VA secretary, a Fort Hood veteran, calls shootings 'senseless'

There's "no way" to explain the mass shooting at Fort Hood Army base in Texas, Eric Shinseki, the secretary of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, said in Tampa today.

"This is senseless," Shinseki said.

The gunman suspected in the death of 12 people and wounding of 31 was not a war veteran suffering from battlefield trauma but an Army major who had never seen combat, he noted.

Shinseki, a Vietnam veteran, served at Fort Hood from 1994-95, commanding the First Cavalry Division. The base is tightly controlled, he said.

"Day-to-day that level of security is more than adequate."

Shinseki was at the University of South Florida to talk about the needs of veterans who return to college. He said the VA is developing a wide-ranging effort to provide veterans with education, job training, housing and mental health services.

He expects his department to receive $3.2 billion next year to fight homelessness among veterans. More than three-fourths of the money will go toward mental health services aimed at preventing veterans from becoming homeless.

The focus of his remarks in Tampa was the Post 9/11 GI Bill, which went into effect in August. It provides more money for tuition than the earlier bill, plus stipends for living expenses.

A key feature of the effort is a program being piloted at USF called VetSuccess on Campus. A counselor is based at USF to help veterans find the services they need, from housing assistance to mental health care.

It will soon be expanded to San Diego University, in California, and Cleveland State University, in Ohio.

Overall, the new GI bill has the potential to change society as dramatically as the original GI bill after World War II, Shinseki said.

In the years after the war, the original GI bill enabled hundreds of thousands of people to go to college. They became doctors, dentists, teachers, engineers and accountants, and they built a nation.

With the new bill, "history is poised to repeat itself." Shinseki said. By 2011, he said he expected more than 250,000 men and women to be using it to go to college.

Thousands are using it already, though many are waiting for their payments to come through. Shinseki apologized for that. The VA is struggling with a severe backlog because of its "paper-bound" system.

"We're playing catch-up and we know it," he said.