?)
What roughly 23 percent of vets returning from Iraq have is a diagnosis of PSTD (post-traumatic stress disorder.
Having had PSTD myself after a violent home invasion 26 years ago, I'm aware of its symptoms, effects and medical interventions. I can emphatically say it did not make me "mentally defective", 'crazy' (except in internal ways) or a flying risk. It is a terrible condition and should this new screening methodology prove true and vets with PSTD put on a no-fly list, it will be an additional affront to the soldiers who have served.
MaryScott O'Conner has an excellent diary posted tonight titled "Slouching Towards Kristallnacht" http://dailykos.com/...
In it she discusses the incremental, tiny steps that lead inexorably towards tyranny. Count me as a Kossack who thinks this potential targeting of vets with PSTD is part and parcel of where we're being force-marched.
This is how they do it. Little by little. Small changes that happen so quickly no one has the time to protest. Each morning you wake up to a new, small outrage. I can hear the wingnuts exclaiming, "Well, you don't want CRAZY people on planes, do you?" Of course I don't. But like I said, PSTD isn't "crazy".