Many of the soldiers returning from Iraq are experiencing mental healh issues. Their loved ones say the military is not helping to the extent it could or should be helping.

The psychological toll from the war in Iraq is climbing, according to new research and experts who cite the severe stress of fighting a deadly insurgency. Though the Pentagon says mental health care, including battlefield counseling, is expanding, critics counter that military suicides and post-traumatic stress disorder cases have exposed gaps in how treatment is delivered to soldiers.

"There have been improvements..... "But it's still the military's dirty little secret that lives are shattered and often we don't do enough when the war is over and these people have to deal with the consequences of what they saw and did."

According to a study by the New England Journal of Medicine, one in eight returning soldiers suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. Symptoms include "flashbacks, feelings of detachment, trouble concentrating, sleeplessness and more." Many of those afflicted don't seek help because they fear it will negatively impact their military careers.

The death toll climbs to 63,000 from the Asian Tsunami. CNN tv reports that islands with hundreds of thousands of people have not been heard from as communications are still down.

Hundreds of Americans are still missing.

Nathan Newman spent some of his Christmas vacation in Phuket, leaving for Bangkok before the Tsunami hit. He has some pictures of Phuket.

I spent a week in Phuket here in the late 1980's. It was beautiful. The Meridian chain, which now owns the resort, reports that none of its guests were seriously injured or killed and it did not sustain any structural damage. It remains operational.

The American navy base Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean was unaffected by the Asian Tsunami.

Officials said the Diego Garcia Navy Support Facility, which houses about 1,700 military personnel and 1,500 civilian contractors, suffered no damage related to Sunday’s earthquake and ensuing tsunamis. Diego Garcia, the southernmost island in the Chagos Archipelago, sits about 1,000 miles south of India and roughly 2,000 miles from the earthquake’s epicenter.

Navy and Air Force personnel are on the island. According to the Red Cross, so are some of the hidden detainees. The Washington Post also refers to Diego Garcia as containing a CIA secret interrogation site.

The Washington Post mentions this unconfirmed report from the front page of the Bangkok newspaper, The Nation, alleging that the Thai Government stopped the warning of the Tsunami from going out after the earthquake:

The Thai government has generally maintained that it has done what it can under intensely difficult circumstances, with little warning and limited resources. But a front-page story published Tuesday in a Bangkok newspaper, the Nation, reported that Thai officials were aware of the possibility of tsunamis early Sunday morning -- more than an hour before they hit -- but scotched talk of an evacuation, fearing the consequences for the tourism industry during one of the busiest weeks of the year. The report could not be independently confirmed. (our emphasis.)

Wizbang provides this translation it received of a report from Expressen Se:

Now we're talking...the U.S. has increased its offer of $15 million in aid to the Tsunami victims to $35 million.

The U.S. State Department said an additional $20 million in aid will be added to the $15 million the United States has already pledged for nations hit by the tsunamis. In addition, said Powell, nine patrol planes and 12 C-130 cargo planes packed with relief supplies were on their way to southern Asia.

Jailed inmates in India are among those donating. [Link via Jesse at Pandagon.]

The New York Times reports on blogs providing live coverage from the disaster areas. [link via Instapundit.]

This is just unbelievable. The death toll from the Asian Tsunami now exceeds 55,000.

Half of the deaths come from Indonesia's Aceh province. In Sri Lanka, 17,640 have been declared dead.

The fear that outbreaks of disease could unleash a second wave of tragedy on a region struggling to cope with the first also loomed large with decomposing bodies and sewerage contaminating water sources. In some areas food and medicines were in desperately short supply.

As we noted earlier, Bush has offered up $15 million in disaster aid. Atrios points out his inauguration is going to cost $30 to $40 million, exclusive of security costs which will be unprecedented.

U.N. Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland called Bush's offer "stingy." We agree.

Bianca Jagger has an op-ed in today's Miami Herald on William "Tommy" Ziegler who has spent 29 Christmases on Florida's death row despite substantial proof of his factual innocence.

Now DNA evidence offers Zeigler the hope of a very different future Christmas. DNA evidence has played a significant role in 14 of the 117 exonerations from U.S. Death Rows. Such evidence is vital, especially in Florida, which -- according to the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, D.C. -- has had 21 people found innocent on its Death Row, more than any other state.

Lawson Lamar, the state attorney in Zeigler's death-penalty case, fought for years to prevent DNA testing of the crime-scene blood. In August 2001, the court ordered the tests. The results, which were reported in June 2002, hopelessly devastate the state's theory of Zeigler's culpability. The results completely support Zeigler's innocence.

Yet, the state still refuses to agree to a new trial. Bianca, who has been a committed human rights activist for years, writes:

Does this pass the smell test? The Missouri Supreme court has ruled that the payment of $250k from a killer's family to a victim's family, conditioned on the killer not getting the death penalty did not provide a basis for a challenge by other defendants who didn't have money to make such a payment. The opinion is here.

The Washington Post keeps the story alive of Bush's grinch-like pardons alive. Quoted today is Law Prof Doug Berman, who is also the author of the awesome Blakely blog, Sentencing Law and Policy.

"He continues not to view his role as chief executive as one where he should temper the justice handed out by the justice system with mercy," said Douglas A. Berman, an Ohio State University law professor who studies presidential pardons. "This really is a stingy view of things, especially given how much larger our federal justice system is now" than it was in years past.

Pardon expert Margy Love says:

"What President Bush has done, to my personal way of thinking, is approach the use of his pardon power with no theory other than to stay safe," said Margaret Love, a Washington lawyer who served as federal pardon attorney, heading the government's screening of clemency petitions, between 1990 and 1997.

So what's wrong with playing it safe?

Here are some headlines from Tuesday's Asia newspapers on the Tsunami. The numbers dead refer to that country's local totals. Good photos from beginning to end of Tsunami here:

Phuket Gazette

Latest Figures: 934 people are confirmed dead in the southern provinces hit by the tsunami, 2,720 missing and a further 10,063 injured.

Thai Immigration officers are also on hand and cooperating with them in issuing Certificates of Identification for foreigners who lost their passports. There are also Immigration officers on standby at Phuket International Airport.

Harbor Department officials continue to recover dead bodies from the sea around islands around Phuket, Phang Nga and Krabi. All are being taken to Phuket, which has become the default center of emergency relief operations in the region.

* Swedish Baby Separated From Parents Identified
* Thai Tourism Ministry Secures 1,000 Hotel Rooms and Flights for Foreigners at Its Expense

Bangkok Post:

Update: The Command Post has a comprehensive list of relief efforts accepting contributions.

This is just unfathomable...23,000 people dead in a natural disaster that rippled like a wave from country to country in the Eastern hemisphere. I hadn't planned on writing about it but I also can't ignore it. So add your thoughts.

The disaster spared no one. Western tourists were killed sunbathing on beaches, poor villagers drowned in homes by the sea and fishermen died in flimsy boats. The 21-year-old grandson of Thai King Bhumibol Adulyadej was killed on a jet-ski.

"We have a long way to go in collecting bodies," said Thailand's Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who expected the 866 death toll in his country to go much higher. One Thai official estimated up to 30 percent of the dead were foreigners.

There is already a weblog cataloguing events in the region. [link via Instapundit.]