It was a crass thing for Trump to say to a recent war widow, but of course it's also fundamentally said in praise of brave men. They knew what they signed up for. But do American soldiers know what they sign up for? Not just the risk, but the horror and culpability? Did Trump voters know what they signed up for? I'll put it to you they did not.
Tag: Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
Wilfred Owen: Spring Offensive & PTSD
You won’t find a more haunting depiction of battle induced PTSD than the last two stanzas of Wilfred Owen’s Spring Offensive. You’ll be curious no doubt to double back on the setup: troops being marched to the frontline, the idyllic lull before battle, the unceremonious charge, and the moment a stealthy sprint turns to mayhem. The next stanza speculates about the fate of those who fall in battle: to bullets, to explosive shells, and to shrapnel. The last stanza is about the "too swift" survivors who "out-fiend" death to come through, and don't want to, or can't, talk about it. Spring Offensive (April, 1917) Halted against the shade of a last hill, They fed, and, lying easy, were at ease And, finding comfortable chests and knees, Carelessly slept. But many there stood still To face the stark, blank sky beyond the ridge, Knowing their feet had come to the end of the world. Marvelling they stood, and watched the long grass swirled By the May breeze, murmurous with wasp and midge, For though the summer oozed into their veins Like the injected drug for their bones’ pains, Sharp on their souls hung the imminent line of grass, Fearfully flashed the sky’s mysterious glass. Hour after hour they ponder the warm field— And the far valley behind, where the buttercup Had blessed with gold their slow boots coming up, Where even the little brambles would not yield, But clutched and clung to them like sorrowing hands; They breathe like trees unstirred. Till like a cold gust thrilled the little word At which each body and its soul begird And tighten them for battle. No alarms Of bugles, no high flags, no clamorous haste— Only a lift and flare of eyes that faced The sun, like a friend with whom their love is done. O larger shone that smile against the sun,— Mightier than his whose bounty these have spurned. So, soon they topped the hill, and raced together Over an open stretch of herb and heather Exposed. And instantly the whole sky burned With fury against them; earth set sudden cups In thousands for their blood; and the green slope Chasmed and steepened sheer to infinite space. Of them who running on that last high place Leapt to swift unseen bullets, or went up On the hot blast and fury of hell’s upsurge, Or plunged and fell away past this world’s verge, Some say God caught them even before they fell. But what say such as from existence’ brink Ventured but drave too swift to sink. The few who rushed in the body to enter hell, And there out-fiending all its fiends and flames With superhuman inhumanities, Long-famous glories, immemorial shames— And crawling slowly back, have by degrees Regained cool peaceful air in wonder— Why speak they not of comrades that went under?
The conceivability that climate change, torture, or Pope’s Catholicism isn’t.
The January 2015 Smithsonian Magazine asks "Did Civil War vets suffer from PTSD?" which seems a progressive conceit from an arbitor of the accepted version of events. I think it's useful to ask "Does a bear shit in the woods?" by which I mean, is it conceivable to you that bears don't shit in the woods? Because your incredulity is critical. Apparently these days, history is written not by historians but by pollsters. Today the commonplace perception of history and science prevails as the dominant verdict. Whether Climate Change is real, or whether torture is torture, depends on how the public polls. Presumably truth being what we want it to be would poll favorably too. While the Smithsonian's question suggests to upend institutional dogma, dragging 19th century medicine into the 21st century, it's actually the reverse. Doctors treating veterans have always known that nearly all people exposed to combat will suffer PTSD, ancient times didn't favor acronyms perhaps, yet today's spin doctors want public comprehension to pivot on a question, contingent upon whether is is. Of course DO BEARS sounds more objective than BEARS DO. It also smells of the dissembling of a torture doctor. TORTURE IS.
One man’s war hero is another’s snitch. Iraqi informant Jasim Mohammed Ramadon is also an American rapist.
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.-- Haha. Iraqi "war hero" Jasim Mohammed "Steve-O" Ramadon was granted asylum in the US after snitching on his countrymen, his tribe, and own father, as a youth informer for the US Army. An American soldier brought Ramadon back to Ft. Carson and praised him as a war hero in his memoir. Now Ramadan has been getting himself into trouble for drunk driving and beating women. Recently, he and four other Iraqi expats were arrested for the violent sexual assault of a neighbor, probably the everyday rape M.O. of American soldiers in occupied lands. I'm laughing because while Ramadon betrayed his dad, beat his girlfriend, and now faces charges of rape, local teabag Red White & Blue guy Jim Cross stepped forward as character witness for Ramadon, saying "his heart is in the right place." Does being a conservative jingoist mean you have to hit every sour note? I was reminded of Cross today because our City Hall fracking protest was interrupted by the stereotypical blimp-neck sticking his smartphone in our faces with lame gotcha questions, beginning with the usual insincere "So what's this about?" Today's idiot was no brighter than Cross, and thought he'd caught us up because we protested oil drilling yet drove there burning fossil fuels. These guys are almost worth having cameras turned on them, so dopey are their leading questions and smug oversimplifications. This one seemed too dumb to actually be of interest, but it turns out we could have unmasked a local media bully. I learned only later that our camera-wielding heckler was the Gazette's editorialist Wayne Laugesen. So now I've confirmed my suspicion that Mr. Laugesen's relentlessly backward editorials must be cribbed verbatim from right-wing PR mills. For all their nauseating inanity, the editorials are too consistent with the corporate talking points to emit from the moron we saw today. Of course, one man's idiot is a ditto-head's intellectual. Laugesen trailed us as we walked to lunch, but filmed it like we were running away from his lard ass.
Who really has PTSD?
“Suleiman’s post-traumatic stress disorder left him unable to work and without means to support himself,” says Crosby. “His lack of self-sufficiency has led to further depression and feelings of inadequacy and shame, because he has to rely on his family for his basic needs.” Let's take a further look at this man's PTSD. Who caused it? How the US Rendered, Tortured and Discarded One Innocent Man There are possibly millions of people with PTSD... people who were victims traumatized by US soldiers who themselves now claim to be suffering PTSD. Ironic, is it not? Who deserves the disability monies? Really? Who deserves to get this money? Who are the people who mainly got traumatized as opposed to those who did the traumatizing?
The Air Force Rape Academy- are the two sexes having trouble getting along in the military?
Let's face it, having young men and women join together in an authoritarian environment like the military most certainly is, is definitely a sure fire recipe for disaster. And disaster is exactly what's happening out at the Lackland Air Force base in Texas. Lackland Air Force Base Sex Scandal: Investigation Has Found 31 Victims So Far. 'Lackland is where every American airman reports for basic training – about 35,000 a year. About one in five are female, pushed through eight weeks of basic training by a flight of instructors that are about 90 percent male.' --And the situation is no better with the other branches of the military either. The military is a poor place for young people to end up in TOGETHER with their mutual problems of finding sexual intimacy in their 20s. Egads! What a mess militarism and faux feminism and machismo make when all mixed together. PTSD anybody?
WWII vet, age 92, finally diagnosed with PTSD why, because we care?
Sgt. Stanley Friedman, a 92 yr-old veteran of the WWII North African campaign, was finally diagnosed with PTSD. Pro bono lawyers couldn't even verify his service records, but after sixty years of denying his claims, the VA has at last been forced to grant Friedman compensation. Is this really the result of crafty legal work, at long last, or of a PR climate now overrun by Big Pharma, whose PTSD drug market windfall needed a poster boy for the baby boomer set, the type of veteran Americans favor over those from less "good" wars?
Pentagon-loving corporate media says to pay no attention to real details about the Sgt. Bales led USA war crime
The news report yesterday, hidden away for the most part, was that Child witnesses to Afghan massacre say Robert Bales was not alone and read that the Afghan reporter who was reporting for the Australian press had also reported being impeded by the US military in her access to the war crime witnesses who were children. Here is what the child witnesses to the slaughter by Bales and his squad said to her... 'In the video, the children told Hakim that other Americans were present during the rampage, holding flashlights in the yard. Noorbinak, 8, told Hakim that the shooter first shot her father’s dog. Then, Noorbinak said in the video, he shot her father in the foot and dragged her mother by the hair. When her father started screaming, he shot her father, the child says. Then he turned the gun on Noorbinak and shot her in the leg. “One man entered the room and the others were standing in the yard, holding lights,” Noorbinak said in the video.' Now who are you dumb shit, American soldier uniform lovers going to believe here? Why the Pentagon, for sure, who calls the children liars! Right? So no need for the American media to even much discuss this event any more, you Flag waving dips have your minds made up already... and it's all that Bales and the other soldier troopers are great heroes and what not, though no doubt it's a shame that so many perhaps have been traumatized by their killing of foreigners who got in their way of career advancement through the vet Welfare Establishment.... blah, blah, blah. 10% off that hamburger and fries, Soldier Dear. Take this job right now, Mr. Vet Preference Dude. Got a back ache? Take some dope and here's some disability right away no questions much asked... for life. We love you, Soldiers! But Sgt Robert Bales and his squad seemed to have some anger control issues so they might be slapped on the wrist in the days ahead, and Bales might even have to serve a year or two in jail as Hero Man, while his comrades get the free walk, all thanks to the Big P of northern Virginia...Insurance Company for trailer trash heads who Uncle Sam recruits and turns into even worse criminals than the petty hoods they were in civilian life before. ('Now, Tony, you are being a tad bit disrespectful to our heroes who kill kids, so that you might have that nasty thing we all vet- soldier Right Wingers hate called Free Speech. Go live in Red China, Commie a-hole!') Oh, and that Black and White picture at the start of my bad? That was the American soldier men in uniform defending 'free speech' during the Vietnam War 'error'.... at Kent State. If I only had a nickel for every dumb ass Right Winger vet,
Why are returning US soldiers with behavior and/or psych problems being pumped so full with narcotics?
According to the study, vets with psychiatric and other behavior problems are being given 2-4 times the amount of narcotics if they claim to have physical pain of some sort as those without these Psych conditions. What gives? PTSD veterans prone to drug addiction get risky painkillers
To cure P.T.S.D. we need to spread it
I always thought it misguided that the antiwar community should worry about our soldiers' PTSD. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder: it's a guilty conscience soldier, you've earned it. Of course, Troop Supporters bear responsibility too, so we need to spread the guilt around.
A face to launch a thousand protests. Leak your trophy footage you cowards
This is a still from John Pilger's THE WAR YOU DON'T SEE, recently blocked from its US debut in Santa Fe. Why? Because such images will stop war. In particular this shows a terrified Iraqi girl held at gunpoint as her home is searched. I wonder how many such scenes have been captured by embed cameras or GI cellphones. Western eyes are being inoculated to violence and gore, our victims dehumanized, foreign civilians reduced to collateral, but it appears our media managers worry Americans cannot yet resist the ordinary tears of children. Imagine such scenes of heartbreak gone viral across the web. Never mind atrocity or war crime, show us emotional responses with which we can identify. The mass of digital records could doubtless overwhelm Wikileaks. These are not top secret, yet nearly any have been leaked. My appeal to the cowardly US soldier, or the damnable media embed, leak the footage which haunts you already, your PTSD may be the contagion to end public support for our state sponsored terrorism.
News sources, MSM and the mouths of horses…
See, we constantly get told, on this site and any other site that opposes the wars and the occupations and such, that we're listening to the "Liberal Mainstream Media". Huh? The most frequently criticized "Liberal" media are as rabid a War-mongering Mob as Fox, they're just more polite about it. Sometimes more polite about it. The bullshit with the "Ground Zero Mosque" is being whipped up by the MSM CORPORATE whores just as much as the FOX corporate whores. With an insidious difference, they'll use weasel words rather than coming right out and saying "Hate Muslims! Hate Islam! The REAL 'Obsession' is our Hatred for all things Middle East!" like FOX does. Same with the Wounded Warrior bullshit the Pentagon tries to fill a swimming pool with, and then dump us in. The fault of causing all those wounds and deaths isn't in the Anti-War movement, it's in those who twist their own words to make it appear just, and righteous, to CONTINUE the wars and start others. Why would they do that? Money. What did you think, that the Corporate Press would cut the throats of their Pigs who lay the Golden Turds? Of course they won't. People who were recently in the Military Establishment have a little bit of an excuse. Not much but some. It's called Stockholm Syndrome. "Jonah, from whose rectal orifice did you pull that one?" but, straight from the Horses' Mouths is more like it. Stockholms is well documented because the United States Military uses it to defend against confessions made by U.S. POWs. In every non-declared war in my lifetime, the only POWs treated as such by the U.S. military were those held prisoner by the people the U.S. soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines attacked, in their own countries, without a declaration of war. Like McCain. VietMinh "cong" soldiers were handed over to the Saigon Govt troops for torture and execution, not as POWs, but as criminals. Fairly typical, Bush demanded that any American soldiers taken prisoner by the resistance groups in the nations of Iraq and Afghanistan be "treated humanely under the terms of the Geneva and Hague Conventions" while denying any such treatment to the prisoners captured and tortured and killed by OUR soldiers. So here's how Stockholm's works. It's a principle of Pavlovian Conditioning. Like when Dr Pavlov trained his dogs to slobber every time he rang a bell. In the Chinese prison camps during the Korean War, the SAME techniques used to train those dogs, and to train the U.S. soldiers and really those of every established military in the world, were called "brainwashing". Who says so? The U.S. Army When we write of War Crimes committed by the U.S. Army, our sources certainly aren't the Tame Media. They're the often conflicting reports issued by the Army and... from the soldiers themselves. The recently discharged soldiers, well, they're still hopped up on the Industrial Strength Koolaid administered by the Army. In-their-face confrontations against the lies they were told so often is a good therapy for that. It
An anti-recruitment message especially for military families…
Because whenever the subject of recruitment comes up around certain members of my own family, many of whom were active duty military, the mantra of "But the Army/Navy/Air Force/Marines support the troops' FAMILIES." So, quiz time... Every base has a Base Veterinarian and one of the divisions of that office is Exterminator. You know that the exterminators will inspect your homes for roaches, mice, rats, correct? And will from time to time make a special announcement about having your housing unit ready for the Bug Spray Squad. How many times do they tell you when they're going to spray defoliants? That's Weed Killers. Roundup is a lower strength of what they usually spray, but the Monsanto Corporation sells the Pentagon some heavy duty versions of that, up to and STILL INCLUDING Agent Orange. Because every base is a "secured area" and there's a lot of cleared ground, and the housing and other buildings arranged in rows and squares... did you notice? No tree lines, no areas of tall brush... part of it is to prevent fire, the other half to enable fire, do you know the meaning of that? By the way, any question answered with any version of "I don't know" is a Red Flag. How much did the Military tell you or your spouse about that? How often do they put out poison for the birds on the flight line? How often do they warn you about "sick" birds? How do they word those warnings? How do they warn you about your pets, to look for certain symptoms? Do they teach your kids to not pick up sick or dead birds or other animals? Do they routinely screen you, and your kids, for a genetic disorder called "Fragile X"? Or ANY of a short list of genetic tags that would demonstrate exposures to radiation or toxins? Do they tell you, educate you AND your families, especially your kids... about a class of chemicals called Dioxins? They DO poison the birds, rodents, skunks, coyotes, feral cats, foxes, etc. If they don't tell you when, Red Flag. If they NEVER told you, RED FLAGS!!! The Fragile X chromosome damage causes a wide variety of disorders especially in children, Pervasive Development Disorder, Autistic Spectrum Disorders including Asbergers, other neuro-motor disorders... The weed killers ALL have a chemical in them, one or more dioxins. These aren't the active ingredients, they're a residual from the manufacture of the active ingredients, but they can't take them out without destroying the "good" chemicals. The active ingredients themselves, supposedly harmless to animals including humans, act on the leaves and any other green surfaces of the plants. The cells that transfer water, carbon dioxide (what the plants breathe in) and oxygen (what they exhale and we inhale) basically giving them the vegetable equivalent of emphysema. They can't breathe and they die. The dioxins can enter the human and other animals' bodies through the water, mostly, eating contaminated food, or breathing the smoke from when the chemicals are burned. The Army and Air Force "buried" the investigation of their use of Agent Orange along
GI quadruple amputee’s hobby: guns. Army needs a prosthetic for PTSD.
Wounded Army Specialist Brendan Marrocco was this weekend's NYT front page testimonial to the resilience of US soldiers. The VA is finally acknowledging amputee-counts apparently, so we now learn that 988 veterans have lost limbs in Iraq and Afghanistan. Specialist Marrocco lost all four, but is learning to get around. He can walk for stints of up to 15-minutes, and his favorite pastime? Shooting guns.
Traumatic Brain Injuries and Statistical Manipulation
This has a two part trigger, for me, I saw a bus stop sign saying that 1 in 5 returning soldiers have TBI and a BBC headline about "stocks fall on manufacturing data", the last being a poorly constructed sentence that can be read two ways, manufacturing as a noun or as a verb transformed to adjective. Either way it would be accurate, recent events on Wall Street show they've been manufacturing the data for a long long time. But with the TBI example, we get some really complex thought-lines from the one sentence. Is that perhaps 20% of ALL returning military personnel? Even with that 20% being limited to Combat Infantry personnel that would be a shocker. And you KNOW the Army would make it minimal. They've been treating (and getting busted doing it) TBI as "underlying personality disorders with onset prior to service" which means the Pentagoons are Covering Their Collective Poopy Butt. That gives them the opportunity to give the soldiers thus affected anywhere from an "Unfit for Service - Psychiatric" Honorable Discharge BUT, since it's not officially service connected, they don't have to pay a dime to the broken soldiers. Just throw them away and holler "NEXT!"... To Bad Conduct or Dishonorable discharges complete with Prison Time if their injuries, or battlefield-induced psychoses caused by an overdose of combined Conscience and Unconscionable Deeds they're ordered to commit, cause them to commit "crimes" like telling their Commanding Officer to fuck himself and go kill the "enemy" civilians himself if he wants them dead so damn bad. That's called "mutiny" and punishable by death at the highest level or "insubordination" and punishable as a Federal felony at the lowest. By denying TBI and PTSD claims the Pentagoons can handle a lot of the symptoms of both as crimes, to be punished, rather than as symptoms of damages caused by the Pentagon Mission. They can also punish the soldiers for "malingering" - faking illness to get out of performance of their duties... if they report the symptoms to Medical Personnel and Medical, who are under orders from their "superiors" (which would make themselves "inferiors", something the military discourages you mentioning) and if those orders pointedly Exclude diagnosing PTSD or TBI, that means the Medical Personnel themselves would be required to report the soldier for "malingering". They did that crap with Agent Orange victims too, and still do. File an A.O. claim and they'll investigate YOU as a criminal rather than Monsanto, Dow and Union Carbide... That leads to the Other Interpretation of the statistic. If "Soldiers" is limited to the Army, possibly the Marines, that's still the largest chunk of Military personnel and would mean possibly 37% of returning Army and Marine Corps being affected. That's one in three instead of one in five. Be All That You Can Be, as the lying ass recruiter slogan used to say.
Babykilling new Sport-du-jour. Update: No fatalities, lots of injuries…
Actually in French it would be jeu du jour which is kind of a really bad pun. But, in China, a day care center/preschool was the scene of a knife attack. I didn't read past the headline, sue me. 28 people stabbed, no word in the headline how many died, no word how many were kids. The motive isn't given either, but if it were, it would sound like gnarblsgnashsnarlwhipframdoodle. In short, it wouldn't make any sense to an actual sentient person anyway. I know the standard arguments this will arouse, I bet if I turned on Bile O'Liely or whatever twit is holding forth on Hate-TV and Hate-Radio right now I'd hear "See, if one of the kids had a gun it would never have happened" News Flash, China has Universal Conscription, meaning everybody in the whole damned country learns how to use guns at one point in his life. They also make quite a few guns, so many in fact that they sell them on the export market. Those SkS machine guns that are ever so popular up on Rampart Range, for instance. "See, even a knife can be used as a weapon of mass murder". Well, sure. And if the guy had taken in one of those readily available black-market firearms and some spare magazines he probably would have killed quite a few little kids. And they probably wouldn't have stopped his shooting spree as readily as they stopped his Stabbing Spree. OR, maybe it could have been stopped. The Gun Lobby Morons don't make much mention of this, but when GoofBall Adkisson decided to go all Elmer Fudd (be vewwy vewwy quiet, I'm hunting Wibewwals heh heh heh heh heh) on a church in Tennessee he was the ONLY one in the church with a gun. An Alley Sweeper. Automatic 12guage shotgun wit magazine feeds. He, too, was targeting the kiddoes. Killed to adults who were an order of magnitude more MAN than he could even fantasize about being, unarmed, Liberals, one of them a retired Marine. Stepped in front of the muzzle which was aimed at the children of the church. The "upshot" (don't you just love it when appropriate words exist?) of the deal was the Same Gun Freaks who say that More Guns in schools would prevent crime, filled his nasty pointed little head with the notion that Liberals were Pussies and if he pointed a gun at them they would fold up like laundry, beg and plead with him not to shoot them.... Marvelous things, those Shooter's Manifesto devices. And who did he get the idea from? Right Wing Hate Speech shows on Television and Radio (newspapers don't count, it would mean having to actually read something besides the television schedule for next sunday) AAAAAANNNNNNDDDD... in China there's a death penalty. And another fellow was executed recently for killing 8 children in a stabbing spree. Unlike Texas, for instance, where they NEVER execute people who are obviously insane or mentally retarded. Just ask them, they'll tell you. So apparently, none of the things the
These days we outsource our POW-MIA
According to Nation Magazine, there are 131,000 homeless vets, and about 18 suicides per day among America's 25 million vets.
Major Abu Nidal Hasan to meet Jack Ruby
So who was the Fort Hood shooter, do we know? The media's got the back story all lined up for it to be Nidal Malik Hasan, he has three names like all assassins (and sound bites), and now the Army is trotting out witnesses to point their fingers at the Muslim Major. Addressing reports of multiple gunmen, the Army says "there was only one shooter." Although five of the victims may have fallen to friendly fire. So there was a "friendly shooter?" Which one was Hasan? I'm thinking the multiple shooter stories came out of the Army deciding the shooter was Hasan, but witnesses insisting it was another soldier. Sooner than contradict what they'd seen with their own eyes, Investigators and victims agree to disagree, until a uniform narrative can be worked out. With a mess of dead soldiers, all dead by PTSD, who the hell cares which killed which? But poor Major Hasan's name had the right evildoer pedigree, with an Abu Nidal ring to it, which could bring Americans to a boil. What's going on right now, by the way, big picture wise? Is the American public vacillating about sending more troops to Afghanistan? It took a 9/11 surge of Muslim-hating to send our invaders off in the first place. The Army must have shit bricks when it turned out that Hasan was still alive. The fall guy they'd chosen wasn't dead. It's hard to pin the tale on someone who can still tell. But who am I kidding? Either we're going to see a Jack Ruby pay a visit to Hasan in the hospital, the end, or the military's going to control Mr. Hasan with its usual heavy hand. And that's the New World Order MO. I can already see Jose Padilla being shuttled between tortures and deprivations, losing his mind as the government confounds him with accusations. Hasan is already as cooked as Padilla. No matter what happened, we'll see confusion and confession and absolutely no access to civilian lawyers or the press. Hasan is this year's American Taliban, the caricature John Walker Lind painted as America-hating wuss. The Army's having nobody think this is PTSD. Did you see the JAG lawyer on CNN, ruling out PTSD because Hasan was an officer? Antiwarriors can laud the shooting as "fragging" but it's not. Fragging means to kill your superior officer. At Fort Hood, the only dead were grunts. Antifada antiwarriors can hope this was Islam striking back, hitting Americans with their own MO. But where was the collateral damage? Where were the wives and children, the innocents among the dead soldiers? Nope, none of those. The evidence indeed points to a principled Mujahadeen who wanted to kill only the US killers, or the soon to be deployed killers. The Fort Hood shooter might have been sparing the readying soldiers the horrors of Afghanistan, and the DU poison they'd bring back to their families. The real story is that this is what PTSD looks like, and it may have played out as Russian Roulette, it wouldn't
Army offers Mental Resiliency Training to harden the conscience against PTSD
What do you make of the VA study indicating that more stateside military drone operators suffer higher Post Traumatic Stress Disorder than soldiers in actual combat? It may point to the obvious, that PTSD comes less from being shell-shocked under fire and more from committing deeds to haunt the conscience. If our troops weren't being asked to act inhumanely, perhaps we'd see fewer suicides, or homeless and maladapted vets. Instead the Army has announced it will give all its soldiers "mental resiliency training." This might inoculate their fear of coming home to face their loved ones, but will it steel them against redemption?
Support Our Homeless Troops
COLORADO SPRINGS- I watched yesterday as a group of homeless men disbanded beneath an underpass. I remarked how their yet unbent frames and close-shaved heads made them appear more menacing than usual. Then I noticed one had a graphite prosthetic calf, and I thought about our vets who disappear themselves into being vagabonds. Homelessness is elective you could say, like despondency or suicide. If one in four of America's homeless are veterans, why not tell us what that fraction amounts to? They must know. Americans were just leaked the number of suicides among our soldiers and veterans. It's more even than have died in the Iraq war. We hear about the seemingly haphazard suicides, self-destructive acts and reckless endangerments, but who puts it together? Did you imagine the tally as a result of the war would be so high? Probably the incidence of PTSD, they say now 30%, is equally under-documented. Who will contravene with the VA, the DoD and the State Department to give us the real totals? Americans recently honored the 4,000th US casualty in Iraq. What was THAT milestone for? The American Friends Service Committee had been circulating a collection of army boots --Eyes Wide Open, before the number became unmanageable-- to correspond to the official US losses. It didn't occur to me how some military families might feel left out by that count. What about the non-combat deaths, or the wounded who expire stateside? What about the suicides, or the brain-dead? What about the broken bodies who would be over-represented by a pair of boots, who would need a single boot, or none at all? What is the real figure so far, of US lives sacrificed to the war? What fraction of a Vietnam wall memorial are they setting aside for the true casualty count? Enough for ten thousand? Is our tally of wasted-lives several times that? I want to know where are the yokels who make a big deal about supporting the troops? Where are they while homeless vets look for heat and food? Where is the support for young men haunted to the point of committing suicide? Is that yellow sticker on your car the furthest extent to which you support the troops? Do you hope your sticker remains obscured in the garage until the homeless vets pass? I hope the yellow ribbon Support the Troops sticker comes to mean you're good for a meal, a ride, a place to sleep, or spare change for a drink. I didn't support the troops, what they did and still do, or the trouble they find themselves in now that their killing duty is served. You encouraged them, you're still welcoming them home and cheering their continued deployment. You broke these young men, now support them.
Why rent-a-cop if you can rent-a-killer?
The city clerk has been working on a proposal to the Colorado Springs City Council to authorize private security firms to carry semi-automatic weapons. The New Life Church shootings raise the issue, apparently, that security personnel should be better armed, although there were no private security firms present. The mayhem was averted by volunteer church members assigned to security, who made do with a handgun. Has there been a call for an escalation of firepower in property protection skirmishes? Are marauding bands of drug dealers challenging malls and warehouses with overpowering force? Are rent-a-cop and house alarm responders finding themselves out-gunned by burglars and mischievous teens? Private security firm owners claim the current limit of .38 or .45 caliber handguns is too restrictive for their new hires who are often coming from the military war zones and are used to patrolling with automatic weapons. Oh, and to what else are they accustomed? Shoot to kill orders? Shoot anything that moves "kill-zones?" After an I.E.D. ambush, shoot all living beings in the vicinity? Shoot women and children if suspicious? Shoot cars that do not heed shouted commands? Shoot through walls, into doors, around blind corners? What percentage of vets are coming back with PTSD? Aren't they unsuited to most jobs except to be lonely night patrolmen? In the wake of Hurricane Katrina we saw assault-rifle bearing Blackwater blackshirts unleashed on the traumatized population. The only thing keeping Blackwater and Aegis type goons out of our city would be weapons restrictions such as we have, as are common to all civilized population centers. Many British Bobbies still are not permitted to carry guns at all. That's the kind of change we need. Stand down, don't gear up.
Your dad is going to die of cancer
It's just been reported that the children of soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan are more likely to suffer child abuse. Is this finding not terrible enough for their parents to take heed and refuse to to be ordered there? All soldiers going to Iraq and Afghanistan doom themselves to exposure to Depleted Uranium. Does it give anyone pause that they are dooming themselves and their families to certain ill-health? They're not making a selfless sacrifice, they're sacrificing their kids. By the VA's own report, over 11,600 Gulf War vets have died since 1991. A third of the soldiers involved in that 100 hour engagement are now on disability. The health problems have been called Gulf War Syndrome because the military won't admit responsibility, like it long denied the effects of Agent Orange in Vietnam. But doctors are now certain the many common symptoms are due to DU. Already we are seeing birth defects from Iraq War veterans. Of course the media is not addressing the problem, but why aren't soldiers figuring out the cause and effect for themselves? Do they still think the Department of Defense is looking out for them? After the Walter Reed scandals? After the failures to deal with PTSD? Remember an unusual report early in the Iraq occupation when Dutch troops were to replace a US Marines encampment? The Dutch commanders instantly forbade their soldiers to inhabit the American barracks due to DU contamination. They deemed it better to bivouac outside the camp, exposed to attack outside the fortifications, than to suffer the certain DU exposure about which the American soldiers had been told nothing. I have an idea of how to bring this message home to our soldiers. It involves the soldiers' families because they are already impacted negatively, and stand to bear the brunt of losing their father or mother, of having to cope with a bitter, violent veteran, or having to care for the eventually terminally ill invalid. Here's my plan: I live in a neighborhood that houses the families of officers posted to Fort Carson. Usually they're newcomers, usually just the families, the fathers being away in Iraq. Kids know these families from talking amongst each other at school. The next time this or that house is pointed out to me, I'm going to tell the kids to be nice to those children because their father is dying of cancer. Never mind succumbing to IEDs, or to mental illness, the veteran will more likely than not, die a slow death of cancer or leukemia or whatever mysterious debilitating fate, owing to the DU he inhaled over there. Imagine the talk at the school reaching the soldier's children. They'd bring their fears home. It's a heartless rumor to spread to kids, but maybe their alarm could prompt an awakening and ultimately save their dad's life. This subversive message can be directed toward soldiers at other opportunities. Be it a panhandler with PTSD, or a proud veteran in a parade, treat them both with a sincere gentleness because of
Memorial Day 3,500 x 100
This Memorial Day the number of US soldier casualties in Iraq nears 3,500. At 1,000 we held a vigil in Acacia Park. We did the same at the 1,500 and 2,000 marks. The numbered-cross memorial we mounted at Camp Casey COS commemorated near 2,000 deaths. The "Eyes Wide Open" boot collection came to town as the number exceeded 2,500. Colorado Springs was its last stop because the figures began to require too many boots to unpack at each stop. We met again in the park for the 3,000th, but I'm not going to eulogize any more boots until the number reaches 50,000. That's well into Vietnam War casualty territory and that's where we're going. The war got its funding, the military has revealed its plans to double the troop levels, the President is warning us to expect US casualties to surge, and sure enough we're seeing the body count rise. Eight, fifteen a day. Not counting mercenaries. And still no one's tallying the Iraqi dead. I'm okay not to count the mercenaries. But what of our volunteer army, signing ever-increasing re-enlistment bonuses? I don't want to count them either. Our soldiers keep shipping themselves off to Iraq to serve well-enough-documented evil illegal deeds. What's to commemorate, really? They're not jumping off cliffs, they're driving armored vehicles into Iraqi children on the way. Our soldier's souls are already lost to us. That's 150,000 active in Iraq. 300,000 counting the mercenaries. Plus who ever's being held back with PTSD. Cry about that. On this date in 1973, the military had counted 44 deaths for El Paso County. It was not enough even then.
Homeless vets, the Iraq generation
There's a little discount store I like to frequent where I get inexpensive health food. I crossed paths there today with some homeless young men. It was only a matter of time I thought, before the truly needy discovered this little store, known so far only by less needy bohemians. They were Iraq vets, young men, hair grown long, vagabonds, not unfriendly, not talkative either except with each other. The conversation didn't get far because the three reeked of lived-in clothes. You think you can bear it when first one approaches, but in enclosed quarters the smell pierces your nostrils and persists even hours later. I had to leave. They were vets yes, in a war they wanted nothing to do with. It was fucked up. Don't blame me, one of them said, it's the assholes in charge. They had more colorful words for assholes. We're not supposed to blame you, I countered? Well I do. I blame Rumsfeld of course, and Bush & Co, but I blame the soldiers too. I blame them plenty. The soldiers marched off to war, got in our face with their militarism, had their families cheerlead for them. Soldiers killed a mess of Iraqis, innocent people by the vast majority. Now the soldiers come home and threaten us with their PTSD and reckless anger. You three are choosing to protest militarism by dropping out, but what about protesting more visibly? What you're doing now is as selfish as your decision to go along in the first place. You are vicitms, my God, look at you, but you were also the perpetrators. Tell me, how do we send a message to the other soldiers? How do we reach the soldiers still doing the deeds, torturing, murdering, raping the prostitutes, raiding the houses, smashing the tableware, kicking the children? I say, incarcerate them. Let them know the judgment awaiting them at home. Make them consider making a moral decision to stop providing the muscle for Bush's crimes of war. Sure Rumsfeld is guilty, but you're all guilty. It's a tough break, but you're complicit whether you agreed or not. The boys walked out as I walked out. The Vietnam War left a legacy of homeless vets to roam our streets and parks to this day. Obviously the next generation is already on that trail, stretching their government checks to cover food and drug, here and there. In Manitou it's easy to live in the foothills. A bum can be social or anti-social. When the weather gets cold he will move down to the shelter. In the meantime the homeless vets will reek up my favorite places with their slept-in combat boots and their mental ill-health not up to facing their consciences. They might even pose a threat to the neighborhood when they're drunk, I can't judge them on that in advance. These boys didn't seem un-bright, but they're adding nothing to the community once again. If they were not the dreck of society before they went to war, they are now.
Support our snively troops
We've had a spate of vandalism at Camp Casey of late. It's usually the same thing: lights broken, cinder blocks smashed, chairs upturned, fire pit stolen, banners torn and taken. They've taken STOP THE WAR, END WAR, WHAT NOBLE CAUSE, DEMOCRACY DEMANDS NON-VIOLENCE and many others. We simply make more. But they always leave the banner that reads SUPPORT OUR TROOPS - BRING THEM HOME NOW. What self-serving ninnies! There might be well-intentioned, ordinary Americans caught up in Bush's lies, out in Iraq and Afghanistan thinking they are protecting our freedoms. But they are killing innocents. They are murdering innocents. They are aiding and abeiting their fellow soldiers who are murdering innocents. At some point we'd have to say that being an idealist idiot cannot be an excuse. Let me at these troops we're supposed to support. I'll spit in the face of every one of them. Idiots. Moral degenerates. Cowards. They're afraid to do the right thing and resist immoral orders, afraid to face the brig instead of putting themselves in the position to be forced to kill innocent Iraqis and Afghanis. I sympathize with every one of them but I respect not a one. They are all cowards, idiots, killers, or scum. And their parents are indefensible. Bring the troops home, yes. To save the lives of innocents. What should I care about the soldier's lives? Three years into this war, it would be fair to say they've earned what's coming to them in this life or the next. Cowards and bastards every one. ERRATUM 7.26 I've gotten so much heat for writing this. As I deserve. I've met active duty soldiers who are fine human beings, whom I like, all with their own stories of how they were caught up in what's happened. A number are involved in the anti-war effort. I applaud their actions and really my original sentiment was harsh. I do believe that the end of this war will have to come, as it did in Vietnam, when the soldiers themselves refuse to serve. When soldiers say no, when officers fear that their men will not follow, is when the Pentagon tells the President that this war is over. It's a tall order to ask of a common soldier, but it would not be a selfless act. Opting to go to the brig would be wiser than risking a tour of duty with IEDs, PTSD, permanent moral trauma, exposure to DU, the Anthrax vaccine, etc.