NOW on PBS: Is The Army Casting Aside Its Neediest Soldiers
Of the thousands of U.S. troops getting discharged from the Army each year, many who are suffering from post traumatic stress disorder and brain injuries aren't getting the vital care they need. The Army claims these soldiers have pre-existing mental illnesses or are guilty of misconduct. But advocates say this is a way for the Army to get rid of "problem" soldiers quickly, without giving them the treatment and benefits to which they're entitled.
This week, NOW travels to Fort Hood in Texas to meet traumatized soldiers fighting a new battle, this one against the army they served. Are soldiers being wrongfully discharged for honorable service?
The entire episode is available for streaming on the NOW website, as well as web-exclusive interviews with Jonathan Norrell and David Chavarria (above) about their heart-breaking experiences.
W and the Dick support the troops until they come home, then W and Dick show their true colors: A Weasel and, and, and, a dick.
If these brave soldiers don't get the help they need they're liable to end up like a certain Presidential candidate, unable to deal with, or even discern, reality.
The troops are not a concern to the Misadministration because it was voluntary them signing up. So....whatever they get, it's their fault. Bush is right there with Stalin, Hitler and Pol Pot, who he is trying hard to pass with the most murders of innocent people. McCain, you go back to that cot you came from please and then look around at what's happening. You really are an idiot in a suit!
Link to how John McCain really feels about veterans:
http://www.vvof.org/mccain_hides.htm
some of these soldiers that are coming back home are very dangerous because they haven't received treatment...it's a pay me now or pay me later scenario they have decided pay later.......imagine that
So these brave men and women had "pre-existing" mental conditions, but the services took them in anyway? In that case, the Army should be holding up their end of the deal. it's called "supporting the troops". But, the truth of the matter is that they're welching on the deal, AKA lying to get out of paying. Fucking scumbags, the lot of them.
it's not too important.....wearing out soldiers and their families.....bush and mccain have a big decision to make regarding up coming g.i. bill there policies are affecting the troops morale
http://bravenewfilms.org/blog/41811-headzup-not-too-important
Who's most likely to "support the troops", the Democrats who served or the Republicans who dodged?
http://www.awolbush.com/whoserved.html
If the military brass and the bureaucracy would do this and other heinous things to (or withhold treatment) the most revered and hallowed segment of the government - the troops/soldiers/sailors/airmen etc...
imagine what they would do to 3000 U.S. civilians to get their agenda going.
Basically, the military considers only physical injuries are honorable. "Faking" psychological damage marks one a pussy. Now, Gates is giving this a rethought. Count on the military to drag its feet another century or so.
DONT WORRY......... WE DID THIS IN VIET NAM..... soldiers who returned with nervous disorders, or Agent Orange cancer shit....
you know the guys.... those nervous old soldiers in the wheel chairs... in the parking lots and under the freeway overpasses.... unable to hold
a job... WELL IT TURNS OUT that Viet Nam was such a long time ago that we needed to fill these position...... THANK YOU DUBYA ! ! !
Now our endless war can supply an endless supply of cripples. After NAM, the GOVT denied that these people existed UNTIL ENOUGH OF THEM
DIED so the expense wouldn't hurt the WAR MACHINE....
When will PEOPLE (especially asswipe REPUBLICANS) realize that the NEOCON-BUSH-WAR-MACHINE will drop them the minute they are not cheap labor ?
That REPUBLICAN COMING UP BEHIND YOU..........HELLLLLO...... it's called a lance
Didn't this site have a thread a couple of weeks ago where it was leaked out that at least one VA official was discouraging PTSD diagnosis?
in order to keep up enlistment rates the armed services dropped their basic standards...this is how mcoldfart can travel around the country and say we dont need a draft
so they dropped their standards and wont give services to those that they have further injured
we are so effed it isnt funny
Use them, abuse them, and then throw these brave soldiers away like trash. And, as a final insult, send them a bill. Dubya and Dick need to keep those dollars coming in so they can keep the killing machine going, you know. How very typical of this administration. Sick bastards, all.
My heart goes out to those servicemen and their families. It's good to see that someone is trying to help them.
Wow.
On the one hand, I guess I shouldn't be surprised. SUPPORT THE TROOPS rhetoric aside, since the troops are disproportionately represented by people from lower income backgrounds and minorities, it never really made sense for GOPs (who have never evinced excessive concern for either of these groups) to be too worried about them.
But WTF is with this pre-existing conditions excuse? Is US Army an insurance company? The bankers truly are in charge of everything?
Phylter @ 6:
Many of those pre-existing mental conditions are sociopathy and other empathy disorders. A study from Normandy showed 98% of all vets had psychological damage and the 2% that didn't were already damaged. War does terrible things to soldiers. It can scar them for the rest of their life, not just physically in terrible ways, but also mentally. People also screw an army at their peril. Remember, Hitler was a WWI vet who won the highest decoration of Imperial Germany.
There really is no floor here, is there -- no depth to which the craven bastards cannot sink?
Someone I love more than the breath in my lungs is afflicted with severe mental illness. In the two years since she was first diagnosed I've learned more about this subject than I ever cared to know. I cannot imagine compounding her sickness with the unspeakable traumas attendant to an unnecessary war -- and then the suffering produced by a cynical, calculated attack on her character for purposes of financial expediency.
If and when we ever extricate ourselves from the mess the Bush Regime has made overseas, there's going to be an awful lot of hell to pay over here.
This is MUST SEE television!
16 General_Rennenkampf
I didn't buy the preexisting condition excuse.
If it wasn't severe enough to prevent recruitment
Than it must've become severe during action the military brass directed.
Therefore the military brass are responsible for the aggravation of the condition.
Additionally, what if they had no preexisting condition but warfare created a totally new one?
Is morality a preexisting condition?
I can't wait to the anti-troop, pro-anti-troop video partisans break out on this thread too.
We have to be careful with that only the poor and disadvantaged join the military theme. I'm sure even those from more advantaged classes joined too.
Without knowing the name of author and book, some of us were born to the concept of Sir Kennelm Digby's Broadstone of Honor.
Something much like it was drilled into me as a Cub Scout/Webelos/Boy Scout.
But it could've been worse
It could've been the Scout Leader drilling into me.
As a veteran who had received shabby treatment at the hands of a VA counselor, who tried to make me feel more guilty for not having spoken out enough at the orders that I was given while in Vietnam, I can certainly empathize with what these soldiers are going through. What the Army and the rest of the military will rarely acknowledge is that these soldiers' PTSD [like mine] would never have occurred if they had not been placed in that untenable position in the first place. For the army to claim that these soldiers are somehow the victims of their own behavior ands actions is not only ludicrous but unconscionable.
"Everything in war is barbaric... But the worse barbarity of war is that it forces men collectively to commit acts which individually they would revolt with their whole being."
-Ellen Key [1849-1926], Swedish feminist writer
I'm a little drunk now, so maybe not all of my concepts are clear.
19 ysbaddaden 16 General_Rennenkampf
I was saying that in agreement.
Now the drunk nonsense.
Even though conservatives are against evilution.
The way it was taught to us in school with early man being hunters and gatherers
And even cartoons in magazines with a cumly young cavewoman being klonked on the head and taken to the caveman's cave, but she has wheels on and an eager expression. Nearby a couple of middle-aged cavewoman are saying "I heard she's easy,"
It seems like we're continuously conditioned to think of ourselves as aggressive. For boys it starts even sooner with that Snips and Snail and Puppy Dog Tails...
Hopefully, unlike real puppies, we don't sniff each other's tails as a how de do.
To the 28% base that still supports Bush, the Democrats have always been the one's who "disrespect" the troops. And it seems that no amount of stories that give definitive proof that it is Bushco wjp does not support the troops will sway this 28%.
There could be film of them actually (not metaphorically) sacrificing a soldier on the high altar and they still would come up with some justification. A certain amount of the population we will never be able to reach, no matter how we try.
We got the VA on one side mitigating the allocation of resources to those that need it by saying.."you are not that bad, you are participating in veterans organizations that are helping you to cope"
Then on the other side, we got someone in the army giving a general disharge to a soldier because the command stated he had a personality disorder which made him a disciplinary problem. Totally ignored the soldiers 10 year service, which entitles the servicemember to a medical retirement review. In essence, like anything else our culture does when dealing with mental illness, choosing punishment over treatment
afew of these company commanders have too much crap for brains and instead of doing the right thing which will take a little longer to do, they go for the 80% short term solution intended to get the percieved problem out of their inbox.
So what to do..
1. Servicemembers need to investigate filing an article 138 action outlined in the UCMJ against the officers making these decisions, if anything else to weed them out to keep them from hurting the next guy. here is an example of on post's policy http://pom-ima.monterey.army.mil/sites/installation/sja/admin_law/reques...
2. Seek representation to guide them throught the General discharge process. There are a lot of documents out there that deal with separations from the service. Separations may be characterized as administrative, medical, or punitive.
The character of the separation colours the benefits you may be entitled too.
To a young servicemember with minimal access to these documents, it may seem its just easier to get out anyway neccessary, just as long as your out.
My advice is to excersize the same patience that got them this far in their service, review this links references, then take the fight to their command.
http://www.nlgmltf.org/4.html or if one would prefer an army reference site try this http://sill-www.army.mil/IG/redress_military.htm
3. Medical discharges and Army disability programs ar confusing and arcane and are indeed a separate process from the VA system, once you spend all your time learning this system, then you have to spend your time learning the VA system. This means you have to find an advocate that is familiar with both systems. A rating from the Military medical system does not correspond to the rating the VA will give you.
ysbaddaden @ 21:
ysbaddaden @ 19:
19 and 21 ysbadden: Indeed. However aggressive our ancestors indeed were (the Romans, for instance, or Shi Huang, or t'ai-daishoguns of the Kamarakura dynasty, or Pakachuti), that by no means implies that their old ways would work in today's world. In a world where the best people could use to kill each other was a very phallic piece of equipment, or another one that thrusts deep, it was perfectly fine for one group to conquer another group, and that continued all the way back to when we and the chimps were one species.
In a world with nuclear weapons and ICBMS, OTOH, that sort of attitude doesn't fly. Fortunately, having damn near all of Earth except Australia, America (I use America to mean the two American continents, not the US), and sub-Saharan Africa (which was fucked up in another way) torn to shreds by the WWII generation kinda bred out the idea of war for war's sake that had existed previously.
As for whether our ancestors were ruthless, nasty, mean sonsobitches, we are, and all the social attitude towards kindness doesn't erase the overcompensation of the last 50,000 years for being eaten by Big Nasty ThingsTM for the previous 6.5 million. Still doesn't mean 21st century H. sapiens has to act like the Ur-Hominin.
Erroll @ 20:
I understand that full well. In the days of the Pharaonic Old Kingdom, there are hieroglyphics that refer to what war does to human beings. War has always done this, especially when it moved from tribal warfare between tiny isolated groups to full-scale battles like it did upon the rise of Sumer and Norte Chico.
Thank God for people like Joshua Kors, Carissa Picard, and Andrew Pogany. These three people plus Steve Robinson have done so much for my fellow troops that have been discarded by our military.
One thing that was not discussed in this piece when it spoke about the 5-13 personality disorder was that Company Commanders of these soldiers are working behind the scenes with Military Mental Health Physicians hand and hand to push troops out of service quickly. What I mean is that Infantry Officers are telling Licensed Medical Professional what to do. This is CRIMINAL!!!
Anyone who has ever served can tell you that the military doesn't see people as human beings that have emotions, feelings or thoughts.....they see us as bodies. Just look back at your military career and ask yourself if you can remember every time a leader needed to get something done such as mowing the unit lawn or cleaning the barracks common areas, what would your leader say? Did it sound something like this?? "Give two bodies to do this detail", they didn't say "I need two soldiers" or "You two come here"...it was always "Give me two bodies".
That's exactly how unit Commanders see their soldiers. If a soldier has an injury or a mental health issue that makes them non-deployable, this hurts that Commanders unit readiness so instead of keeping a soldier with mental health issues (i.e. PTSD, or TBI) on their roles and ruining their unit readiness rating which in turn will possibly kill that Commander's career it's easier to get a physician to label a troop as having a Pre-existing Personality Disorder which will in turn put that troop out of the service within 2 weeks. This allows a Company Commander to bring in a "fresh body".
When I served the Army left no one behind. But what but desertion of the troops can we expect from the deserters of the gop?
It's no coincidence that War's triune hosemen brothers of the Apocalypse are, Disease, Famine and Death.
Even after the battle proper is over, the brothers will argue over their spoils.
That's why War should be the last option, not the first.
It can't be discounted entirely, Rome evolved faster than the Barbarians, and fell to the Barbarians, and ushered in a millenium long Dark Ages.
There was a story that Merlin (Myrddin) asked King Arthur which was his greater weapon, his sword or his scabbard. They both had magical properties, the sword could cut through anything, but the scabbard could cure anyone if they would touch it. The king answered his sword. Merlin said it was his scabbard.
Although that may've been a reference to their magical properties, it also means a sheathed sword of peace is the greater of the two.
Of course, according to tradition there were 13 Treasures of Britain (largely weapons):
A chariot,
A bridle,
A sword (Caledvwylch/Excalibur?),
A Basket,
A Drinking Horn (the last two probably without stint),
A Knife (Carnwenan?),
A Cauldron (the Cauldron of Anwyn?),
A Whetstone,
A Garment (Armour?),
A Pan
A Platter (Pan/Platter probably both referencing an abundance of food, and like many Celtic Cauldrons would not cook a coward's food),
A Mantle (the Mantle of Gynn, a cape that would allow Arthur to become invisible?), and
A Gwyddbwyl board (an early form of chess, played by Emrys Arthur and Owain and perhaps a mystical board game tied to the battle of Ravens and Warriors in the Dream of Rhonabwy?)
Iddawg the Churn of Britain was to make diplomatic overatures to Mordred (Medrawt) and spoke rude words that precipated the Final Battle, and may've been the unnamed warrior that initiated the fight on the fateful day. They all agreed not to draw their sword unless someone on the other side did. When a snake bit one of Arthur's warriors on the foot, he pulled his sword, and smote the snake's head off. That sudden drawing of the sword ended with the cataclysm of Camlann.
And the Morrigu howl and keen.
Okay, this will probably all be deleted as off-topic, but at least I have an excuse in being drunk.
The Pentagram did the same thing to Vietnam vets and to vets of the first Iraq war. It is always the hawks, usually Reptilicans, who foment these wars, and it is always the same people who renege on all promises they make and moral obligations they incur. It's a good thing never to forget that warmongers and profiteers foment wars because, among many other things, they don't care about people.
As a Vietnam vet, I knew while it was happening that I wasn't fighting for America, or freedom or the freedom of the Vietnamese. I was fighting for the profits of Dow, and DuPont, Raytheon,Brown and Root and all the other usual suspects. The government was just a bought-and-paid-for entity that executed their will. Push the right emotional buttons, make the right manipulative appeals to patriotism, throw some cash around to all the crooked politicians, and bing!...the Pentagram is in your pocket and your in the money. It didn't matter that 60'ish thousand of ours and a couple million Vietnamese were killed, and that lives beyond number ruined. Profits, profits, profits! It's happening all over again with 4-7 thousand of ours killed (if you count them all), 1.3+million Iraqis dead, more countless lives ruined...profits, profits, profits! That's all that matters: profits, profits, profits!
Don't expect anything of value from those who value money more than human beings, and expect even less from the politicians or military leaders who can be bought and owned by them. And for military folks, stop voting for the kinds of people who hold you in contempt, who know they can manipulate you with simple, cynical appeals to your better nature, use you and then discard you when they have had their use of you, as if you were a now useless commodity that is nothing more than a forgotten piece of trash; if you learn that lesson, teach it to your children.
ysbaddaden @ 28:
War brings with it famine, death, and plague. Until the 1914 debacle, most war deaths were disease-caused, not battle-caused. Even wars in pre-Columbian America (again, referring to NA and SA with one word) resulted in that pattern, same with tribal conflicts over the 40,000-year history of Australia. It wasn't until medicine was put through the forcible trial of WWI that battle became the primary source of war death.
Paul @ 29:
Extremely well said. As a Vietnam veteran also, your thoughts reminded me of the 1974 Oscar winning documentary Hearts and Minds, which focused on the physical and psychological wounds that were inflicted on those in the military who ended in that most unnecessary conflict. What makes this film so extraordinary is that it did something that was very unusual for an American film and that was to also focus on the trauma that was inflicted on the Vietnamese people, who were the victims of American imperialism, as well as that of the Americans soldiers. American war films tend to glorify war while ignoring the plight of those who fell under the heel of American militarism.
I am also reminded of the scene in the documentary Sir! No Sir!, when the American male nurse recalls the paralyzed soldiers that he had attended to who had been grievously wounded in Vietnam. The nurse recounted how not one of those wounded soldiers would say that what he had gone through was worth it and questioned why they had had to end up the way that they did. One wonders why more of the soldiers today who end up in same condition do not also question why their government had to needlessly put them in harm's way instead of proclaiming that they would do it again for God and country.
IraqWarVeteran @ 26:
Which leads into something I noticed when I was in and is probably certainly true today. I found very few genuine leaders in the officer ranks. Most were careerists who thought themselves leaders. More acurately, most of them were petulant careerists, like little children, most of whom I wouldn't have trusted to lead me to the men's room. When genuine leaders arose amongst their peer group, these careerists invariably circled the wagons againsts them, viewing them as threats. The true leaders I saw, all had one thing in common: they viewed themselves as servants, and cared more for their troops than they seemed to care for themselves. The "bring me a fresh body"-types you describe are the careerists I remember. Some things never change.
Well...they should have known that they would have suffered trauma from the war before they volunteered to defend our country!
Besides, they aren't even real soldiers...real soldiers have the decency to die on the battlefield and not come home to be a burden on society...only Democratic soldiers want to live on the pensions promised when they signed up.
For the people out there who don't get it, I'm being snarky...
Considering the many ways in which the Bush administration has consistently failed the brave men and women whom they sent to fight their suspect war, this only serves to demonstrate further that their "Support The Troops" rhetoric is little more than blatant and deliberate hypocrisy. If this is their idea of "supporting the troops", I shudder to think of what abandoning them might look like!
Bluestocking @ 34:
I do not think that this can be said often enough . I believe that the best way to "support the troops" is to remove them from that abattoir in Iraq and Afghanistan as quickly and as rapidly as possible. This is why I do not support Obama, because he is in favor of a phased, as opposed to an immediate, withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq, He also wishes to leave close to 100,000 troops in Iraq or in the region, even after his phased withdrawal is finally completed. Obama also want to shift the focus to Afghanistan, where the Taliban has joined forces with the local citizenry to fight the American invaders. Obama's actions do not strike me as the best way of "supporting the troops."
Nicole,
I think you know exactly how much I appreciate your vigor on this matter.
Consider yourself the recipient of a kiss on the forehead from a grateful vet.
Erroll @ 31:
Erroll,
I know. Part of the reason is that their is a need to justify the harm that has been done to them. If you are struggling for your life and mind to heal and then have to face a bitter truth that it was all for nothing, that's a heavy blow to sustain while your barely holding yourself together. So, "I would do it again". their service is/was honorable. the people who used them are not.
I spent about 8 months in a Navy hospital in 1971 healing up. When I started coming back to life I did a lot of reading. One of the books I read was "Johhny Got His Gun". Ever hear of it? If you haven't read it, find it. It ought to be required by law that anybody who is going to sign the enlistment papers on the dotted line or accept a commission must read that story before doing so.
Terrible @ 27:
Really?
You are just believing in the fantasy.
It has ALWAYS left people behind.
Ask the Bonus Army
Ask the Atomic Veterans
Ask the crew of the USS Liberty
Ask the Agent Orange victims
Ask the victims of US chemical weapons experiments such as Whitecoat, SHAD, MKULTRA and many - MANY more.
Ask the guinea pigs of the Pharma complex immunizations
Ask those suffering from Gulf War Syndrome
Ask those soon to be suffering from Depleted Uranium.
Paul @ 29:
Good post.
Erroll @ 35:
Erroll, I think that the refusal to pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan is one of the reasons that the MSM made sure (manipulated the entire process) to make that only Corporatist Democrat (Obama) and Über-Corporatist/neocon-Lite-Democrat (Clinton) mind it to the finals. Ending the war wouldn't be good for the profits of Corporate Amerika. They wanted Über-Corporatist/neocon-Lite-Democrat to win the Democratic position, but had Corporatist Democrat as their fallback. They're still hoping that McShitstain will "win", of course; then they'll have the most facile and unobstructed path to more rape, plunder and profits.
IraqWarVeteran @ 26:
Ok I said "Sgt. Sherman grab 2 bodies and fill these watercans" a bunch of times, but that sjust the way the army is. Always has been probably always will be. The army is full of assholes and half the time if you wanted to get any work done you have to be an asshole. Lifer 11b officers more concerned with their OER than with the welfare of their guys? Well no shit. Thats the way the system is set up, they're rated on whether they meet their mission essential task lists and "taking care of the soldier" is a secondary task left to NCOs.
I think the army is probably doing a better job of caring for mental health than it did for previous conflicts (you always heard stories from old timers about back in the day things were way worse) because of the national empathy most feel for the military - I mean, they actually have a full bird whose sole job is mental health? Did that shit exist even 10-15 years ago? And they actually talk to reporters about it? Hell when something went wrong on Camp PA they kicked the reporters off the base. And that was 5 years ago.
Truth B Told @ 39:
Thanks.
The army lowers its recruitment standards and then claims "problem soldiers" have pre-existing mental illnesses. The people in the government and the Pentagon who do not live up to their commitments to these men, after sending them into the meat grinder, are lower than whale shit.
One Year Wonder @ 41:
I agree with everything you wrote, what I was trying to point out was how there is working relationship with Doctors and Company Commanders. Commanders are telling these Doctors what to do rather than let them do their job and actually diagnose the troops with the correct illness rather than be forced to give the troop a misdiagnosis of Personality Disorder to help the Commander with his numbers.
I wanted to make non-military (civilians) understand what is actually happening, and point out the criminality of it all.
I'm not all that surprised. This is from someone who dealt with this on the periphery. I discovered that they would rather have felons than someone with a college degree who had, and was cured of, cancer. The system is screwed up and it is up to them to fix it. No amount of wailing from the outside will help.
"No amount of wailing from the outside will help."
Are you sure?
Like 'volunteering' to be a cop - It takes a certain type of individual to join the military...
Either hopelessly poor, hopelessly disadvantaged in the competitive market of employment, perhaps a family history of serving the empire...A dream of gaining citizenship...
In most cases it is not the best and brightest amongst us.
They volunteered to be cannon fodder to an empire that doesn't have any humanity.
I'd say they were screwed from birth.
Anyone volunteering anymore now has to be a real brick with out a clue .
Where Bush and the corrupt Republicans are concerned, their crony corporate war-mongering war-profiteering pals always get the gold, while our active-duty soldiers and military veterans always get the shaft.
karl @ 5:
"The Army claims these soldiers have pre-existing mental illnesses or are guilty of misconduct."
That sounds closer to the truth to me frankly.
They chose to accept money to go abroad and kill people abroad to secure oil for the Bushies.
IraqWarVeteran @ 44:
It happens, a lot of shady crap happens - but there are selective pressures that make people act this way. Any way you slice it, O3's are still pretty low on the totem pole, fuck, even today full birds and 1stars are considered to be sacrificial lambs. Captains, Majors, Colonels, Brigadier Gen, they aren't writing doctrine or policy that makes examples out of guys like those cav scouts so that everyone is scared to claim mental illness. But i do hope that newstories like this change the policy.
Paul @ 29:
AND THE BASTARDS DENIED AGENT ORANGE caused ANYTHING.... until enough vets died that it wouldn't cost the GOP cheap labor group too much ??
Riiiiiiiiiiight.
Calling bullshit on 100 percent of that.
I was in the military so I know all about this nonsense.
The military and govornment likes to fuck people out of their benifits any way they can.
'They had mental issues BEFORE they enlisted.'
OH, REALLY?
DID YOU HEAR WHAT YOU JUST SAID?
WHY THE HELL DID YOU LET THEM IN IF THEY ARE SO MENTAL?????????????
People need to stop joining the military for a while.
They havent caught Bin Laden yet and they havent put much effort into it.
They dont want to catch him. They want to drag it out as long as they can.
Dont go to die in the hot sand with Uncle Sams pp up your butt.
Or worse, go mental and/or be a cripple for the rest of your life.
Dont fight these fradulent wars like Iraq and Vietnam for these frauds anymore.
It wont hurt the common people in this country as much as the douche bags that want to screw us all over. No matter which country we reside.
THERE IS A WAR HERE AT HOME ANYWAY!
Can soldiers cover themselves by getting a full mental health workup before they enlist (and lodge it with a lawyer)? It'd be a lot harder for the Army to successfully claim prior mental illness if it's on file that they weren't.
WE ALL LOVE A LITTLE BUSH @ 52:
Yup, they sure did. they did the same thing with the Gulf War Syndrome. Whatever generation it is, it's always the same types screwing the vets.
ysbaddaden @ 28:
Okay I'm now sober(ish),
First off the misspelling Annwyn and Gwyddbwyll.
While I was taking my bath I realized this earlier comment may be more relevant than I thought. I entered the service a teetotalling Mormon, and left a drug addicted, alcoholic practitioner of Witchcraft, and that's all WITHOUT seeing any wars, although there were a couple of close calls.
Additionally, in mythology, is the mythology of the great warrior like the Mycenean Odysseus, Achilles or Herakles. It resonates to this day, even in Christianity which was originally about turning the other cheek. I remember in elementary school, well after the court decision about prayers in school, having to listen to Morning Devotionals which was usually a Bible reading, a prayer and often Onward Christian Soldiers, which I grew to hate from sheer repetition, the abnomally of the concept, and the fact that we were then in the winding years of Vietnam.
As for Paul @ 29's comment I couldn't figure out if he was being facetious calling the Pentagon the Pentagram, the latter of which I wear under my shirt. To this day the Pentagon has not approved the pentagram for grave markers, like other including atheism. There are dead Afghanistan veterans still awaiting markers, because their families want them to bear pentagrams.
50 Underground Pirate
You sound like dick chaney
"The soldier's are suffering
They need the help they're entitled to."
So?
The "soldiers" in Iraq (and soon Iran) enlisted to help Cheney/Bush and the military industrial complex kill abroad to secure access to oil.
They volunteers took the job without duress. It seems highly unlikely that they enlisted for any good purpose. They were either unaware of
what they were doing, or they buy the whole crap about fighting for your country..right or wrong.
Why is it so hard to believe that they went in with mental problems?
I would assume that PTSD would occur to any sentient creature when they witness needles killing first hand.
Soldiering is stupid.
Underground Pirate
You are an enabler of the brass that orders the military into war, whilst claiming to be against that brass and all war.
Your argument that soldiers were sick to begin with echoes the official line.
With contradictory thinking like that you ought to be a republican.
I want to hold the brass's feet to the fire, drag them kicking and screaming if need be, to honor their commitments to the troops.
Only by making war an even more expensive option can we perhaps end war being the option of first choice.
Whether we like it or not, unless we all work for the military-industrial-complex. Because it's corporations who largely direct that complex. And we either work for the corporation itself, or subsidiaries, or even as self-employed borrow money from banks that are part of that complex and pay it back with interest.
In my time, I've given 3-5 gallons of blood, with no way of knowing who it went to. A cop a robber, a corrupt cop an innocent victim, a soldier or the enemy, or a hapless prisoner.
We could compare our soldiery to cops, some are brutal and corrupt, but another may be rescuing us from a smashed car, or an attacker. Even worse is it may be all in the same cop. Some may not be corrupt at all, and shouldn't be smeared by the few that are.
Even in the volunteer military, most volunteered for their state's National Guard to protect their immediate neighbors. Some volunteered due to economic duress. I suspect boosh has been trying to emphasize his "war record" in the Air National Guard, before he deserted, by using them as a large segment of the force in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Some of our soldiers volunteered to fight in Afghanistan, because they were protecting Osama Ben Laden, only to find themselves fighting in Iraq instead.
And those who may've volunteered to fight in Iraq was during a period of heavy, illegal, propaganda where the government was making knowingly false statements on the connection between Al Qaeda and Saddam and 9-11. I knew the connection smelled funny because of briefings I got on the Middle-East, and because by then I had a political science degree. Many private citizens still make that connection. Our soldiery probably more so, because although they have the internet, they're constantly being conditioned to think a certain way, and Stars and Stripes is unlikely to try to tell them otherwise.
This will be my last comment on the thread for the day. My dial-up is getting too slow. Hopefully, this comment will make it.
S/B Whether we like it or not, whether we work directly or indirectly for them, we all work for the military-industrial-complex. Because it’s corporations who largely direct that complex. Such is the nature of our Nation's incipient fascism.
I am totally baffled by this controversy. Exactly who is it that benefits? Who gets the money that is "saved"?
I am not a military person. The timing of my life meant I missed the draft both n the UK and the USA. But I firmly believe that any country that fields an army owes its soldiers lifetime educational, medical, housing, and pension benefits, without conditions. Maybe only enough to be above poverty, but not reduced at all should the recipient better themselves with post-forces careers. If a person joins the forces, be it voluntarily or by draft, be it for 6 months or career, that person has given the government permission to place them in the line of fire to be killed. So we own their life. So we are responsible for that life. However long it is. And for their dependents.
And a society that really aspires to be civilized should take care of everybody anyway. This bickering and meanness has no place in a Democracy. But let's start with our soldiers at least.
Of course, I fully realize the Haliburtons etc who actually run the place subscribe to a different view. But gotta start with the dream.
Comments are closed on this entry