If spying on us terrists isn't enough, adding our mentally disabled veterans to the boogie man roles to keep us running from our shadows seems to be the next step from the Ministry of Homeland Security......
From Larry Scott at OPEDNEWS.............
Military personnel and veterans with mental health issues could end up on the TSA's "Watch List" and be denied access to commercial flights - Who has access to the information is a primary concern.
The TSA's computer system is called the Transportation Threat Assessment and Credentialing Screening Gateway and accesses government record systems such as Social Security files and FBI criminal records.
But, this next step of looking for "mental defectives" in military and veterans' records presents multiple problems.
You know what to do and where we're going.........
Who is a mentally defective? If a person has had mental health issues, what criteria would the TSA use in blocking access to commercial airline flights? What level of mental health problems would kick a person onto the TSA's Watch List? And, who would have access to the medical records of millions of military service members and veterans?
Of special interest to military personnel and veterans is the issue of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Would troops and veterans diagnosed with PTSD be stopped at the gate by the TSA? Various studies indicate that anywhere from ten per cent to 30 per cent of troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan suffer from some symptoms of PTSD. And, add at least 100,000 Vietnam-era veterans and many more from the Gulf War.
And from "repost" at Indymedia.org
Will your medical records prevent you from flying?
Is there an efficient, legal way to keep crazy people off airplanes altogether, like the manic depressive man shot dead at the Miami airport last week?
As it turns out, the government was taking steps in that direction almost a month before Rigoberto Alpizar was plugged by U.S. air marshals after he ran down the Jetway with a bundle in his hands while saying, according to the government, that he had a bomb.
A Nov. 15 notice put out by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), which is always thinking about new ways to keep potentially dangerous people off our airliners, states TSA is looking for contractors to add a number of new databases for screening passengers and airport workers.
Up first are the files of the Defense Department (DoD) and Veterans Administration (VA), which the TSA says it wants scoured for "mental defectives."
As if troubled veterans didn't have enough to worry about. According to a 2004 Government Accountability Office (GAO) study, about 15 percent of the soldiers coming home from the intense guerrilla wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are likely to be afflicted with what was once called "combat fatigue."
The New England Journal of Medicine also reported in 2004 that "15.6 percent to 17.1 percent of returning soldiers from Iraq exhibited signs of anxiety, major depression or other mental health problems."
I don't know about you, but as a veteran and a liberal/progressive who is politically active, I only hope that I can survive this screening process and not be labeled as "a mental defective" and a risk to the flying public.