Your presentation is quite timely, because you'll read newspaper reports that many of our military are now being diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. I would be very disappointed and angered myself if this is the norm—that we have conflicts between various departments, that people are put through the wringer, not just in serving, but once they come out of active duty and want to assume a certain type of normalcy and get the help they require.
You must talk to other people who are veterans. Is your experience a common experience with other veterans in a similar situation? How prevalent do you think it is, just from your own conversations and experiences? Can you maybe make one or two suggestions of how we can improve this?
We have to take it forward. We have a government that touts the military, touts veterans. We have a veterans charter. What the hell is the government doing if it's not responding to the urgent needs? This is not something we can put off. This is in many ways life and death. If the government is not responding to our veterans, then it is a shameful mark on the government and on us as a country.
I want you to share with us for a couple of minutes whether others have experienced this and maybe one or two suggestions of some way we can move this forward. We can't let it stay the status quo.
Thank you.