Lost Years and Missed Opportunities: How the Pentagon Squandered the Chance to Combat Brain...

It was 2009 at the Pentagon, and a group of military doctors and civilian experts was having a fight in front of two of the top generals in the U.S. military.
Gathered in a conference room at the Pentagon, the civilian doctors were insisting that the traumatic brain injuries service members were suffering were far more serious than the military realized.
The military doctors wanted more evidence that the brain injuries, which were starting to mount as deployed troops were facing the near-constant threat of roadside bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan, were going to have the long-lasting effects the civilians predicted.
But while the debate was raging in Chiarelli's office, doctors had known for years that TBI was becoming a problem. As hundreds of thousands of service members suffered brain injuries, action was delayed and the military dithered over what to do, mired in flashpoints such as the 2009 Pentagon meeting.

That delay may well have cost lives, given an increasingly clear link between the brain injuries and suicide.