Review Finds "Huge" State Discrepancies In New GI Benefits.   The AP (7/7, Pope) notes that a review it conducted of "state-by-state benefits under" the new GI Bill, which "kicks in Aug. 1," shows "huge discrepancies in the amount veterans can receive," discrepancies which stem "from the formula the government created, as well as a much-criticized decision by the Department of Veterans Affairs on how to implement the law." According to the AP, the "new GI Bill covers full in-state undergraduate tuition and fees at any public college," but Congress "also wanted to help veterans attend often pricier private schools. So the new bill offers them an amount equal to the tuition at the most expensive public college in the same state." That provision, however, "penalizes veterans going to private colleges in states that have kept their public university tuition low." Critics "argue the Department of Veterans Affairs misinterpreted the law and should have combined tuition and fees in coming up with reimbursement levels," but the VA "says its hands were tied by Congress. 'It is a valid question concerning why we would pay X in State A versus how much we would pay in State B, but the statute defines the kinds of programs we would account for,' said Keith Wilson," the VA's director of educational services.
Impact: New GI Bill

Robert McNamara Dead At 93.   NBC Nightly News (7/6) reported, "Word arrived this morning that Robert McNamara has died. It is difficult to this day to find someone who came up during the 1960's who doesn't have an opinion about him. McNamara died knowing a lot of that was negative, despite his attempts to salvage his reputation. His name will always be associated with one place: Vietnam."
      ABC World News (7/6) reported, "For seven years under President Kennedy and Johnson, McNamara directed the escalation of our commitment in Vietnam. He was so enmeshed in the conflict that by 1964, people were calling it 'McNamara's war.'"
      The CBS Evening News (7/6) reported McNamara's life was a "cautionary tale," noting there are "many among those who fought in Vietnam and the families of the 58,000 dead who can never forgive McNamara. But give him this: by the end of his extraordinary life, he had owned up to his mistakes."
      The Washington Post (7/7) says in an editorial that McNamara "had come to be seen more as a figure out of Shakespeare than of cinema, tormented by guilt over his role in the Vietnam War, driven to stabilize and rein in the nuclear arms race, in which he had also figured large, devoting himself (as president of the World Bank) to alleviating poverty." The "true McNamara's War, as it turned out, was longer than Vietnam, and was fought mostly within himself."
      The Los Angeles Times (7/7), in an editorial, calls McNamara "a brilliant man who rose quickly to the pinnacle of the corporate and government worlds only to become the poster child for wrongheaded hubris."
Impact: Former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara

Study Finds Moderate Drinkers Have More Money, Live Longer. Reuters (7/7) says that according to a new study, people who drink moderate amounts of alcohol have more money, are more educated, and are less likely to be disabled than people who do not drink. In addition, the study found that consuming one alcoholic drink per day cut a person's risk of dying over the next four years in half. The study, a report of which appears in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, was led by the San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center's Dr. Sei J. Lee.
Impact: VA Research

We Owe Our Veterans Much More Than This.   In continuing coverage, US Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), writing in a Philadelphia Inquirer (7/7) op-ed, says, "The nation owes its veterans a debt it can never repay. Foremost among its obligations to them is safe, reliable health care," but the "bungled radiation treatment of close to a hundred veterans with prostate cancer over a six-year period at Philadelphia's Veterans Affairs Medical Center falls far short of the government's promise to veterans."
Impact: Brachytherapy issue