today, serving those who serve with the vice chief of staff of the army peter kror relly. veterans advocates with tim tats and paul rykofp. chairman of the senate veterans commit patty murray. >> paying for veterans is a cost of war. >> and an iraq veteran -- >> i've been told welcome home dozens of times. i met a vietnam vet who had never been told that once. i'm candy crowley and this is "state of the union." this afternoon president obama visits joplin, missouri, the town devastated by tornadoes. joining us this morning from joplin, governor jay mixon. give us an update, the number of confirmed dead, what's the situation with the morgue and how many do you still have missing? >> we've got that unaccounted for number overnight down to 44 now. and throughout the night once again troopers were making that most difficult visit to families in this region notifying them of a loss of their family members. we a we've still got a significant level of work to do to make sure because of the damage done to these bodies an dna and science that's necessary to match them up, but that unaccounted for number is down to 44. >> so is it possible that these 44 are in the morgue. >> reporter: have you ruled that out? >> there may be some as we complete dna tests. plus we are still getting some unaccounted for reports but we certainly move that down. when i took that system over about four days ago when that number was at 1,500, we moved it to 232, then down to 156. by using law enforcement resources throughout the state we got that number down to 44. at the same time we're getting notifications to dozens of more families each hour. two nights ago, 17 between 11:00 and night and 4:00 in the morning. families were notified last night all night. our troopers were working. the bottom line is we're using science to get the answers but more importantly than that, we're using trained missouri troopers to sit with families sometimes for hours to go through the -- what's often a very difficult discussion. >> do you know what the death toll is at this moment, including those notices that went out last night obviously? >> the numbers continue to rise. this isn't about a scoreboard, this is about a series of individual tragedies. those numbers have far exceeded what anyone had ever hoped for, far exceed any single tornado in the history of our country. today as we pause at 2:00 to bring everybody together, all the ministers, all the clergy for a memorial service, we are focused on remembering and inspiring others to continue to come together the way they have here. we have law enforcement officials from throughout the region. we have folks that have been here for a week working straight through the clock. we're going to rebuild joplin. we're going to focus on rebuilding our souls today and begin the process of rebuilding joplin when the memorial service is over. >> when do you expect to be able to have identified all the bodies that you currently have now, the remains? >> we're working through the process. like i said, we're up well into the numbers of confirmation but as i said before, we're dealing with the families before we're dealing with the media an as we work through one by one by one we'll release, as i've said in the past, daily lists. we were the first ones to release names and addresses of those who had been confirmed killed by this horrible tornado. it is also important to note that at the forensics work, scientific work here is very challenging. as you can see behind me, a field of tattered town. so, too, were the bodies. matching up those and using science to mch those up has required a great deal of our effort through our crime lab and our national state database network. we continue to work 24 hours a day to get that done in a professional, effective, efficient manner. >> governor, the president is coming this afternoon. i know he'll be there from one of the memorials that you'll be having. i am certain he will ask you what you need. what's your top priority? >> we want to continue to feel the people of this country continuing to reach to us an give those contributions to our various charities. that's been tremendously helpful. we also are going to need their will to rebuild here. we're going to need the assistance from everybody to get this site cleaned off, rebuilt and rebirth. we've been working with all of the folks. bottom line is the most important thing today is the refocus on our resolve, the calling on a higher power to make sure we all have the strength to go through what's going to be many months of rebuilding here in joplin, missouri. >> governor, there have been a number of articles out that are surprised, even though this obviously was the worst possible tornado, strongest possible 200-mile-per-hour winds, and that you do expect there will be fatalities. but a number of people were surprised at the number considering we do have doppler. there were warnings put out. everything -- you're talking about people that understand what to do in a tornado. what do you think accounts for a really high number of fatalities here? >> i mean story after story of just total destruction. i mean one of the stories of a young couple. woman got in the bathtub low in her house. her husband laid down on top of her to make sure she was protected. he was impaled by debris as it came through. he passed. she didn't. stories like that. all across the area of tremendous destruction. i mean folks are beyond homeless here. their homes don't exist. you can't tell neighborhood to neighborhood whether a house was a brick house or a wooden house. the level of destruction, there's no bark on the trees. the power here just twisted everything off. the foundation of this hospital back here was moved. this giant hospital, top two floors knock off four inches it was moved on its own foundation. power and destruction here was unimaginable. >> governor nixon, thank you so much for your time. certainly our hearts and prayers with those in joplin and in missouri. thank you so much. and now to the country's veterans and my series of interviews with people in and out of government trying to make a difference in the lives of those who made it home. >> joining me now here in washington, vice chief of staff of the u.s. army. general, thank you so much for being here. you spent so much time in particular looking at soldiers who are suffering in vast numbers, post traumatic stress disorder, ptsd. head injuries of all sorts. over the past two years, soldiers and veterans, we are told by one statistic, have killed themselves in greater numbers than were killed in combat. why? >> well, i think we've been fighting for a decade and i don't think we, as a nation, we, as an army, and we, as the armed forces, know the total effect of a decade of war. but i think that's what we're seeing. you know, these hidden injuries of war, post traumatic stress and traumatic brain injury and other behavioral health issues have been with us forever, they've been called different names at different times in our history but they've been with us forever. but we've been fighting now for a decade in a different kind of fight where everybody that finds themself in theater finds themself in danger. >> would you agree that suicide among those in the military and veterans combined is epidemic? >> i hate to use words like epidemic. but i will say, in the united states army last year, we had 162 suicide and about a force of 725,000 folks. 156 suicides. each one of those is a tragedy. but for every one of those individuals who commit suicide, there's a whole bunch of folks who will never, ever consider committing suicide who are hurting. that's why i think it is absolutely essential that we study and learn everything we can about the brain. now, no one is in fact criticizing us for the way we're taking care of soldiers who have lost arms and legs. i can't find a single article, no one ever e-mails me about that. but the fact is, we just don't know as much as we need to know about the brain. and the effects that are causing the brain for these long deployments and for these repetitive deployments and for the experiences that soldiers have down in theater. >> and so when you look at something like ptsd, i've read in several of the articles that you said you just don't have enough psychiatrists and you don't have enough folks who are suffering who want to come and talk, because of the stigma to it. so first, let me ask you, why are there not enough psychiatrists in the army? why are there not enough psychiatrists available to the army? >> that's a national problem and you're going to have to ask the nation. i have a problem, because the rest of the nation has a problem. and we have a real deficit in behavioral health specialists in this country. we need more. i need more in the army. and the other thing we've got to work is the stigma. we as a nation -- not just the united states army, defense department -- have got to take on this issue of stigma, the stigma of folks not wanting to go get the help that they need. but i've got to tell you, candy, even after they reach out and get that help of the 156 soldiers that committed suicide in the united states army last year, almost 50% of it had seen a behavioral health specialist. so it is not the panacea, because we just don't know enough about how the brain works. these soldiers come home and they look basically the same, or exactly the same as they look when they went away for 12 months, when they went down range. they're welcomed home by their families. again, they look the same and then they start changing. they show signs of post traumatic stress. they may show signs of traumatic brain injury that was undiagnosed. >> and if you look at the stigma -- so you have what? more than half of these folks who killed themselves did reach out. have you looked at what went wrong here? is it because -- and again, i read this somewhere -- that because you lack the personnel in terms of psychiatrists or health, behavioral folks who can help, you're too reliable on drugs or pharmaceuticals. >> i really think that's the problem. the perception of soldiers out there is that, at leaf in tst i past, we were relying too heavily on drugs. now we've taken that on-board and are working alternative medicine very, very hard. we believe we're close to having a biomarker that's going to allow us to go up with a small machine, the same kind of thing you would use if you were checking somebody's blood sugar, and you're going to be able to take a quick blood sample and tell if somebody has had a concussion. we're working with different instruments to measure pounds per square inch, acceleration that occurs during blasts, to see if we can collect more information on individuals so they can be treated as we unlock the secrets of the brain. now i got to tell you, i worry watching the coverage of these tornado areas, the number of folks that are going to come out of those areas that have post traumatic stress. i'm sure they're going to have cases of traumatic brain injury. but post traumatic stress in those areas seeing some of the film that i've seen that people have shot on cnn, anything we can do to learn more about this is going to help not only the united states military but it is going to help society as a whole. >> general, stick with me, because when we come back, i want to talk a little bit about the american people, if there's anything you think that could be helpful from the american people that can help with so many of these young people and middle-aged people coming home from war that need our help. we'll be right back. i'm good about washing my face. but sometimes i wonder... what's left behind? 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[ chuckling ] home and auto together. it's like peanut butter and jelly. oh, or like burgers and fries. or pickles and ice cream. unicorns and glitter! no? bundling to save you more. now, that's progressive! call or click today. mplt mpltdz. we are back with general peter chiarelli. when you look at some of the statistics that deal with veterans these days, they have a higher rate of suicide, particularly in the young people group. homelessness about 20%. higher rate of dependency on alcohol or drugs and a high rate of joblessness. again, particularly in that younger group. what does that say about the u.s. commitment to its veterans? >> well, we need to reach out. we need to reach out and first identify those veterans. what i worry about is that they blend back into the community and don't get the really three things they are looking for. they're looking for education, they're looking for access to health care, and they're looking for fulfilling and secure employment. community solutions to this, so much are so better than anything we can do at the national level. >> i want to -- admiral mike mullen who, as you know, the outgoing chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, delivered the commencement address at west point last weekend. i want to play you a bit of what he had to say. >> i fear they do not know us. i fear they do not comprehend the full weight of the burden we carry or the price we pay when we return from battle. this is important, because a people uninformed about what they are asking the military to endure, is a people inevitably unable to fully grasp the scope of the responsibilities our koo constitution levees upon them glp this is a frequent theme of admiral mullens, there is a growing disconnect between the bulk of the civilian population an the military. i'm trying to figure out if there is any connection between that and between the fact that at the moment our veterans seem so underserved. >> well, i think admiral mullens' comments are, as we say, spot-on. that's a concern of all of ours. that's why he as well as the white house is leading this dialogue to connect veterans with local communities. there's always a tendency to try to do that from washington, d.c., but that's really not how it works best. the best solutions to doing this, is admiral mullen has us going out speaking -- i was recently out in seattle, washington, spoke to a town hall at the university of washington where we talked about veterans organizations and the need for the community to reach out. if you ask just one question -- are you a veteran? then spend some time talking to that veteran to see how you can help him or her reintegrate and get back in to their community. >> how come it is still so messed up, though? as you point out, we've been at war for ten years, that we would have veterans, more veterans than we've had to begin with, isn't a surprise, and yet we just hear sort of complaint after complaint. and -- but more than the complaints, just these awful statistics about people, you think couldn't we have helped this person? >> well, i feel exactly like you do. i want to fix it as fast as we can. i, too, wish that we could snap our fingers and all the problems would go away. but it's a huge organization with many, many veterans. and it's just -- it takes time but i understand that that's not comforting to anyone. >> does it take more money? do you have the resources you need? if we say, i've never seen a politician say we've got to make sure we take care of these veterans when they come home, they need homes and jobs and training. do we have the money for that? >> what we need is a focused effort on the research to get behind the causes and the remedies for post traumatic stress and traumatic brain injury. i've got a population of warriors called my army wounded warriors. they had a single disqualifying injury of 30% or greater. when i became vice 2 1/2 years ago, there were about 3,400 and about 30% had post traumatic stress or traumatic brain injury. today that number is over 6,500. 11% of my soldiers have lost an arm or leg or more in that population. so the real huge numbers, what we're seeing, are these hidden injuries. and you just got to really push the research so we understand them more and are more successful in treatment regimens. >> do you have the money for that? >> well, i want congress to provide as much as they can to these research efforts. i think they're absolutely critical. i got to tell you, i worry given the fiscal situation that some of the money that's being used to do this critical research is going to dry up. >> and that was my last question, that is that we're in a budget cutting time. you have heard secretary gates say that he thinks he can find another $400 billion out of the pentagon budget. do you think any of that money ought to come out of any va -- any veterans -- sorry -- any veterans pay? >> my personal opinion is we need to find a way to increase the money that's going into pick t particularly these research efforts and programs. >> general chiarelli, thank you so much for stopping by. appreciate your time on memorial day. the challenges facing our nation's veterans who two organization whose say the government can and should be doing more. 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[ female announcer ] nourish plus. only from aveeno. but when she got asthma, all i could do was worry ! specialists, lots of doctors, lots of advice... and my hands were full. i couldn't sort through it all. with unitedhealthcare, it's different. we have access to great specialists, and our pediatrician gets all the information. everyone works as a team. and i only need to talk to one person about her care. we're more than 78,000 people looking out for 70 million americans. that's health in numbers. unitedhealthcare. joining me now, tim tats, legislator director of the american legion and paul wykoff, from veterans of america. thank you both for joining us. let me give you the big broad-brush question. if you're a veteran coming home today, what is the biggest problem you face? >> for us right now it is unemployment. the unemployment rate for veterans for iraq and afghanistan officially is at 11%. when we talk to iave members, it's 20%. this economy is hitting them very hard. they've been overseas repeatedly, their families are stretched and they come home to a really tough job market. we also need to connect with the american people. we are facing an unprecedented level of disconnection. when you think about memorial day, most americans are going to the beach. we're going to arlington national cemetery. we need the american public to be engaged not just on memorial day or july 4th, not just veterans but a constant and consistent commitment