Groups reach out to help veteran, 81, held hostage at motel

ALBANY, N.Y. — Veterans' organizations have reached out to help a Korean War-era veteran who authorities say was held hostage in a motel room for four years by a man who stole his benefit checks.

The Associated Press is reporting that groups in New York, Ohio and Virginia have offered assistance to David McLellan, an 81-year-old Navy veteran and retired auto plant worker, said Highlands police Detective Joseph Cornetta.

Last week, police arrested 43-year-old Perry Coniglio at the motel where both men lived and charged him with grand larceny, menacing and endangering the welfare of an incompetent person.

Coniglio used "brute force and intimidation" to get McLellan to hand over monthly Ford Motor Co. pension and Social Security checks totaling several thousand dollars, police said. He also is accused of selling McLellan's vehicle and keeping the proceeds after telling the buyers that he was the older man's guardian.

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The general public vastly overestimates the number of post-9/11 veterans with mental health conditions, a misconception veterans advocates say threatens the overall well-being and employment prospects of former troops.

Military Times is reporting that a survey of more than 1,000 adults in the U.S., Canada and the United Kingdom found that roughly 40 percent believed more than half the 2.8 million veterans who have served since 2001 have a mental health condition.

The actual figure lies somewhere between 10 percent and 20 percent, or 280,000 to just more than a half million, according to a Rand Corp. estimate.

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New authorities given to U.S. troops in Afghanistan to more proactively target the Taliban have already made a difference, but troop caps continue to present problems, the Republican chairman of the House Armed Services Committee said Monday after a visit to the country, The Hill is reporting.

“One of the commanders, this may not be an exact quote, but I wrote it down at the time: ‘We’ve done more good in the last 30 days than the entire nine months before, and we’ve only had to drop one bomb, but just having an airplane overhead is a huge boost for the Afghans and does huge damage to the morale of the Taliban,’” Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) said he was told during his trip. “And that sort of sentiment we saw in a variety of places.

In addition to the help of more U.S. airpower, the Afghan forces themselves are performing better, Thornberry said.

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Iraq’s counterterrorism forces, known as the Golden Division, were once so loathed that they were nicknamed the “Dirty Division.”

They were accused of running secret prisons and carrying out extrajudicial killings. Some lawmakers called for them to be disbanded, according to the Washington Post.

But the country’s war against the Islamic State has restored the reputation of the elite forces, which have spearheaded nearly every major fight against the militants in Iraq. Their commanders have become battlefield celebrities, while popular songs praise the troops’ prowess.

The force of about 10,000 men is a small bright spot in an otherwise lackluster legacy of American efforts to rebuild Iraq’s military in the 13 years since the invasion. U.S. officials say it is their most reliable partner in fighting the Islamic State on the ground, while the Iraqi army struggles with corruption and mismanagement.

This story was originally published July 26, 2016 at 11:47 AM with the headline "Groups reach out to help veteran, 81, held hostage at motel."