“Joseph never came home.”
July 7, 2008 by Dusty · 2 Comments
The Iraq soldier in the photo to the right died of a drug overdose last week. In 2003 that picture was splashed across the MSM, his name was Joseph Patrick Dwyer. From the Editor and Publisher article:
Dwyer served with the 3rd Squadron of the 7th Cavalry Regiment of Fort Stewart, Ga. He earned the Combat Medical Badge and other military awards.
His mother said the military could have done more to help with post-traumatic stress. “He just couldn’t get over the war,” Maureen Dwyer said. “He just couldn’t do it. Just wasn’t Joseph. Joseph never came home.”
More soldiers are going to die not from physical wounds but from the emotional and psychological wounds they received from multiple tours of duty and just the carnage of war in general. Again from the E&P writeup:
The day he died, Dwyer apparently took pills and inhaled the fumes of an aerosol can in an act known as “huffing.” Thomas said Dwyer then called a taxi company for a ride to the hospital…
When he returned from war after three months in Iraq, he developed the classic, treatable symptoms of PTSD. like so many other combat vets, he didn’t seek help. In restaurants, he sat with his back to the wall. He avoided crowds. He stayed away from friends. He abused inhalants, he told Newsday. In 2005, he and his family talked with Newsday to try to help other service members who might need help. He talked with the paper from a psychiatric ward at Fort Bliss, Texas, where he was committed after his first run-in with the police.
There are more invisibly wounded soldiers than dead soldiers right fucking now m’dear reader. And their numbers will only increase as this madness known as the Iraq War continues. PTSD is a silent killer. I dealt with my former husbands PTSD for almost 20 years. He never received proper treatment for it as a Vietnam Veteran. Last I knew, he was living homeless in AZ. He fiinally walked away from life and our family never to return.
I want these Iraq War Vets to get the treatment and help they deserve. I demand it of our government.
All of us should.
Sphere: Related ContentFighting the army they fought for.
PBS has an excellent documentary up that you can watch online here.
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.
When will we stop fucking them? The suicide rate of soldiers is the highest it has been in 26 years for the love of Christ.
Sphere: Related ContentAdvocacy From The Ground Up: Military Spouses for Change
June 11, 2008 by Big Fella · Leave a Comment
Cross posted from BFD Blog!
Military Spouses for Change (MSC) was founded by Carissa Picard who, after finishing college and law school, starting a career in law, then beginning a marriage and raising children found her true calling, other than as a wife and mother, in her advocacy of active duty military personnel, veterans and their families. Her biography states, in part:
Carissa created Military Spouses for Change (”MSC”) in May of 2007 when she realized that military spouses were a powerful but untapped resource for positive change (there are more than 700,000 active duty spouses alone). The past five years revealed that our governmental institutions were neither prepared nor capable of properly responding to the increasingly complex needs of our military and veteran families. While our service members cannot be advocates, our military spouses can. Consequently, MSC tries to show military spouses how acts of social and/or political awareness can improve their lives, protect their loved ones, and strengthen their country.
Picard has created a web site and organized a cadre of volunteers and they have stated that they currently are focusing on three major areas of advocacy:
Case Management: MSC acts as a conduit between service members, veterans, and/or families and organizations (both public and private) that may be able to help them in times of crisis or need. If we cannot find an organization that can meaningfully assist them or resolve the matter, we will intervene and advocate for them, ourselves.
Public Policy: MSC monitors Congressional and Executive policy-making and implementation. We collect information and data from official and unofficial sources in order to provide feedback to members of Congress as well as military officials regarding the efficacy of their policies. Further, we are developing and promoting policy changes that we believe would significantly improve the quality of life and quality of care for our service members, veterans, and families.
Education, Outreach, and Empowerment: MSC seeks to educate and empower the spouses of service members and veterans, believing they are an untapped resource for ensuring that the needs of our communities are appropriately identified and effectively met.
Picard and her cohorts have recognized, correctly in our opinion, that the military services and our government, left to their own devices, are not doing an adequate job of providing for the rehabilitation and welfare of those men and women who have volunteered their service to our country, nor to their families, which have all been impacted by their individual family members’ military service.
MSC will be featured on the PBS program “NOW” this Friday evening, June 13 in a segment hosted by Maria Hinojosa. “NOW” will be addressing the question: “Is the military wrongfully discharging soldiers in order to deny them benefits?” The fact is, in our opinion at BFD Blog!, that the military has been railroading war casualties out of the service, and thrown them on to the street without adequate care or rehabilitation as we have previously blogged about: “The Shafting Of Our Career Soldiers: Continues Unabated”. It is also abundantly clear to us that absent any interest from the Executive branch of our government or adequate concern by the Legislative branch of our government, that it falls to the American people, to as we have demonstrated for time immemorial, step up and lend our own helping hands to our neighbors in need.
Please check your local TV listings for the exact time that the PBS “NOW” program will be broadcast in your area on Friday, and pass the information about it to family, friends and colleagues. Please also pay a visit to the MSC web site and learn what some of your fellow Americans, members of families that are making the ultimate sacrifice for our country, are doing to help themselves and others.
One in four soldiers suffer from..
April 6, 2008 by Dusty · Leave a Comment
per a WaPo writeup..signs of anxiety, depression or acute stress, according to an official Army survey. Of course these are soldiers that are sent to Iraq for the third or fourth time..which is the bulk of them. As I noted in another post on the topic this weekend on troop strength, Bushie has promised to shorten deployment times from 15 to 12 months.
Somehow, I do not see that doing a lot to help the soldiers cope with the PTSD..does anyone else with two fucking brain cells to rub together? From the WaPo writeup:
Sphere: Related ContentAmong the 513,000 active-duty soldiers who have served in Iraq since the invasion of 2003, more than 197,000 have deployed more than once, and more than 53,000 have deployed three or more times, according to a separate set of statistics provided this week by Army personnel officers. The percentage of troops sent back to Iraq for repeat deployments would have to increase in the months ahead.
DESTROYED LIVES AND FAMILIES. Epilogue
March 20, 2008 by PraetorOne · 3 Comments
NO REAL SACRIFICE: LIES, EXPLOITATION, AND MANIPULATION
By PraetorOne
Obviously I am too young to have experienced World War II directly, but I am well read on the topic and I have forged friendships with older people who did experience that war first hand.
One of the things I learned was that the American people were willing to make sacrifices in those days. As well they should have. In the summer of 1942 Adolf Hitler appeared to be at the height of his powers. German Armies had penetrated deep into Western Russia; German and Italian Armies had conquered vast areas of territory ranging from Northern Africa to Western Europe to Scandinavia. In the East, Japan had taken out the American Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, leaving America’s Western Coast vulnerable to attack. Moreover, the Pacific Ocean and Eastern Asia were little more than a Japanese play ground.
With that in mind the American people, though they may have grumbled from time to time, decided to make personal sacrifices for the war effort. The rationed everything from eggs, meat, and fat, to tires and nylons. They paid higher taxes and went without new refrigerators, wash machines, and cars to save metal for th war effort. Moreover the government levied higher taxes to pay for the war effort; and by taxes I mean taxes on everyone, rich and poor alike, not just on the middle and lower classes, but on the wealthy as well. Franklin Roosevelt went on the radio and explained why we needed to make personal sacrifices in our every day lives, and once we understood exactly how grim the situation was we got into line and did our best –albeit with a little pissing and moaing–to support the War Against Fascism.
Now flash forward to the year 2001. On 911 of that memorable year we were attacked by right wing religious religious fanatics from Saudi Arabia and Egypt, initiating what George W. Bush referred to as a War Against Terror(ism). Presumably this war against terrorism is a Third World War, but unlike Franklin Roosevelt, George W.Bush did not call for shared sacrifice. Instead, he fought hard to keep tax cuts for the very wealthy and told us to go shopping. In effect asking us to pull out our credit cards to buy worthless junk that we don’t really need while openly encouraging his “Ownership Society,” which is just a fancy way of saying: “Get yourself a variable mortgage and buy yourself a home that you can’t afford to pay for.” Translated into modern English, George W. Bush told the lower and middle classes to buy things they didn’t need or couldn’t afford to keep his consumer driven economy afloat. Translated into modern English, George W. Bush asked the American people, the lower and middle classes, to pull his economic chestnuts out of the fire by going deeper into debt. After telling us that the War Against Terror(ism) was the greatest threat this country had faced since World War II George W. Bush called for no common sacrifice and decided to fight his wars on the cheap.
Sphere: Related ContentFamilies and Lives Destroyed, Final Chapter
March 19, 2008 by PraetorOne · 3 Comments
Of course we can hear the Social Darwinists even now: “Homeless veterans WANT to be homeless! Why should my tax dollars go to help people who WANT to live on the streets.” Yup. That sounds good to us. Who wouldn’t want to live on the streets during a Wisconsin winter. Nothing like 10 or 20 below zero to stimulate the old cardio-vascular system. Or a 95 degree summer day in clothing that hasn’t been washed since Hector was a pup. And don’t forget the meals–we hear garbage can left overs are a real treat. By the same token living in warehouses or under bridges or in old cars might be considered adequate housing in SOME deluded minds.
So let’s correct that mythology right now. Granted, there are a few veterans who might be reluctant to seek help because they view a need for help as a form of weakness. You have to remember that the military tends to view psychological disorders and a need to seek help as a form of weakness, indeed, careers can be ruined if a person is deemed weak because of a psychological disorder which requires therapy. So there may be some reluctance to seek out help in the first place, but that doesn’t mean that homeless vets enjoy being homeless. Virtually no one, save for the most severe cases, wants to live on the streets. As we might have expected, the myth of the happy homeless started during the Reagen Administration and it continues to this very day. Sadly it is just that, a myth, and yet the degree to which weak-minded right wingers continue to believe in that lie is nothing less than shameful.
Sphere: Related ContentDestroyed Lives and Families Part 3
March 18, 2008 by ReasonOne · 3 Comments
By ReasonOne, Shakti, and PraetorOne
PART 3: HALF TRUTHS AND BROKEN PROMISES
Under normal circumstances it takes a number of a decades for a Veteran to go homeless, but in the case of veterans returning from Iraq or Afghanistan, the process by which past generations of veterans went homeless appears to be taking place at an accelerated rate. According to the National Coalition of Homeless Veterans nearly approximately 196,000 vets are homeless in any given night. And that may only be the beginning because as of 2006, 1.3 million American men and women had served at various times in Iraq or Afghanistan.
Sadly more than 400 veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are now utilizing agency supported residential programs across the entire United States. Shelters, soup kitchens, and parks are regularly visited by outreach officers from the Veterans Administration and the results are chilling to say the least. Approximately 1,500 Iraq-Afghanistan veterans were determined to be at risk even though some of them still had jobs. And the news only gets worse.
The increased number of women in the armed services has also complicated he picture. Approximately 40 percent of the hundreds of female veterans have been sexually assaulted by American soldiers while they were still in the military. That may sound irrelevant until you remember that sexual abuse can be a factor in determining homelessness.
Sphere: Related ContentFamilies and Lives Destroyed Part 2
March 17, 2008 by Rachel · 5 Comments
Another part in the series by the writers from the Coalition for a Democratic America~Dusty
BY DoctorWho, Shakti, and Rachel
PART 2, Screwing Wounded Vets at Home and in War
When former Secretary of War Donald Rumsfeld issued his asinine comment about how we go to war with the army we have not the army we want, I thought to myself: “How unfortunate that we went to war with the President, Vice President, and Secretary of War that we have and not the one we legally elected.”
No matter how you look at it, this Administration has been a disaster for wounded veterans. On the one hand they sent the troops into a war lacking weapons, armored vehicles, and body armor, a fact which undoubtedly increased the number of dead troops which we never saw come home in flag-draped coffins. On the other hand, when we DID properly arm the troops, we all but guaranteed an increase in the number of severely injured veterans. Body armor, surgical techniques, new medicines, and improvements in transportation have translated into an increase in the number of severely wounded troops. Today, as a result of the innovations listed above, only 6 percent of all veterans die of their wounds. That’s up from 17 percent in Vietnam and from 23 percent in World War II. That isn’t to suggest that we want more dead troops. Far from it. When you consider the fact that we now have nearly 4,000 dead and 29,320 wounded with outside estimates ranging from 23,000 to as many as 100,000 wounded, one really has to wonder what the Administration was thinking about (or for that matter,what it was thinking WITH) when it decided to invade Iraq in the first place. Contrary to Administration prevarications, we were attacked on 911 by terrorists from Saudi Arabia and Egypt, not Iraq. But I’m not here to argue about motives–at least not yet. No, for the time being I’m here to insist that at no point did the Bush Administration consider the possibility that under supplying some troops while properly arming others would cause tragedy at both ends of the spectrum.
Sphere: Related ContentLives and Families Destroyed-Part 1
March 16, 2008 by PraetorOne · Leave a Comment
Continuing from yesterday, another installment in Lives and Families Destroyed from those wonderful folks at the Coalition for a Democratic America, including Uncle Abe, Siren’s resident historian~Dusty
BY Abe, Donatra, PraetorOne, and Kyle
PART I: GETTING BACK IN THE SADDLE AGAIN WHEN YOU SHOULDN’T
In the early 1800s they called it “exhaustion.” In World War I they called it “Soldiers Heart,” “the Effort Syndrome,” and finally “Shell Shock.” In World War II it was called “Combat Fatigue,” only to undergo yet another transformation in 1952, when the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) referred to it as “Stress Response Syndrome” caused by “gross stress reaction.” During the Vietnam conflict, in 1968, it was melded into a section about situational disorders. And, as an interesting side note, it should be stated that those Vietnam Veterans who suffered from “Stress Response Syndrome” actually suffered from a preexisting condition if that condition lasted longer than six months–a slick way to avoid paying Veterans benefits. It wasn’t until the 1980s that the third edition of the DSM (DSM III) used the current term of identification, and in 1994 the DSM IV categorized it as new type of stress disorder, still listed under the heading of Anxiety Disorders.
We are of course talking about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, a condition which the overstretched military currently and conveniently believes can be cured by taking traumatized Iraq veterans and pushing them back into combat situations. Translated into modern English, Military psychiatrists seem to have confused PTSD with phobic reactions and are foolishly encouraging young veterans to get back in the proverbial saddle again.
Imagine if you will, that you have eaten a bad hotdog and have become violently ill. Imagine further, that you go to your doctor and that your doctor has told you to eat another hot dog. Well, that’s what is happening in Iraq as Military Doctors are using traumatized soldiers as psychological guinea pigs in a thinly disguised effort to maintain troop levels, and quite possibly to prevent Iraq War Veterans from cashing in on deserved benefits here at home. In either event this so called treatment flies in the face of morality and rational thinking and it certainly makes a mockery out of the Hippocratic Oath.
To understand how foolish this controversial treatment really is we might want to take a look at the highly varied symptoms of the beast that we refer to as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder:
Sphere: Related ContentPTSD and the VA: A Story of Fact
November 15, 2007 by Spadoman · 4 Comments
In the Spring of 1993, I moved from Northern Minnesota to Grand Junction, Colorado. The move was to a different climate and a change of scenery and we thought we’d try the mountains; thought the fresh start would help us cope with the loss of our daughter-we were running from something. I had suffered a mild heart attack in winter of ‘93 and I didn’t think I should stay on and continue the job I was doing. I got a clean bill of health from the Cardiologist and packed up the truck and moved. When I got situated in Grand Junction, I met a man with a nephew who had gotten money from the VA for PTSD. I didn’t really know what PTSD was, but when I got an explanation and did some research, I found out that many of the symptoms associated with PTSD and returning Vietnam War Veterans, had manifested a foothold in my own life.
