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VA Secretary nominee Denis McDonough says in statement to the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee at his nomination hearing that while true he was not a veteran, and years of public service at the privilege afforded to relatively few Americans to see up close and be deeply moved by the excellence and dedication a women in uniform, when visiting soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines and Coast guardsmen at bases in Afghanistan and Iraq, had witnessed heavy burdens of long deployments away from families, beside their hospital beds when they came home seeing resilience in the face of wounds, visible and invisible the last a lifetime, had seen unimaginable grief military families to made debt was owed to could not be repaid but with whom to stand forever.