The Washington Post’s Attack on Veterans’ Integrity

On the eve of Veterans Day, a moment meant for gratitude and reflection, The Washington Post doubled down on its campaign against those who have served, accusing America’s Veterans of feigning mental health injuries as a means to secure disability benefits from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. The article, one in an unrelenting series of Veteran attack articles from the Post this fall, is disheartening and injurious to those who have sacrificed their minds and bodies for our country.

The series sparked an immediate backlash, with veterans and advocates writing to the Post in droves to slam the reporting as biased and misleading. And they’re right.

The Post’s articles risk leaving readers with the pernicious idea that it’s commonplace for Veterans and their private benefits consultants to scam the VA benefits claims system by using PTSD and other mental health disorders as an excuse to collect benefits from the government.

Mental health disorders are not mere excuses for Veterans to collect benefits; they’re a reality. Ryan Gallucci, Executive Director of the VFW’s Washington, D.C. office, put it best when he called PTSD one of “the signature wounds of modern warfare,” adding that it’s “either ignorant or deliberately cruel” to claim that conditions like this are fake and unworthy of benefits claims.