“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.
Fighting 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.
We owe them more.
May 14, 2008 by PraetorOne · Leave a Comment
By PraetorOne
If there’s any doubt as to what John McCain stands for–or should I say DOESN’T stand for?– one only has to take a look at his opposition to the Webb Bill for veterans. For those of you who missed this–and you’re God awful lucky if you did, John McCain has come out against the popular, bipartisan “Webb” bill which would help fund higher education for veterans. Among McCain’s more asinine complaints is the age old Republican gripe that it’s too expensive. And yet, when we funded college education for veterans after World War II the program proved its worth by paying for itself seven times over. And yet McCain uses he same anemic argument that the Bush Administration makes against funding higher education for vets/ Their primary argument is that funding will cost $2 billion a year,but what they don’t mention is that we spend roughly $2 billion a week on the Iraq War.
Once again it appears as if the war hawks prefer to treat young soldiers as mere cannon fodder. They are perfectly willing to use our young men and women for invasion and occupation but when soldiers have served their time honorably, the right wingers show no sense of honor themselves. They, and that includes Bush and McCain, are the worst kinds of users. They simply don’t understand the fact that taking care of the veterans they create is a basic war expense; no different than body armor, guns, and bullets. the only difference is that the Bush Administration and Senator McCain seem to think more of military hardware than they do of living, breathing people. Something has gone very wrong when a gun is worth more than a young man’s future. Something has gone awry when a young woman’s physical, spiritual, and intellectual well-being is worth less than a tank or a Humvee. In other words we owe these people a bright, happy future after they out their lives on the line for their cheap, penny-pinching government.
Granted,the Webb proposal is more complicated. It provides educational benefits and a monthly living stipend based on where the individual veteran lives,which would require the government to keep track of each individual veteran, a fact which the government claims makes it too difficult to administer. This is a red herring because the government already has that information at its fingertips. Moreover, this is the same government that claimed it would be able to keep track of terrorists and illegal aliens. Well if it can’t keep track of our own veterans what makes it think that it can find terrorists? Why should we trust the government to find and protect us from illegal elements when it can’t even keep track of its own veterans.
It wasn’t always like this
April 10, 2008 by ReasonOne · Leave a Comment
IT WASN’T ALWAYS LIKE THIS
SHAME ON THE BUSH REGIME
By Kyle and Abraham
Believe it or not there was a time when we did NOT treat war our veterans like toilet paper. Today we allow our veterans, wounded or otherwise, to go homeless and to wait weeks or even months before they are declared disabled. But it wasn’t always like this. After World War II we treated our Veterans like human beings, passing the GI Bill and treating them with respect and dignity as we provided them with educational and housing opportunities.
Educational opportunities were the most important aspect of the GI Bill. Approximately 7.8 million veterans attended colleges, trade schools, business schools and agricultural schools. GIs were guaranteed a year’s worth of education plus the time of their military service up to 48 months. They also received as much as $90 a month for food and housing. And it proved successful. Thousands of veterans used the GI Bill to attend school. By 1947 veterans composed approximately 49 percent of all college students. In 1952 and 1966 the GI Bill was expanded to include veterans from the Korean and Vietnam Wars, but was terminated in 1989 during the first Bush Administration. As if we should be surprised. The GI Bill was passed by a Democratic Congress and was signed into Law by Franklin Roosevelt in 1944, BEFORE the end of World War II. And we all know how indefatigable the Republicans are in their efforts to dismantle FDRs economic policies.
So how effective was it? The original GI Bill provided books, tuition and money for fees. And, more impressively, for every dollar invested seven dollars were generated. In addition the GI Bill also provided unemployment payments of $20 per week for a period of 52 weeks when a veteran couldn’t find a job. It provided loan guarantees for a home, farm, or business, and created a priority for building materials for Veterans’ Administration Hospitals
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:
Among 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.
Body of War
March 22, 2008 by Dusty · 3 Comments
Friday night’s Bill Moyers Journal was an emotional roller coaster for me. The entire show was devoted to a documentary made by Phil Donohue and Ellen Spiro called Body of War. The subject of the documentary is Tomas Young, a soldier that was shot and paralyzed from the nipples down less than a week after he landed in Iraq. It is a moving haunting tale of how he came back to life when he became an anti-war activist. The irony of the documentary is that Tomas’ brother and step-father are still supporters of the war, while Tomas and his mother are not. But they still love and support each other. It took three years for this documentary to be completed. Ms. Spiro literally became part of the family, filming during all hours of the day and night to show what Tomas and his family deal with to bring him back from the hell created by George Bush’s war in Iraq.
The documentary is slowly being released nationwide now. I am still emotionally affected by Tomas’ story so this post won’t go into much detail. I urge you to watch Bill Moyers Journal this weekend, you can find the broadcast time in your area here. The music was done by Eddie Vedder.
Its a moving, emotional Bill Moyers Journal..watch part one of it below. A link to the movie’s website is here. The documentary is being released nationally now.
Families 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.
Families 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.
Lives 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:
