I am hearing that Secretary of the VA will not step in to ask the Gulf War
Veterans Advisory Committee to move up their meeting from Sept 24-25 to
closer to VA Advisory Committee on Gulf War Illness Research scheduled Sept
15-16. He wants the committee to serve independently and he does not want
to interfere. SO unless US Representatives/Senators?US Press or you the
Gulf War Veterans can get the Committee Chair Cragin to change we will have
the meetings spread out over ten days.
Laura.Oshea@va.gov
Lelia.jackson@va.gov
address it to Chairman Cragin...........ask him to reconsider moving the
meeting date to Sept 18-19. Ask him to resurvey his members! Remember to
copy your letter to Your US Rep, Us Senators (2), and also the Chairman of
the House VA Committee, and Chair of the Senate VA Committee. (Find their
email addresses on
www.house.gov
and US.senate.gov ) Example:
Dear Chairman and Staff of Gulf War Veterans Advisory Committee,
I wish to point out the VA RAC GWI is meeting Sept 15-16 and it would
be nice to have the new advisory committee on Gulf War Veterans move up
their date to closer than Sept 24-25.
If possible it would allow more gulf war veterans to attend both
meetings of advisory committees.
(add in your sentence of how you personally are going to come to
DC and how hard it is. Also mention that you want to be able to attend
both advisory committee meetings!)
It would also facilitate the new committee members of the Gulf War
Veterans Advisory Committee to attend the VA RACGWI and receive the
report that VA RAC GWI is releasing on Sept 16th as it is released.
May I suggest the Gulf War Veterans Advisory committee consider
meeting on Sept 18-19 or 22-23.....
This would shorten the time gulf war veterans would have to stay in
DC in order to attend both advisory committee meetings and save travel
and housing costs or repeated trips into DC when these veterans are ill.
Sincerely
I hope that many of you can stay and I will do everything I can to find
affordable billetting and will work with others to help you to stay for
both. But in order to do this WE have to know how many of you would be
interested in coming and staying for both. In order to raise funds and
arrange the billetting options I have to know roughly how many.
I will be unavailable from Sunday until Tuesday sometime so that gives you
all a bit of time
to sign up and indicate your interest and in the comment block to indicate
if you are trying or have interest put struggling to figure it out. Please
go to
and let us know---use the comment block to state your desire. So we start
having a rough idea. WE have some time put in order to accomplish anything
we can not wait to get some idea of how many!