there's nothing social welfare about it. alan west won overwhelmingly. viewpoint with eliot spitzer up next. ♪ >> good evening, i'm eliot spitzer. this is viewpoint. mitt romney unburdened himself of some perspective presidential plans. and anticipation that he would share his plans with all of us dashed. instead, the former massachusetts governor made his remarks behind closed doors at a fundraiser with high donors. a couple of reporters overheard his backyard speech including he would eliminate the urban

development. he would cut loopholes in tax deductions for the very wealthy including eliminating mortgage deductions for the second home and deductions for state income and property taxes. governor romney and wife ann had advice for the obamas with an exclusive interview. >> well, start packing. that's what i would like to say. obviously we have a very different view. >> i believe it's mitt's time. he is the person who can turn around this economy. it's our turn now. >> maybe not. the latest "washington post" "abc news" poll has president obama's favorable rating at a two-year high at 56% compared to 35% for mitt romney. and romney's lagging among women, and the gender gab

clearly mitt romney's strategic hurdle moving forward. i'm joined by politico white house reporter joe williams and and joel sawyer. thank you to both of you for joining me tonight. joel, let me begin with you. we're one week into the rebranding, this is your domain, the rebranding of mitt romney. he has had open running in this field for a week now, but i don't see anything different. i don't see any different to shake up the agenda or how we view him. he's got to do something dramatic. why isn't he doing something? >> you know, i don't that he necessarily has to do anything dramatic. if you look at the tone of what he said during the republican prime iprimary, i believe that will appeal to the voters. this is one reason frankly, he had problems to in connecting with

connecting with the electorate as well. if you're mitt romney you keep on doing what you're doing. as the race starts to heat up, there are a lot of people who are not paying attention to the presidential race right now. as startling of an idea to people like us. he has got plenty of time. >> it's not startling to me. i was in this political arena for a couple of years. i know that people do pay attention. having said that, if i was a candidate lagging in the polls with unfavorables that from akin to him i would be saying to my consultants we got to do something. when you're behind, you got to change the game. joe, am i missing something? he has to do something more fundamental. >> joe, we'll give a shot. >> certainly he can't be too leisurely about this. this is a big dramatic point coming.

that's when he taps the person on the shoulder to be his vice presidential running mate. that will catch attention. yeah, there's going to be a lot of focus on his issues. there is dead time here. there is a chance for him to cover a lot of ground, which he's going to do to do. if you look at the poll and see the numbers that we saw, absolutely you have to do something, if not only to shake things up, then to start work on the very real task of closeing those gaps. >> joe, i agree with you. the vice presidential selection is one of those moments that people pay attention. we looked at the speech with sarah palin that electrified the nation before it collapsed on her. joel, i want to come back to you. if you were sitting down with mitt romney looking at that abc "washington post" poll you would be disconcerted by it. there are structural problems and we're not making progress with women and getting traction

with our economic argument and we're not getting the support of latinos. there are core areas that are eluding him. gout to concede that much, so you would want something to happen. >> you do want something to happen. but again, a couple of things. look, i think you got a lot of time. this is ultimately--this is still a state-by hi state race. you have to look at state by state polls in the general election. what you want to look at is the process is the message what do i need to do and focus my resources. like it or not in this political environment we're in, races are won and loss by paid media. until we start to see the paid media, if i was mitt romney i would be up before the president was given where his numbers are and given where president

obama's numbers are. but until we see the tv ads start talking, that's where we'll see something very telling with the numbers. >> i sort of wonder. there has been the criticism that i heard during the run up of the primary is the fact that romney had relied almost exclusively on the air campaign and did not have a ground game going. that was to his peril in a couple of states where he should have mutt people away, like michigan where he didn't have the margin of victory that he wanted, and the infrastructure is lacking there. not to mention there is a lot of ground to cover. you mentioned the politics in months and weeks in politics is a long time. but it's a short time and the more that president obama can define who mitt romney is, and he's starting to do it right now, the harder it will be for mitt romney to turn back the clock and reverse those negatives. >> you both are right. the air assault will begin--i don't know if i agree with you

with the outcome determinative. paid media is important, but social media is important. and i want to pick up on something gnaw said. let's look at a map. i think we got a screen here of how a lot of folks looks at the electorate votes right now. the magic number is 270, you win. mitt romney being at 188. the up for grabs really being own 104. that gets to be a tough hurdle for mitt romney. how does he get to 270? we put together a couple of different scenarios, what we called romney-a. let's put that on the screen. joel, you tell me if this is feasible for mitt romney to get to this which would be to winning all the states you're looking at. he would need to do this to get from 188 to 270. virginia, ohio, nevada, is this feasible? do you understand the map? >> i think so.

i don't know if you mentioned florida or not, florida and ohio, i think they're going to be key states for the republican nominee, any republican nominee. i think go the republican number any can win florida and ohio you're in a lock for the rest that you need to go for. >> i agree with you. joel, hold on for one second. florida has got to be part of the republicancal clues. ohio has mitt romney down by six. now this is a dramatic swing from 2010 when the recommendation did very well winning the. gubernatorial seat there. what is he going to do in ohio where the committee beginning to come back a little bit the automotive industry is coming back. what is mitt romney going to say in ohio? >> look, i think you're going to continue making the case are we having some job growth? yeah, but it's not enough to keep up with what we need to do to get out of the hole. i think he's going to continue to make the case. he's a guy who has had success in the private sector and's

better suited to manage the current economy than the current occupant in the white house. >> joe, you said that moment could redefine him. if you were mitt romney and ohio were the battleground, who would you pick? >> that's a tough question. the name that is on a lot of people's names is rob portman. very low-key guy. solid, he has got the fiscal record. that's the ohioan that a lot of people are saying should be number two on the ticket. it doesn't bring a lot of excitement or national name recognition care to marco rubio or even paul ryan, but certainly it's a solid number two pick. it fits in with mitt romney's characterization of himself, a steady guy, a guy who is dependable and looking for institutions. i want to go back to something that joel said that ohio is in play. i think romney could win ohio

conceivably but there are a couple of uphill battles that would give me cause. the first is we had a big union battle there. the republicans got turned back, the governor there did not get the right to work bill that he wanted which was out of sync with the other combined states the ohio auto industry as you mentioned, eliot, is starting to come back, that is a difficult argument for mitt romney to come in and make with the agreements going on with the union bills going on over there. >> i got to tell a little story. i was running out in central park a--this goes back a couple of months. a guy comes up and starts chatting with me. turns out it was rob portman. i thought i was aware of who is who in the united states senate. i had a wonderful conversation with the guy. on substance i could find common

ground with him, but is he going to turn this race around? is he going to be the sort of guy who can turn a presidential race? >> no, and i disagree a little bit. i think the governor romney needs to pick somebody who can fire up and get the base energized. he did a lot of things right in the primary but one thing he didn't do very well was connecting solidly with the conservative base. much like what senator mccain did with sarah palin to bring that fire and get people to come out and vote for you, i think he'll need someone with a little bit more fire in them like marco rubio. >> if you pull someone from the right, there was a lot of distance between the moderate voters and the hardcore relevance over the primary. we saw that. i don't think it's necessarily a great strategy. to bring electricity and excitement, but it doesn't nosily

necessarily woo the middle. >> get the last word joel, if you want. >> i think that's fine. i think governor romney will be very good at appeal together people in the middle, but you need someone who will get out there and work hard for you. >> getting to 270 without florida and ohio, very hard for mitt romney. i don't think he can do it right now unless some factor outside of his control shakes things up, bad economic news i just don't see it based on what he's seeing. this is politics world that can turn on its ear in 24 hours. >> anything can happen. >> that's why we watch. it's great to have you both on the show. >> thanks. >> another grate day to be a millionaire. the buffet rule rebuffed next on viewpoint. >>just refreshing to hear.

no other television show does that. we're keeping it real.

>> a close call for the 1%. not even. bye bye buffet rule and another bad weekend in afghanistan. how many more can we endure. i think its brilliant. >>current tv welcomes two new hosts. news and analysis with a washington perspective from an emmy winning insider. >>i know this stuff and i love it and i try to bring that to the show. >>and humor and politics with a west coast edge. >>politically direct means no bs, cutting through the clutter. >>bill press and stephanie miller, current's new morning news block. weekdays six to noon. is on the new news network. >>welcome to the war room.

>>jennifer granholm joins current tv. a former two-term governor. >>make your voice heard. >>detremined to find solutions. >>that partnership in order to invest in our country is critical. >>driven to find the truth. >>how did romney get his groove back? >>fearless, independent and above all, politically direct. >> somewhere grover norquist is laughing. they would raise taxes on .3% not any 3% but the richest 3%. the buffet rule failed to garner the 60 votes necessary to avoid a republican filibuster. the republicans blocked the bail showing that the bill is supported by 72% of americans

including 53% of republicans. but the buffet rule is far from the only tax dispute on the horizon. a perfect storm of tax policy will coalesce to increase every's taxes by an average of $3,800. not such a big deal for people making over $1 million but for families living on $49,000 a year, it is. it may come a month after the mayans predicted it, but some are still calling it tax armageddon. joining me and thank you both for being here tonight. brian, with the defeat of the buffet rule, is any possibility of compromise on fiscal matters tax, spending issues gone between now and november? >> i think so, and i think that's really what the leaders on capitol hill and both parties really assume. that after the tax spending

fights of last year and sort of the contentious issues surrounding the super committee they weren't going to get anything and the election is really going to have to be the place where fiscal policies and the two parties visions for the country will be resolved. >> we cast our votes and let's leave it up to the electorate. come november you'll make a fundamental choice. president obama's response tonight senate republicans voted to block the buffet rule choosing once again to protect the tax breaks. the battle is now joined and we know who is on who's side. >> this is not the greatest tax policy but it's simple. the rich are getting away with murder. now everyone in the country knows it. even small business knows it. even the majority of small business wants the tax on the

millionaires. >> we'll get to the economics in a moment but as a political matter this doesn't seem to be the fight that i would have expected the republicans to want to fight in the sense in a this really is the democrats framed the issue cleverliry to say you're protecting that .3% not even 1%. why didn't the republican leadership say anter native strategy, we'll shock you are vote for this, give you what you want and see if the economy comes back. you could say you had everything you wanted now give us our chance. >> there is no chance in the world they would have done that. they maybe would have come up with a modest alternative to show that they were a little bit sensitive to the extravagance, the sheer greed of the rich and the tax loopholes, but i never expected them to do anything differently than what they did. they weren't going to give into this, and i think they're going to try to call it gimmickry.

they probably have some legs, so it's good to understander the other side. they may have something there, frankly, eliot it's just too much-- >> the buffet rule. >> yes. >> why is that? >> it's going to be a complex rule to enforce. people are talking about it already. how do you begin to enforce this sort of thing. what if you're married to somebody and it puts you--there are complications there. there are better ways to handle this. >> you say the buffet rule is not great tax policy. you're correct about that. there are many different flaws in it but as a political statement, and this is a matter of merges, it seems to me that the republican party is playing defense because the democrat party is saying this is the litmus test. this is the dividing line as the president's statement

articulated. you don't have a choice, be with the middle class or the wealthy. what is the republican response to this? >> right now the republican response is to say this is a gimmick, class warfare and throw dust up around the issue that voters will lose sight of the clear message that the democrats stride to send by setting up this vote. but the two parties have been around this so many times that the democrats realize they need to figure out a way to make republicans feel some political pain for refuse to go ever increase taxes on the wealthy. or there is going to be a huge fiscal problem in the years ahead, and the only people who will be bear the brunt of that are working class people and middle class people when their programs are cut. this is a lever, a way to expose to voters what republican priorities are and hopefully break them of it so there are

some more reasonable fiscal policies are nut in place. >> maybe you're right, maybe the voters will determine the outcome in november, we're not going to pay attention to gimmickry until we see proposals that come in october and november. there is this brewing sense that given the expiration of the bush tax cuts at the end of the year and the quarter of at the end of last year, and the healthcare act if it is still deemed constitutional by the supreme court there are going to be a lot of fiscal pain imposed upon tax payers and the government. what does this mean. >> i'm worried about it partly because i think that both parties believe in austerity. i guess they got the kool-aid. we got to deal with this budget deficit to deal with it right now. the economy is too darn weak to

have tax increases and spending cuts. if it's not taken care of by january 1st we're diving back into recession as sure as we're sitting here. something has to be reversed. my fear is not all of this will happen. some agreement will occur. >> i want to hold you up, you're speaking like an economist. tax also go up. spending will be cut, you say this will bring us into a recession. cagey economics, the republicans are saying it, and many believe it, what will happen because of those tax increases and spending cuts. >> you're withdrawing 3.5% of demand, demand for goods and services, purchasing power right out of the economy. that leads to recession. recession is a shrinking of the economy. and it has a multiplier effect. it gets bigger and bigger. it could be very serious. >> a lot of people are saying look at europe. europe is in a downward spiral

because of austerity is being imposed. given the convergence of all these taxes and spending cuts, they kicked the can down the road, the pain is going to come due at the end of the year. is there any conversation going on right now based upon people who are saying look, a couple of grownup versus got to get together and begin to lay a foundation to prevent what has just been described as a 3.5% cut in our gdp. >> even members of both parties are working quietly behindly scenes in hope of addressing these things without having to do 6 trillion-dollar of budget addressing some of these things before the election. there is very little hope that anything like that will happen just because the top leaders in both parties think the election needs to determine what direction we go, how many spending we cut, if we raise taxes and if so, by how much. the real question at this point is how clear of a mandate does one party or the other have

after the election and then whether or not congress gives extension of the deadline to itself three or four months so they have time to do the bill writing and to do something responsible as opposed to just letting all this stuff trigger or hayesly putting it together and letting legislation that is meant to address the problem but is erroneous or flawed. >> if i were just betting the averages here, saying president obama is going to be re-elected, the senate is in position of equilibrium. the house stays in control of the republicans, that's a tough dynamic to negotiate your way out of what jeff just described as inevitable recession. i would be worried. am i wrong? >> there is a real possibility that you'll have president obama win the re-election and republicans take control of the senate and have a whole lot of confusion among republicans, but also between the two parties about who really has what the voters said and what they meant.

if you have that situation it's unclear how they get out of this without punting yet again indefinitely. >> jeff, ten seconds, last point. >> odds are very high the confusion will lead to bad policy. withdraw money from the economy, maybe not as much as we're worried about, and that could be lead to a recession. it's bad news. >> there we have it. congress will kick the can down the road and we'll have bad policy, shocking. this is what we've come to expect. brian beutler and jeff maverick, thank you for your time tonight. >> good to see. >> you the view finding coming up next no one.

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both. and it's steroid-free. spiriva does not replace fast-acting inhalers for sudden symptoms. tell your doctor if you have kidney problems glaucoma, trouble urinating, or an enlarged prostate. these may worsen with spiriva. discuss all medicines you take, even eye drops. stop taking spiriva and seek immediate medical help if your breathing suddenly worsens your throat or tongue swells you get hives, vision changes or eye pain, or problems passing urine. other side effects include dry mouth and constipation. nothing can reverse copd. spiriva helps me breathe better. does breathing with copd weigh you down? ask your doctor if spiriva can help. >> still to come, my view on romney's troubling speech to the nra. but first our daily look through the viewfinder.

>> i want to thank you for that, mitt. the only cabbed who could ever make me look exciting. >> and you're the only candidate who can make me look gay friendly. >> i had a theory when i was white house press secretary, nothing good ever happens on the sunday shows. >> i can't think of a time when i felt it was more important for us to to come to defeat than today with president obama. >> he looks great. >> he's like a cat. he keeps coming back. >> the romney roulettes the fat cats rig the system. >> i can't believe we're here. >> i can't believe it took so long to win. [dog growling] >> hey, everybody is out. >> earlier you had a very patronizing tone towards me. i fully understand what a slip screen is.

[dog growling] >> being investigated for--i'm sunday. >> i have very little tolerance for people who tell me they graduate with $200,000 of debt or even $80,000 of debt because there's no reason for that. [this ♪ the campaign was ♪ the time of my life ♪ that little kid is on the u.s. olympic team by the way. this weekend in afghanistan, a reason to stay or compelling reason to get out. next on viewpoint. and i try to bring that

to the show. look, i don't play 'bout my facial hair. but if i grow this out a little bit i look too much like an english country gent... naaah. a little this way and i feel like i'm from outer space. this and i feel like a viking... [ roars ]

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>> the opening taliban spring offensive begs the question can the war in pacific afghanistan be won and what does that mean? after deadly attacked today waged by the pakistan-based haqqani network and the taliban could strike in the heart of afghanistan. the country's president, hamid karzai was quick to praise his security forces saying they couldproved to the people they can defend their country successfully. adding this quote this is a sign

that the taliban are back. now 66% say the war in afghanistan is not worth fighting. joining me now from foreign policy.com welcome. >> glad to be here. >> what has changed over the pastify years. karzai is still as corrupt as ever. and the taliban seem to have free roam of the nation. >> the funny thing you could say karzai is right. it was a big success to the afghanistan security forces. what is true two three four, five years ago they couldn't have done that. that's nice. the question is this something like the tent offensive. the insurgents failed. they wanted to kill some diplomats and they wanted more chaos, and in that sense they didn't succeed, but maybe that's not what happens.

what matters is they have shown the afghan people that they're not going away. the american claims that they are decimated are false. the war will continue until they achieve their on objectives. >> the second half is what struck me as more important. maybe they did not achieve the objective of pure chaos, but they or organized a wide offensive and made the statement we're here, we're not going away and we'll strike at will. that raises the question what is our objective? how do we define success in afghanistan? >> once upon a time we defined success as saying we are going to leave an afghanistan that is it truly capable of defending itself. it's going to be a different kind of place. but we haven't succeeded that. >> rebuild a society-- >> so the afghan people feel there is something here worth defending.

we accepted we can't do that. now the question is can some combination of training the afghan forces and training and counter terrorism keep not the taliban but globalgied aists jihaddists like al-qaida, they'll have some political role in afghanistan in the future, that's clear. >> put aside how you define victory, who is the enemy? when we begin to make the taliban the enemy we must defeat the taliban we could never succeed given the way they're integrated in the afghan society. >> well, here is the scary part. who cared out this? we know it was the haqqani network which is a branch of the

taliban but not affiliated with the taliban control. the haqqani has clearly worked very closely with al-qaida elements. we have seriously degraded al-qaida. we have not been able to touch haqqani. how dangerous are they to america and the west. >> that openings up the issue the haqqani network many believe, was protected by the pakistan, so you then go in to what is a relationship with pakistan. >> and this is why from the very beginning people said it's pakistan. joe biden famously said it's not afghanistan, it's pakistan. the mistake they made was thinking that pakistan was more influenceable, more shapeable by the instruments that the united states had. if anything it's more more

recalcitrant. >> is it possible to focus on the terrorist threats, al-qaida, leave eye loan afghani civil society and create a better argument that we've succeeded something-- >> that's what we are going to do. we've redefined what a victory means. we're accepting the civilian side that this is not going to work. i hope we continue in the civilian role. we're going to say the gospel is, as obama said, to degrade and disrupt al-qaida. we will leave in a few years and we will sea that the afghan security forces are sufficiently well trained. that may not be so but we hope that our own efforts will keep al-qaida and related folks out and for the rest of afghanistan, i'm sorry. >> in our effort to degrade minimize the haqqani network are drones more important than troops on the ground? >> the argument that counter insurgentcies people make is that

you can't use drones effectively unless you have people on the ground to gather intelligence, which is why they always argue you need a certain element of presence even to do this limited counterterrorism thing. pakistan parliament said if america wants any position at all in pakistan they must end the drones. they have been saying this for years but they mean it this time time. >> we appreciate your insights to this and we'll continue this conversation. >> happy to be here. >> mitt romney's false deaf fission ofdefinition of freedom my view coming up.

>> the shocking and tragic statistics of soldier suicide but first let's go out to jennifer granholm. >> you know the issue about budgets and how they're a reflection of people's priorities. we'll look at mitt romney's

support of the ryan budget especially for women the young and the poor and families. i'll be joined by geena davis actress and new chair of the status of women and we're going to have a great discussion about what needs to happen to protect the most vulnerable. we're focusing on a key swing state in wisconsin and our former colleague jim doyle is going to be right here at the top of the hour in the war room. >> sounds spectacular. remember a budget is a moral document. both you and i having been governors, we know how hard it is to put things together, but when you step back and say it has to happen, you have to god it right. more viewpoint coming up. >> thanks, eliot. >>thanks mom. it's perfect. if i can't be at home, at least i can have a taste of it. >>hershey's air delight milk chocolate, a lighter, airier meltier hershey's happiness.

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♪ >> up next, the alarming trend of veterans committing suicide. nicholas kristof will join me here. but first here's my view. mitt romney at the nra no matter how you cut it, that's not an auspicious beginning and that's not the start of a good joke. this is romney's own self described etch-a-sketch moment. he gets to redefine himself. he gave a speech at the nra and chose to speak about freedom. it made me think back to that fay news fdr speech with freedom of speech and expression. freedom to worship as one wants. freedom from want, and freedom from fear. there is a grandeur from those notions that define our objectives for decades to come. mitt romney freedom from government, freedom from taxation, is it well taxes challenging our freedom? the reality is they have not been as low the percentage of the gdp in decades. that's why we have a deficit.

mitt's second challenge to our freedom, dodd frank, come on mitt, you can do better than that. telling over-leveraged banks that relied on tax bailouts to change their basic model of fundamental challenge to freedom? and then of course the healthcare act, a fundamental challenge to our freedom. we've spoken enough about that one over the last couple of weeks. my only thought, even the weather vane that mitt romney won't be able to escape. the interstate highway system that everybody loves, but the reality, it's his party that stands in the way. his own chris christie a big supporter blocked a tunnel project here in the northeast. the failure to build is not because of lack of vision. it's the lack of will on his side of the political aisle. here is the real problem. there is no grandeur to mitt romney's motion of freedom. for him freedom is freedom from

government. thathaven't the last several years taught us we're not just individuals without common bonds, common objectives. mitt romney waited until the flawed mythology that government is the enemy, and if only we could rid ourselves of it, all would be well. fdr pulled us together to build 50 years of prosperitier by articulating a sense of common purpose and shared sacrifice. these are also a piece of the freedom we stand for. if we have forgotten this so quickly then we really are doomed to relive it once again. that's my view. so i'm at my best. centrum. always your most complete.

>> the human toll of war is horrendous. an american soldier dies every

day and a half on the battlefields of iraq and afghanistan. but the death toll at home is even worse. a veteran commits suicide every 80 minutes. let me say that again. a veteran takes his or her own life every 80 minutes. a staggering 6,500 every year. this is reported by "new york times" calumnies and two-time pullpulitzer prize winner nicholas kristof. nicholas, first, 6500 suicides almost a staggering number. what explains this? >> well, we really don't know and we don't have very good data. we do know that after vietnam there was not this staggering suicide of veterans. it is tied to ptsd and traumatic brain injury, there is more of

that now because of the ides of explosions that is causing head injuries, that has something to do with it. but even if the causation is clear, what is unclear is the monumental tide of suicide and people are not getting adequate help from the v.a. >> this aggregate numbers are stagger and mind numbing but the individual stories are compelling. tell us about michael and ryan a family which has suffered a suicide of this horrendous nature. tell us that story because i think it drives home the horror that people are living through. >> yes, this is a family outside youngstown, ohio. their mom, sheryl devoe sent these two strong healthy young men to war, to iraq, michael and ryan. michael came back first. and his mom went to meet him at the airport, and she was stunned by what she found.

he was like a shell. just trembling. he couldn't focus. he couldn't hold a job. he never had issues with alcohol or drugs before, but now he was on anti-depressant medication, and he began to be addicted to first prescription drugs and then street drugs. then ryan came home, and he followed the same pattern. and he had difficulties with alcohol, street narcotics, and eventually he took his own life. he died of a drug overdose, and while the authorities listed it as an accidental death, his family and friends i talked to were completely convinced this was a deliberate suicide. >> what is the va doing about this? is there intervention the numbers are staggering. what is the va doing proactively to help our veterans when they come home. >> about five years ago the va

seemed to be more intent on covering up the problem than addressing it. now from that basis they have improved. they have created suicide coordinators at facilities and a national hotline for veterans. that seems to be saving a lot of lives, but what till happens is there are huge variations between facility to facility and time and time again veterans slip between the tracks because there are not those who are working with veterans when they need it. when ryan killed himself or died from an overdose, he was on a six-month waiting list to get in-hospital treatment of his addictions. that just seems to happen over and over, these veterans have huge needs and you know, when tanks come out of battle we repair those tanks we buff them up, we make sure they're in good working order.

we don't provide the same support to service men and women coming home from war. >> in terms of the emotional environment to which veterans return, we have the imagery of world war ii when soldiers come back, we've saved the world and everyone with open arms as if they're heroes. when if--as they are heroes. when they come back now does that add to the emotional der bereftness that they care with them. >> after vietnam soldiers faced even more of a sense of what are you doing over there, so i'm not sure about that. when people are in the military they don't have hugely elevated suicide rates. mildly elevated rates. it seems to me when people are in the military, they're in a can sooncocoon. they feel that they are doing

something, they're occupied. but when they come out they lose that network of support. they lose their buddies, and they find it difficult to get work. they have less of a sense that they're doing something important and fulfilling, and that seems to be when the suicide rates just shoot up. >> that's interesting. you're right. when the soldiers came back from vietnam there was greeting antipathy then. even though now there are serious doubt about what the objective is. the environment was more contentious in terms of vietnam. so you're saying the loss of environment is more of the factor in afghanistan. what is the answer? >> i think there is one distinction from vietnam. in vietnam people were shot at, and they certainly experienced all kinds of emotional trauma but they're less likely to be

facing explosions, and there is evidence that when you have concussion it leads to real but invisible injuries in the brain that are strongly associated with depression and suicide. there may be an element that one of the real differences is tdi. what can we do about it? we have to provide the same kind of outreach that we do to mental health as we do for physical injuries. when people come back with injuries that we can see then we really do make a huge effort to heal these soldiers. but the problem is that there is still a view that mental health problems are sissy and that attitude has to change. >> is that attitude carried by the soldiers who are coming home or the leaders of the va and the

military. >> i think it's a little bit of theofall of the above. the soldiers may be reluctant to speak health. their families may have that too. your grandfather fought in world war ii, and he saw terrible things and he didn't need help. but i think the va to its credit is trying to chip away at that attitude. they're making a certain amount of progress but the needs are vast. they're underfunded and they don't have the number of people out fanning across the country. if it's bad now it will get worse. there will be another 1 million veterans in the next five years, and if we're struggling now what are we possibly going to do with 1 million more. >> this problem will grow exponentially as the number of troops coming home increases and it's staggering within our military budget that we cannot find the resources in that vast budget to take care of this very well documented