general chiarelli, general shinseki. and we started from nothing and we're going somewhere but when you sit and look at a transitioning service member who their goal is to get benefits in 295 days after separation and their reality was 404 days, that's over a year where that person is sitting there waiting for anything and that's why you have the 14,000 calls to the hotline for suicides. that's why you have these people who are just absolutely pulling their hair out saying what do i do? i've become a burden. their families are, like, this isn't the person who came home. that's what we have to address. those are the issues that we have to do. they're doing a lot of work at the top, but it's not working at the lower level yet. >> it has improved but we've got a long way to go and we've never had so many people -- >> you don't have a lot of time. they're coming home in droves. >> they're coming home in droves, and the window is closing. the the political community and public's attention is going to shift in the coming years

. >>> we are back with general peter chiarelli. you look at some of the statistics that deal with veterans these days, they have a higher rate of suicide, particularly in the young people group. homelessness about 20%. higher rate of dependency on alcohol or drugs and a high rate of joblessness. again, particularly in that younger group. what does that say about the u.s. commitment to its veterans? >> well, we need to reach out. we need to reach out and first identify those veterans. what i worry about is that they blend back into the community and don't get the really three things they are looking for. they're looking for education, they're looking for access to health care, and they're looking for fulfilling and secure employment. community solutions to this, so much are so better than anything we can do at the national level. >> i want to -- admiral mike mullen who, as you know, the outgoing chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, delivered the commencement address at west point last weekend. i want to play you a bit of what he h