After the deployment fund dried up in 2009, however, one of its grantees shut down.
"So why should we fund other initiatives?" Nancy Berglass, director of Iraq Afghanistan Deployment Impact Fund, said the small percentage of Americans with a personal stake in the wars — 2.3 million troops, less than 1 percent of the population, actually deployed — has also created obstacles to fund-raising.
When the transaction closes, the Vision Fund will invest $900 million, and when Cruise is ready for commercial deployment, the fund will provide the remaining $1.35 billion.
All of this increases the deployment of funds where they are needed, and coaxes savings from under mattresses and out of offshore accounts.
Rumors about his deployment of funds began to circulate, and letters purportedly written by Deane advocating surrender to the British were published.
SPECIAL SECTION: GIVING An article on Nov. 9 about the growing pains of veterans' relief organizations misstated the number of grantees of the Iraq Afghanistan Deployment Impact Fund that shut down after it was phased out in 2009.
The largest single donation made to veterans services in the last decade, and possibly ever, came from the philanthropist David Gelbaum, who over three years starting in 2006 gave nearly a quarter of a billion dollars through the Iraq Afghanistan Deployment Impact Fund.
Mr. Gelbaum, an intensely private philanthropist who has long insisted on anonymity in exchange for his gifts, said in a statement that he had made more than $380 million in donations over the last four years to the A.C.L.U. and two other organizations, the Sierra Club and the Iraq-Afghanistan Deployment Impact Fund of the California Community Foundation.
Tom Brokaw moderated the opening panel with Admiral Mike Mullen, Senator Patti Murray, Wes Moore, Shaun Donovan (U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development) and Nancy Berglass, (Director, Iraq and Afghanistan Deployment Impact Fund).
"While membership of the Offshore Pollution Liability Association [Opol] remains voluntary... [that] voluntary nature weakens its legality and the control and deployment of its funds.
But there is no question that the deployment of federal funds, especially in this economic climate, is a lantern of hope for the suffering of millions in every nation on the planet.
