next like to introduce yochi dreazen. >> good morning. is pleasure to be with you on this rainy, rainy day. senator heitkamp your leadership on this is a wonderful thing to see. i wish that you are frankly not so often standing by yourself on an issue that matters as much as this one does. i want to talk briefly about issued to frame it all up and over to my friend mark. and 2009 i began to hear from friends who had come back that they would look in america not recognize them so prevent a military friends i've met over the years in iraq and afghanistan, that they could see in the eyes of the wife with her husband that they were scared with the biggest in the eyes of the children that they were scared, that they themselves felt ugly, failed to think about what they've seen on what they have done. avenue for change but didn't quite know how or why or how to change it. some of them over facebook over e-mail or by phone begin to say they were thinking of killing himself but they just didn't want to live in the way it was living. they did want

next, i would like to introduce yochi dreazen. yochi: good morning. it's a pleasure to be with you on this rainy day. setting aside journalistic objectivity senator, your , leadership on this is a wonderful thing to see. i wish you are not so often standing by yourself on an issue that matters so much of this one does. i would like to frame the issue a little bit and then turn it over to my friend mark. in 2009, i began to hear from friends who had come back that they would look in the mirror and not recognize themselves. these were military friends i had met over the years in iraq and afghanistan. they could see in the eyes of their wives and husbands that they were scared, in their children, that they were scared. let themselves -- they themselves felt ugly or disfigured by what they had seen or done. they knew they had changed but did not know quite how to change it. some of them, over facebook, e-mail or by phone, began to say they were thinking of killing themselves. they don't want to keep feeling what they were feeling. a couple of them i knew

thanks to yochi, of course. he's family. spent a lot of time with yochi in the last few years as he was writing the book and to my good friend bill rauch with iava and the work he and so many others do out there everyday. today is the marine corps birthday so happy birthday to the marine corps, semper fi. [ applause ] i'm an army guy so i'll say "hoo" instead of "booyah." but tomorrow is veterans day and we want to thank our great american veterans and their families for all they continue to do for our nation each and everyday. so what do you call when you're home alone at night and afraid, isolated, you don't know what to do or where to turn. who do you call? i run a program at rutgers now, interesting story how i got there but i run a program at rutgers called vets 4 warriors. vets, the number four, warriors. in 24 hours a day, seven days a week a veteran answers the phone within 30 seconds. they're trained in a program called reciprocal peer support. it's set up to where veterans an the call, there's a clinician on site 2

yochi dreazen has made several trips to afghanistan and has been an total of four years on the groundin the two countries. he mostly did frontline combat. he has reported for more than 20 countries including pakistan, russia, china, israel, japan, turkey, morocco and saudi arabia. bill rauch is the political director and supports the development of the annual policy agenda. these and advocacy campaign through trusted relationships with veteran relations and government agencies. bill is a former army major who served 17 months in iraq and has experience working with veterans and veterans issues from his work on several major political campaigns and serves as team red white and blue for his local community in alexandria virginia. he has appeared on nbc nightly news, c-span's "washington journal" and msnbc coverage of memorial day 2015. last we have mark graham. he is the senior director at rutgers call center and director of that's for warriors. general graham has lost two sons in two different battles. one to suicide and another to an ied in iraq. mark currently heads the call center a