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Maureen Dowd: Bush, who used his family connections to avoid Vietnam, told troops serving in Afghanistan on Thursday that he is “a little envious” of their adventure there, saying it was “in some ways romantic.”

(left) my alma matter

Being a smart ass while in the military…it’s a right of passage. 

Al Swearengen on 2/23/2006:

“Iraq Vet Mutilates Wife” – Get ready America, the war’s not over when these guys leave Iraq. Typical of youngsters who sign up while suffering from a mental disorder commonly known as ‘outrageous stupidity’…Marry a woman who, like yourself, just entered legal adulthood, then take off for a 9 month horror show in Iraq. Combine this with a smart mouth and (perhaps) a man on the side, it can trigger something within this wounded, emotionally disturbed, 19 year old, “battle-hardened” trained killer…like, memories of a time not long past when someone running their mouth could be easily silenced in a number of different ways.”

We know that veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have been committing suicide at higher rates, and that in an effort to maintain troop levels, the Army has been intimidating soldiers seeking treatment for post traumatic stress and other mental health issues, then separating those who fail to ‘suck it up and drive on’ without medical benefits. The Army defends its poor government from all these gold-digging fakers by declaring that the soldier’s brain damage was an undeclared condition they developed before enlisting. In the air-conditioned Pentagon, our Army’s top generals assure us that the numbers look good – no doubt the product of this internal campaign of terror, while on the front end ramping up (exponentiating) the number of “volunteers” who meet their recruiter in prison.

It is a numbers game. Like police having to turn murder into manslaughter for the bosses, wounded soldiers are considered full strength. This sort of policy helps to explain why suicide numbers for both active duty and veterans keep rising. Then there’s the job itself, a bloody ordeal experienced in as many fifteen month deployments as one’s luck allows. Come home all fucked up, be without the support of this country you just put your life on the line for, and try to hold on. Along with the amount of terrorists we have created since 2003, I wonder how many Americans have been turned into psychopathic criminals along the way. How many McVeighs have the Army and this loser already produced?

“Killings After Combat 1/13/08 – NEW YORK – At least 121 Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans have committed a killing or been charged in one in the United States after returning from combat, The New York Times reported Sunday. The newspaper said it also logged 349 homicides involving all active-duty military personnel and new veterans in the six years since military action began in Afghanistan, and later Iraq. That represents an 89-percent increase over the previous six-year period, the newspaper said. About three-quarters of those homicides involved Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans, the newspaper said. The report did not illuminate the exact relationship between those cases and the 121 killings also mentioned in the report.

The newspaper said its research involved searching local news reports, examining police, court and military records and interviewing defendants, their lawyers and families, victims’ families and military and law enforcement officials…The 121 killings ranged from shootings and stabbings to bathtub drownings and fatal car crashes resulting from drunken driving, the newspaper said. All but one of those implicated was male. About a third of the victims were girlfriends or relatives, including a 2-year-old girl slain by her 20-year-old father while he was recovering from wounds sustained in Iraq. A quarter of the victims were military personnel. One was stabbed and set afire by fellow soldiers a day after they all returned from Iraq.

Compared with what this former military interrogator described in March of 2007, it’s pretty clear that Iraq just isn’t a “by the book” type of gig:

Confessions of a Torturer It was bad, in particular the First Recon they’re sort of like marine special forces, an elite unit [attached to the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, known as 24th MEU]. Every time they went on a raid it didn’t matter who they were bringing back, they would just fuck these guys up. Old men, 15-year-old kids, they all came with bruises and broken bones. One guy came with a blister on the back of his leg. It was big, it was horrible, a burn blister. They’d made him sit on the exhaust pipe of a running truck.

Watch Out!

The scam has been exposed for quite a while now (VA Failing - Troops Suffer (2005), Born Under Punches, Walk It Off, 20,000 Soldiers Denied Healthcare), but the big money media won’t go after the story. There is a game being played with PTSD numbers, and the most egregious sin against our troops is the military’s tendency to write off PTSD as a “pre-existing condition” whenever it can. This leaves the veteran uncovered and at a serious disadvantage when it comes to achieving success as a civilian. It’s almost like the government consulted with the big money health insurance companies on how best to keep costs down.

So on a Friday we get two great stories on PTSD, with each of them covering a seperate aspect.

(Gregg Zoroya-USAToday: Veteran stress cases up sharply) The number of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans seeking treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder from the Department of Veterans Affairs jumped by nearly 20,000 — almost 70% — in the 12 months ending June 30, VA records show.
More than 100,000 combat veterans sought help for mental illness since the start of the war in Afghanistan in 2001, about one in seven of those who have left active duty since then, according to VA records collected through June. Almost half of those were PTSD cases.

The numbers do not include thousands treated at storefront Vet Centers operated by the department across the country. Nor do they include active-duty personnel diagnosed with the disorder or former servicemembers who have not sought VA treatment. About 1.5 million U.S. troops have served in Iraq or Afghanistan. Of those, 750,000 have left the military and are eligible for VA health care. The nearly 50,000 VA-documented PTSD cases far exceed the 30,000 military personnel that the Pentagon officially classifies as wounded in the conflicts. The discrepancy underscores the view by military and civilian health officials, such as Lt. Gen. James Campbell, director of the Army staff, that troops tend to ignore, hide or fail to recognize their mental health wounds until after their military service.

(Shankar Vedantam-WaPost: Most PTSD Treatments Not Proven Effective) The majority of treatments for post-traumatic stress disorder that are used to treat hundreds of thousands of veterans lack rigorous scientific evidence that they are effective, according to a report issued yesterday by a panel of the federal government’s top scientists.
“If a treatment that is not shown to be efficacious is nevertheless delivered to veterans, and if the treatment is relatively inert, even if it does not harm the veterans, it may demoralize the veteran,” said Richard McNally, a Harvard University psychologist and PTSD expert. “Providing treatments that do not have a good basis in evidence can result in people not improving, therefore getting demoralized and therefore not seeking treatment that can actually help them.”

But the panel failed to find evidence that any medication was effective in treating PTSD — this included the drugs Paxil and Zoloft, which have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration to treat the disorder. “A very high percentage of people who have been diagnosed with PTSD are on medications,” said Larry Scott, the founder of the advocacy group VA Watchdog dot Org, which serves as an information clearinghouse for veterans.

Veterans are prescribed drugs in mass quantities. It is a way to quickly consider the patient as being “in treatment”, without having to devote a lot of man-hours doing any psychiatric heavy lifting. The FDA officials and whatever doctors who helped out in this regard, to facilitate the opening of a new market for their big money drug daddies, should be investigated. Nothing is getting better for our military. The voices are growing louder though.

With that in mind, let me remind everyone to check out the work of: Blue Man in a Red District – Army of Dude – Soldier Voices Forum – VideoVets – Iraq Slogger