Amid a raft of Pentagon initiatives to slow its suicide crisis, a new Army report Thursday showed the pace of self-inflicted deaths among soldiers — and all service members — has barely budged so far this year from the record rate the military suffered during 2012. 

Through April, the U.S. military has recorded 161 potential suicides in 2013 among active-duty troops, reservists and National Guard members — a pace of one suicide about every 18 hours. The Army, the largest contingent of the armed forces, sustained 109 reported suicides during the first four months, according its latest report.

Last year, when self-inflicted military deaths outstripped the number of troops killed in combat, there was one suicide every 17 hours among all active-duty, reserve and National Guard members, according to figures gathered from each branch. 

"We are still continuing to fight this problem with the same intensiveness," said Cynthia O. Smith, a Pentagon spokeswoman. "We are still focused on preventing suicides from occurring in the Department of Defense. We are doing everything we can to ensure that service members are getting the proper health care they need to prevent this type of event from happening. 

"It concerns us deeply." 

The number of suicides the military has suffered in recent years has brought new initiatives and programs aimed at stemming the epidemic. But advocates fear the rate will climb in coming years as more troops are drawn down in Afghanistan.

And research published last week has experts concerned that American troops who survived multiple nearby IED blasts while in Afghanistan and Iraq now are at greater jeopardy for harming themselves.

People who have suffered numerous mild traumatic brain injuries — or concussions — carry a higher suicide risk, according to the first study to make that connection. 

"We’re starting to see now: It’s the build up, it’s the accumulation of brain injuries that increases the risk for suicide,” said Craig Bryan, the study’s lead author, assistant professor of psychology at the University of Utah, and associate director of the National Center for Veterans Studies.

The research team made that correlation by surveying 161 troops who served in Iraq, were evaluated for TBIs — some reporting as many as 15 — and who acknowledged later enduring suicidal thoughts or behaviors, according to the study, published last week in the medical journal JAMA Psychiatry.

Courtesy of Jeremy Lattimer

Marine Sgt. Jeremy Lattimer, far left, stands with members of his squad in Iraq. Lattimer received a mild TBI from an IED blast. He has not struggled with suicidal thoughts but he is working through the symptoms of his TBI at a military hospital.

One in five surveyed veterans who had sustained more than one TBI also experienced thoughts about — or preoccupation with — suicide, the study found. For patients who received one TBI, 6.9 percent reported having suicidal thoughts. And the soldiers surveyed who never were diagnosed with a TBI reported no suicidal ideations, the study showed.

Marine Sgt. Jeremy Lattimer, 26, who earned a Bronze Star for his 2009 actions in Afghanistan, can count at least three concussions he’s sustained through sports and combat — moments when he briefly lost consciousness. 

Military doctors believe he sustained a mild TBI in 2005 during an IED detonation. Six years later, he developed speaking, hearing and sleep problems often affiliated with mild brain injuries. A brain scan later confirmed that Lattimer had suffered a past TBI, he said.

But some of “the biggest blasts” that he and his fellow unit members experienced in combat came from their own outgoing rockets, added Lattimer, an outpatient at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center where he’s receiving TBI treatment and therapy.

Courtesy Jeremy Lattimer

Marine Sgt. Jeremy Lattimer, right, receives the Bronze Star in 2011. He earned the award for his 2009 actions in Afghanistan: While under machine gun fire, he maneuvered his squad in a position to help other troops escape an enemy ambush.

“They put out a tremendous blast wave. One (firing episode) was close enough to ring my bell more intensely than the IEDs that went off in my vicinity,” Lattimer said. “To get back into my train of thought, to read my GPS, it took a minute or two before my brain kicked back in. It’s like you’re in a daze.”

The Pentagon’s own tally shows 266,810 service members received a traumatic brain injuries between 2000 and 2012. More than 80 percent of those TBIs were not deployment-related cases. Many occurred amid crashes of privately owned cars and military vehicles. 

In March, more than 50 members of Congress formally asked Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel to investigate whether mild TBIs sustained in American troops may be fueling the military’s suicide crisis.

The Army and Air Force have reopened their Tuition Assistance pipelines to service members — following a Congressional mandate — yet similar funding remains stalled within the Marine Corps, a leading veterans’ advocate complained Wednesday.

The federal sequestration had previously blockaded all money that’s normally funneled to troops to help them pay for college classes in order to further their educations and their military careers. In most branches, that tab reaches $4,500 per year for each service member who takes the classes.

On March 21, Congress voted to order the Defense Department to locate the necessary funding to relaunch Tuition Assistance across the branches. That directive has now become law. Navy leaders had already opted to keep that program alive for sailors despite sequestration, “and we’re quite proud of that, too,” said Lt. Shawn Eklund, a Navy spokesman.

At midnight Tuesday, the Army turned on the web portal used by soldiers to formally ask for Tuition Assistance money.

“This will allow soldiers to request Tuition Assistance for the remainder of fiscal year 2013. For the balance of (this year), the eligibility rules for use of TA, the $250 semester-hour cap, and the annual ceiling of $4,500 remain unchanged,” said Lt. Col. S. Justin Platt, an Army spokesman.

On Wednesday, the Air Force also reinstated Tuition Assistance for its members, said Air Force spokesman Lt. Col. Laurel Tingley.

"The program is going to remain exactly the same as it was before the suspension," Tingley said. 

Marine Corps public affairs officers didn’t immediately respond to emailed questions on when that branch will again offer Tuition Assistance.

“Here’s the issue: It’s been passed by Congress and signed by the president. There’s no reason this shouldn’t (already) be reinstated at the branch level,” said Michael Dakduk, executive director of Student Veterans of America, a support network with more than 500 campus chapters.

At some military posts, including North Carolina’s Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point, the attendance of Marines who once used on-base college classes has been cut by more than half since DOD halted all tuition help amid the sequestration, Dakduk said.

“It’s absolutely extreme,” he added. “And that’s exactly kind of thing we don’t want to see as far as supporting service members. Especially as our military force in total begins to draw down and we have folks exit the military.”

Related:

• It's official: Navy grounds Blue Angels for remainder of 2013
• Tens of thousands of veterans homeless despite billions in spending

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel on Monday cracked down on generals who now possess the power to overturn sex assault sentences, ordering the first substantive shift of his tenure in how the military handles rape convictions in the ranks.

But victims’ advocates quickly lashed the move as merely a meager tweak that fails to meet mounting calls to remove all sex-assault investigations from the chain of command and to inject civilian oversight into a controversial system of justice further exposed by the recent Aviano case. 

Hagel directed the Pentagon's General Counsel to strip the authority of commanding generals to void military court convictions. The Pentagon must seek fresh Congressional legislation to rewrite a section of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) to make the planned change legal.

The decision follows a firestorm ignited last month when Air Force Lt. General Craig Franklin overturned the sex-assault conviction of Air Force Lt. Col. James Wilkerson, an F-16 combat pilot. Wilkerson was court martialed and convicted by a military jury in the assault of a civilian woman at the U.S. Air Base in Aviano, Italy. He was sentenced to one year in the brig and booted from the Air Force.

But using current UCMJ laws, Franklin reversed that jury's ruling for apparent lack of evidence. Wilkerson was subsequently released from jail, reinstated and assigned to a staff job at an Arizona air base.

The head of the Service Women's Action Network (SWAN), which seeks to help women serve without discrimination, harassment or assault, said she is "encouraged" by Hagel's proposal to reform a portion of the UCMJ, particularly "in light of the perceived travesty of justice in the recent Aviano case." But she added that the modification is not enough.

"The Department of Defense has effectively acknowledged that commanders currently have undue influence on post-trial decision-making," said Anu Bhagwati, executive director of SWAN and a former Marine Corps captain. "However, post-trial review is only one component of the command-driven system that currently governs how military crimes are handled.

"Unless pre-trial decision-making around investigation and prosecution of offenses is also removed from the hands of commanders and given to impartial prosecutors, military criminal justice will remain a lesser form of justice, both for victims and defendants."

Measures 'fall short'
Protect Our Defenders, an advocacy group for military sex-assault victims, called the generals’ current prerogative to toss out sex-assault convictions "only one part of much larger fundamental problems."

"Today’s proposed changes from the Pentagon fall short of the necessary fixes to end the epidemic of sexual assault in the military," said Nancy Parrish, president of Protect Our Defenders. "The military has always contended that incidences like Aviano are extremely rare and we have never disputed that. But, we have always contended that the more insidious problem is that convening authorities can unilaterally lessen sentences, and today’s announcement does not change this.

"Commanders now have the power to reduce any sentence for any reason or no reason," Parrish added. "Under the current proposal ... this will not change. In the Aviano case, rather than setting Lt. Col. Wilkerson’s sexual assault conviction aside, Lt. General Franklin could have simply reduced the sentence to no punishment.

"For the system to be legitimate — the reporting, investigation and adjudication must be taken completely out of the chain of command if we are to avoid another case like Aviano," she added.

Under UCMJ, Hagel and Congress are powerless to change Franklin's decision to overturn the conviction of Lt. Col. Wilkerson.

In a written statement released Monday, Hagel said he is seeking to eliminate the ability of commanders who are the "convening authority" to override convictions for sexual assault or other serious crimes.

Defendants still will retain the right to appeal convictions through the military judicial system, Hagel said. He also wants to require the convening authority to put into writing any changes they may make in sentencing for major offenses.

"From the survivors we talk with," Parrish said, "a written explanation as to why their perp's sentence was lessened unilaterally will be of no comfort to them. This still constitutes an extraordinary power resting in the hands of one person with no equivalent in the civilian criminal justice system."

Related: 

• Guidelines protect sex assault victims seeking security clearance
• Training aims to improve how military sexual assaults are investigated
• Senate panel members suggest overhaul of military justice system 
• Accuser in Air Force sexual assault case 'frustrated' at overturned verdict
• Civil Rights Commission urged to order audit of military sex-assault cases

AFP - Getty Images file

Major General Ralph Baker is seen in a 2010 file photo.

An Army major general with U.S. Africa Command has been relieved of his post in connection with alcohol and sexual misconduct charges, defense officials said Thursday.

Officials said Maj. Gen. Ralph Baker, commander of the Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa, was fired from his command last Thursday and he was fined a portion of his pay by Gen. Carter Ham, head of U.S. Africa Command, after an administrative hearing and review. The officials said Ham lost confidence in Baker's ability to command.

Baker has appealed the administrative action to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel. But since senior commanders such as Ham have broad latitude in decisions to relieve subordinates of command, Hagel's decision may focus more on the financial punishment doled out by Ham, officials said.

Details of how much his pay was docked were not released.

The allegations against Baker involve harassment and inappropriate contact, said the officials, who were not authorized to talk publicly about the case so spoke on condition of anonymity.

Baker took over the task force, based at Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti, last May and was scheduled to leave the job in the near future.

He has returned to Washington and is temporarily serving as a special assistant to the director of the Army staff while he awaits Hagel's decision. Such special assistant posts are routinely used as way stations for general officers who are under investigation and awaiting their fate, or for others who have been promoted and are waiting for their new job to open up.

Ham is retiring and is scheduled to turn over his command to Army Gen. David Rodriguez in a ceremony Friday.

Ham's predecessor, Army Gen. William "Kip" Ward, was demoted in rank from four stars to three, and retired as a lieutenant general after investigators determined that he had misused government funds for lavish spending while heading U.S. Africa Command.

Baker is also one in a string of general officers who have been reprimanded or investigated for possible sexual misconduct.

The issue has raised the ire of Congress, where lawmakers have complained that military and defense leaders have not done enough to combat sexual assault and harassment in the ranks.

In particular, a recent decision by Air Force Lt. Gen. Craig Franklin to reverse the sexual assault conviction against Lt. Col. James Wilkerson, a former inspector general at Aviano Air Base in Italy, infuriated senators. And it triggered calls for a harder look at the military's justice system.

Hagel has ordered a review of Franklin's decision, but he has told members of Congress that neither he nor the Air Force secretary is empowered to overrule Franklin, who is the commander of the 3rd Air Force at Ramstein Air Base in Germany.

Nearly half of the 2.2 million U.S. troops who served in Iraq and Afghanistan have struggled to readjust to American life in part because the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs have been sluggish in helping those coming home in droves, according to a sweeping report released today.

After examining veteran suicides and unemployment as well as the military’s handling of sex assaults, women in uniform and same-sex family issues, the Institute of Medicine said returning service members deserve “timely and adequate care,” yet it cited cases in which the DOD and VA are using unproven diagnostic and therapy tools.

"The (federal) response has been slow and has not matched the magnitude of this population's requirements as many cope with a complex set of health, economic, and other challenges," said co-author Dr. George Rutherford. He chairs the IOM’s committee on the assessment of readjustment needs of military personnel, veterans, and their families. The IOM, an independent nonprofit, is the health arm of the National Academy of Sciences. 

"The number of people affected, the influx of returning personnel as the conflicts wind down, and the potential long-term consequences of their service heighten the urgency of putting the appropriate knowledge and resources in place to make re-entry into post-deployment life as easy as possible,” added Rutherford, head of preventive medicine and public health at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine.

Another 34,000 U.S. service members will be flown home from Afghanistan during the next 12 months. The high suicide toll among veterans (22 per day) has drawn recent Congressional scrutiny as have the elevated veteran-unemployment rate and access limits to VA mental health care. Congress requested the IOM study. 

Among the recommendations within the 500-plus page report:

• DOD and VA must “boost efforts to reduce the stigma” associated with service members or veterans simply asking for help to deal with mental-health issues or with substance-abuse problems.
• The tool DOD uses to assess cognitive function following a head injury – Automated Neuropsychological Assessment Metrics (ANAM) — carries “no clear scientific evidence” to show that it works. That’s key because more than 200,000 U.S. troops have sustained traumatic brain injuries since 2000 — most non-combat-related. On March 5, Congressional members sent a letter to the chiefs of DOD and VA seeking data to investigate a new theory linking TBIs with the military’s suicide crisis.
• One of the VA’s “first-line treatments for depression” — Acceptance and Commitment Therapy — similarly “lacks sufficient evidence” to show its efficacy.
• Research has found that curbing access to lethal weapons prevents suicides, however, “DOD policy prohibits restricting that individual's access to privately owned weapons” — even if a service member is known to be at risk for suicide.
• DOD and VA should link their databases so that the health records of all service members are available to track their medical conditions from the moment they enter the service through the day any future treatment is eventually rendered by a VA facility. 

"These (recommendations) are meant to be helpful, meant to be more of a roadmap of how to pursue” these issues, Rutherford said. “These are extraordinary challenges that the systems are facing and they’ve gone to extraordinary efforts to try and work with them.

'Demand is large'
“Yeah, it can all be streamlined. Yeah, (the available help) can be matched better to the demands. Yeah, you can improve this stuff. But they are trying like crazy to make it match the demand,” he added. “The demand is large, and it’s growing.”

Compared to past post-war generations, a higher percentage of returning Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans are using the VA for their health care — 56 percent of that population, according to the VA.

"This report provides VA a better understanding of the difficulties some Veterans face as they readjust to home, reconnect with family members, find employment and return to school," read an email from Josh Taylor, a VA spokesman. "Greater collaboration with the Department of Defense (DoD) in the areas of research, treatment and clinical outcomes will further enhance continuity of care as service members transition from active to veteran status."

Pentagon officials will examine the IOM’s suggestions, said Cynthia O. Smith, a DoD spokeswoman.

“DoD appreciates IOM's hard work and will thoughtfully consider the study's key findings and recommendations,” Smith wrote in an email. She added that the agency’s Deployment Health Clinical Center “will work collectively with the VA to provide a joint response to Congress no later than June 2013.” 

The IOM study reports that 44 percent of veterans have had "readjustment difficulties," 48 percent have dealt with "strains on family life," 49 percent have experienced post-traumatic stress, and 32 percent have felt "an occasional loss of interest in daily activities." Those figures were plucked from an earlier Pew Research Center survey. 

"I’m not surprised (by those numbers), talking to my other buddies that have gotten out. I’ve got several buddies that still can’t find jobs but, to be honest with you, I think it's a factor of (their) motivation" to hunt for work, said Ryan Kriesel, 24, an Army tank operator who served two tours in Iraq. He's now a student at the University of Minnesota. He described his own transition as "pretty smooth." 

When it comes to those younger veterans who report a flagging interest in daily life, Kriesel believes some of that may be due to the loss of the emotional rush that once came with combat. 

"Part of it is being back in the civilian world," he said. "There’s not as much adrenaline going on as when you were overseas, out on combat missions several times a day."

Related:

• Hunt for bogus war heroes uncovers thousands of hoaxers
• Obama urged to step in to fix VA backlog

Traumatic brain injuries sustained by more than 200,000 U.S. troops may be fueling the military’s suicide crisis, according to a letter co-signed by 53 congressional members who are seeking additional data to investigate the new theory.

In the letter, sent Tuesday to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki, the lawmakers urged both agencies to provide Congress with a raft of figures, including the number of Iraq and Afghanistan service members and veterans who committed suicide or tried to end their lives after being brain injured by the detonation of an improvised explosive device — “the weapon of choice” in both wars.

“Evidence has suggested that blast injuries, including but not limited to those causing damage to vision or hearing, can have a severe psychological impact ... that can play a major contributing role in suicides,” read the bi-partisan letter.

Between November 2011 and October 2012, there were more than 15,000 IED attacks against U.S. service members in Afghanistan, and 58 percent of all coalition casualties during that span were caused by the hidden bombs, the letter states.

At least three veterans groups, including the Blinded Veterans Association, are backing the congressional push to — as the letter to DOD and VA states — “get a better understanding of the connection between blast injuries and suicide.”

“I’ve talked to a lot of neurologists, military neurosurgeons and trauma surgeons who have all started to ponder if the IEDs that have caused the TBIs are the real cause of the suicides, versus the traditional approach that suicides are all caused by the psychological stresses of combat,” said Thomas Zampieri, head of government relations for the Blinded Veterans Association.

“Let’s collect more information and maybe the epidemiologists will find a way to unlock some of this mystery: Are military suicides actually more related to the brain injuries? I think there may be a big connection,” added Zampieri, who served as a Vietnam-era Army medic. “As the numbers of TBIs go up, the numbers of suicides continue to go up.”

The portion of U.S. service members who sustained TBIs increased each year from 2001 to 2011 — with a total of 266,810 brain injuries diagnosed in American troops between 2000 and 2012, according to the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center, part of the DOD. More than 80 percent of those injuries were not deployment-related cases, with many occurring amid crashes of privately owned cars and military vehicles. 

Army soldiers account for the vast majority of diagnosed TBI cases, and those injuries range from “mild” (a concussion) to “severe.” Within the Army, the suicide rate among active-duty members has risen from 9 per 100,000 in 2001 to nearly 23 per 100,000 in 2011, according to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

During that same span, according to the DOD’s brain injury center, the number of annual TBI diagnoses among American troops has ballooned from 11,580 in 2001 to 32,609 in 2011 — an increase of 182 percent.

“What is significant is that we are looking at a potential paradigm shift of significant proportion if the link between low-level TBI from IEDs emerges,” said retired Army Col. Bob Morris, founder of the Global Campaign against IEDs.

“The current automatic approach is to connect everything to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and look at it all as psychological when it may be a physiological,” Morris added. 

The lawmakers additionally asked the DOD and VA to supply "specific autopsy findings (of service members or veterans) potentially indicative of prior TBI." The members said they want to know whether such post-mortems found "chronic traumatic encephalopathy", which has been detected in the brains of a number of NFL players who recently committed suicide. 

Numerous Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have been diagnosed with both TBIs and PTSD, as well as with hearing loss — the most common disability among the men and women who served in those wars. 

"There is no higher priority for VA than the mental health and well-being of our courageous men and women who have served the nation," said a VA spokesman, responding to the congressional letter. "Under the leadership of Secretary Shinseki, VA has made significant progress in providing increased access to mental health care services and strengthening our suicide prevention efforts, but there is more work to do. VA is committed to providing all Veterans the care and benefits they have earned and deserve.”

A Pentagon spokeswoman said Hagel "responds directly to correspondence received" and that it would inappropriate for her comment on the letter. 

Rep. Dan Benishek, R-Mich., a surgeon who worked at a VA medical center for 20 years, led the effort to collect congressional signatures for the letter to Hagel and Shinseki.

“Far too many of our veterans and military personnel have taken their own life after bravely serving our nation. Frankly, it’s tragic and unacceptable,” Benishek said in a statement Tuesday. “I am hopeful that by working together we can make sure our guys and gals in the military and the VA have the support they need to recover from the damaging psychological effects of war.”

"There is particular evidence linking suicide to those wounded by IEDs," added Rep. Richard Hanna, R-N.Y. "It is my hope that through additional research we will be able to identify and reverse this painful trend. One suicide is too many and we should do all we can to address this as quickly as possible."

Related:

• Why modern soldiers are more susceptible to suicide
• Home from war, troops face 'white-knuckled' first month
• Soldier Hard's hip-hop lyrics reveal PTSD's rough edges

Zingers about the Distinguished Warfare Medal, fired with the same deadly accuracy as drone strikes unleashed from computer screens, mock the U.S. military’s latest ribbon as “The Purple Buttocks” and “The Chairborne.”

A website about war-zone burn pits offers a photoshopped version of the medal as a glossy, gold Xbox controller. At Stars and Stripes, one writer quipped the fresh decoration — announced Feb. 13 by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to honor troops who direct cyberattacks and drone strikes — has ignited “an avalanche of Whiskey Tango Foxtrots.” And at an online store run by current and ex-military members, retailers joke that any recipients will have earned the award from “the safety of some air conditioned box while sipping on their mocha-frapachino [sic] that they picked up on the way in to work that day, and waiting for Papa John’s to show up with lunch.”

Boom. 

The shrapnel-packed jabs seem to be fueled as much by the non-combat medal's mere existence as by the decoration's rank: the Distinguished Warfare Medal is slotted by military brass slightly above the Bronze Star, long the fourth-highest combat award granted for heroism and/or meritorious service in battle.

Many of the so-called "Distant Warfare Medal" critics — and cutups — fully acknowledge the strategic value of cyber experts within the U.S. armed forces, especially as President President Barack Obama on Friday deployed American service members and drone aircraft to the African country of Niger, where they could be used to support a French counterterrorism mission in neighboring Mali.

Still, some can't help but smirk at the thought of a keyboard clicker eventually being pinned with a ribbon. And there are those in the service who thought the first mentions they read about the medal were a just a dash of military satire. After all, for men and women in uniform, sarcasm and dark humor are as common as camo and Hesco (a protective barrier). 

"I thought it was a joke at first," said Marine Sgt. Jeremy Lattimer, 26, who earned a Bronze Star for his actions in Afghanistan's Helmand Province where, in one three-hour stretch on Nov. 22, 2009, he led his squad as they maneuvered through enemy machine gun fire then helped another squad escape an ambush.

"When I saw that this has a higher rating than the Bronze Star, it seemed a little bit extreme," added Lattimer, reached by phone at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, where he's receiving treatment for a traumatic brain injury sustained in combat. "Whenever you start getting into (awarding) valor for someone in a box behind a computer in who knows where, I think that's a point where it starts rubbing people the wrong way."

Meanwhile, some military families are so disturbed by the new medal that punchlines seem out of line. 

Courtesy of Veronica Ortiz-Rivera

Marine Staff Sgt. Javier Ortiz-Rivera was heavily decorated in life. After dying in action, he was awarded the Bronze Star. In 2009, he and his wife, Veronica (left), attended the Marine Corps Ball.

Near Camp Lejeune, N.C., where Marine Staff Sgt. Javier Ortiz-Rivera was based before his 2010 IED-blast death in Afghanistan, his wife, Veronica, speaks softly and somberly about the value of the Bronze Star that the Marine earned posthumously. 

"To know that somebody sitting at a computer who never risked their life is going to get something that’s worth more, it almost puts less of a value on what my husband did and what so many other men have done," Ortiz-Rivera said. "To take that new medal and give it a higher classification than the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart is disrespectful. Maybe I’m just biased because my husband was killed in combat.

"It feels like it almost strips away a little of his heroism, honestly, although he is and always will be a hero to us," she added. "I'm not at a point where I can joke about" this new medal.

And for Army veteran Andrew O'Brien, who served in Afghanistan in 2008 and 2009, any humorous takes about any medals — no matter how they are earned — simply feels wrong, he said. 

"We are all on the same team," O'Brien said. "I believe they (drone operators) deserve medals just as much as anyone else and recognition for the things they do. I also feel (the humor) is an attack on them for what they do. To mimic a video game as an award? We are all part of the same fight."

Related:

• 'Vet ink' shares tales of battle, loss and life-long pride
• Long-missing WWII medals awarded in Los Angeles
• Home from war, troops face 'white-knuckled' first month