Suicide rates for veterans returned home are sometimes exceeding the casualty rates in combat. War is hell!

These images were taken by the Marines with cell phones and digital cameras during my son’s deployment to Ramadi. Many men died and many more were wounded and more, like my son, suffer from traumatic brain injury and post traumatic stress disorder. Some of these men died close by my son and one died in his arms and each one’s passing have left a deep mark.

The child at the end of the video has a special place in my heart and my son will never forget her. The video may take a while to load and I will try to encode it for streaming later if time allows.

If the player doesn’t work you can down load it here

Here is part of my son’s story and a little bit of how war impacts military families

This is an especially moving story for me. This young Army sargeant, Shannon Meehan, is suffering from severe PTSD and TBI and had a similar experience of taking the lives of Iraqi civilians, as my son did, is fighting through the fog to find some meaning in his life. His politics are unclear but I hope he makes it.

In the seven years since my son first left for war as part of the initial invasion of Iraq, I have found that my stomach for detail has greatly diminished. In the beginning, I wanted to know everything, understand everything, know what it was to be a warrior, know the sound of mortars and strong metallic scent of blood and the stench of burning bodies. Knowing these things, I believed, were important so that I could help my son, John, who after a second tour in Iraq is permanently disabled suffering from debilitating PTSD and TBI.

John wouldn’t cooperate, wouldn’t share much of what happened except occasionally almost by accident. As the war has worn on I find I can’t bare to go to Icasualties.org anymore. The painful individual stories of the soldiers and Marines I have met are too hard for me to take now. Believe me I still care but the motivation previously induced by the senseless suffering of the kids we send to war now just hurts too much that accomplishing anything is almost impossible. for now anyway, I won’t be watching the documentaries ‘Taxi to the Dark Side’, or ‘Body of War’, they are just too painful and I will not go to see The Hurt Locker, and at least one Marine blinded in Iraq feels the same way.

“The Hurt Locker” and all the other movies I mentioned, whether they are good or bad as entertainment, are still war movies and war movies glorify the acts of violence that I described above. How do you feel about that? Would you bring your children out to the battlefield to witness it live and in person? There is no happy ending. Kelly does not get the gold, Stryker does not make it to the top of Mount Suribachi and 8-Ball gets cut down by a sniper. Please remember that when you watch a war movie you are watching stories about young Americans who went far from home and risked their lives; some of them died there with only their brothers in arms to witness. Hollywood is now taking our money by walking on their graves.

Maybe that’s extreme. Of course I understand why people watch war movies. I watch them, too. But I have seen my friends die and most of the movies just bring up very painful memories.

Apparently, more than one veteran is unhappy with The Hurt Locker – from the Atlantic

In his self-published book, Stolen Valor, Vietnam veteran B.G. Burkett exposes scores of men who pass themselves off as war heroes. He digs through stacks of military personnel records and outs city councilmen, prominent businessmen and even presidents of veterans groups as frauds. Some had served in the military and finagled paperwork that bumped them up several ranks and turned them into battlefield legends. Purple Hearts, Silver Stars, Medals of Honor. Others hadn’t spent a day in uniform but conjured equally dramatic tales of daring and sacrifice. The imposters, he says, had become some of the most vocal and visible veterans. They influenced the public’s perception of war and even guided legislative agendas, a disservice to those who did the fighting and the bleeding.

How could they get away with that? Moral authority. So few Americans have actually walked and sweated on battlefields that they defer to those who say they have, and assume those men and women speak the truth.

This also explains why The Hurt Locker is up for a Best Picture Oscar. And why it shouldn’t win.

THE “LEAVE SOME VETS BEHIND” LAW: A NATIONAL DISGRACE

In 1995, Congress codified as Public Law 95-126 the VA policy denying benefits to veterans who receive less than honorable discharges, including those who served in combat in Vietnam and subsequent wars of choice. These veterans can only receive services by going through a difficult, painful and often unsuccessful process requiring them to debase themselves by begging their former military Service to upgrade their discharge status. In the process, they have to relive their combat trauma and in some cases have to contact those with whom they served. This drags up horrific memories that they have struggled to suppress, often through drugs, alcohol and promiscuity. This is the reason they acted out through drunkenness, disobedience or desertion of their posts stateside after return from combat. I know this because it has been the case in every veteran I have met who falls under the provisions of this Catch-22 implemented by a group of chicken hawks who were too busy setting the country up for economic destruction to consider the consequences of their actions on our veterans.
The men and women affected by PL 95-126 volunteered or were compelled by our own government to serve the interests of the corporations who our elected representatives feel they need to serve to maintain their positions of power. After all, they reason, someone has to pay for the propaganda campaigns that confuse the general public, justifying unnecessary wars and the real reasons for them, as well as lining the pockets of the rich by subverting democracy worldwide in the name of America. Many of the members of Congress responsible for this outrage shamelessly lied to the young, patriotic men and women who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as their parents about the reasons they were sent to kill and die. Now that these service members have done their duty, many of those most in need of help from the VA have been casually discarded, as were the Vietnam veterans before them.
The ordeal of seeking help causes flare-ups of PTSD symptoms and reminds these veterans of the fact that their government chose to dishonor them rather than treat the wounds of war and the economic devastation that these politicians themselves inflicted on these combat veterans. The same is true when any of the estimated 30% of female OEF vets are erroneously told that they are not entitled to VA services to treat the psychological damage from the devastating psychological trauma of being raped in the service. These women are often among the worst affected by symptoms of PTSD. A high proportion of them were sexually abused in childhood but were functioning well enough to serve until being re-traumatized during their terms of service by the very men who were supposed to guard their backs. Almost to a woman, they were then ostracized by their peers, often even if they chose not to report the crime. This has led to a gross underestimate of the actual incidence of this form of trauma, which is magnified by the abuse and neglect that followed from their command, in the name of “maintaining unit cohesion.”
I suspect that most veterans falling under PL 95-126 choose not to engage in this fight, knowing that even if they succeed in obtaining an upgrade of their discharge, they then have to argue that they suffer “mental illness” as a result of their service. PTSD is not a mental illness, leaving the VA to decide whether or not to resort to semantic gymnastics in order to provide the services that most of us in the VA dedicate our professional lives to providing. What they do not know if they choose to engage in this long battle is that they only stand a 50% chance of success at each step, according to unofficial sources with whom I have consulted.
What is worse, the law does not even have a provision to allow the VA to conduct evaluations of those who win the lottery in the first step. They are required to somehow obtain independent psychiatric evaluations in order to make their case. Fortunately or unfortunately, those who need the help most are generally impoverished by their circumstances, so could get these exams through programs set up for the poor, if they are lucky enough to realize that such services are often available in the community. Because these individuals most often have divorced themselves from society in their shame, anger and despair, I suspect that few even try to navigate the labyrinth of steps required to obtain services, if they are lucky enough to succeed.
This crime against the youth of our nation, many now having grown up and producing a new generation of alienated and disaffected youth, is unacceptable. The VA may play a role because of the communication problems endemic in such a large organization, but the real fault lies with our complacent Congress. All of us who want to truly honor our veterans must demand that the members of the Veterans Committee in the Senate act at once to atone for this sin against our nation. Please call Senator Webb, Senator Tester or other members of the Veteran Affairs Committee at 866-220-0044 and demand action. I do not believe that either of these diligent and hardworking senators is aware of the problem, despite my attempts at asking for help through their aides.
When I spoke to Phillip Brady, Veteran Affairs aide to Senator Webb, he made inquiries, speaking to the DOD and VA about the problem. As the only office in either organization authorized to speak to Congress is presumably the office of public affairs, both predictably denied that it was a problem. If you are as outraged at this whitewash, please let these Senator Webb in particular know. As a decorated Vietnam veteran and father of an Iraq war veteran, he may be willing to dig deeper and speak to someone more appropriate at the VA Central Office. I suggested to Phillip that he start with the VA director of Mental Health Services, Dr Ira Katz. Dr Katz is a dedicated public servant who has been unfairly maligned by the media in the past but who has privately expressed his concern about this law as well.
Please contact every veteran group and veteran advocacy group that you can locate. I suggest calling and emailing Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America Also contact Jim Scott at VetWatch.org and let him know that you share my anger at this continuing mistreatment of combat veterans and sexually abused female veterans who only wanted to serve their country while in fact being used as tools by a cynical, cowardly Congress to serve the interests of their corporate puppet masters. While you are at it, you might make an appeal for real universal health care in the form of a single payer system. At last count in 2004, there were 1.8 million uninsured veterans and 3.8 million family members of veterans without access to health care.
If you choose to act, please tell them that I sent you. I have been beating my head against these walls for months and I would appreciate a response from those in a position to repeal this law and give our veterans the care that they have earned. If I have to go to Washington to personally appeal for these deserving veterans, I will, but I would prefer to see Congress take responsibility on their own for rectifying this national disgrace.

Rick Staggenborg, MD
Founder, Soldiers For Peace International
Physicians for a National Health Plan
Captain, USA (Ret)
VA Psychiatrist, North Bend, OR

The I-5 corridor gets pretty dreary after a while. The price you have to pay for connecting resources and talent in a wide open state like Oregon is lots and lots of miles.

There are some side benefits like shopping at Costco or hitting a mall between stops for a wide variety of shoe choices or catching a quick bite to eat and a trendy eatery. While examining the adhesives section at Lowe’s a total stranger regaled me with his on the scene perspective of the 1980 Iranian hostage rescue where 8 helicopters, 6 C-130 transport planes, and 93 Delta force commandoes secretly invaded Iran. They were to rendezvous at a place in Iran they called Desert One, move out to another point called Desert Two, and then go on to Tehran to rescue the hostages. But Delta force never made it to Desert Two or Tehran. The mission was aborted after three of the eight helicopters failed…. cuz one of the pilots was an idiot… and the story went on

Stuff like this never happens in Coos County.

What a piece of work this woman really is. What a whiny ass piece of fluff. Using the troops to strike up sympathy because she has been reported by the media for her own incompetence, quoted verbatim in fact, is an insult to all military families.

Real women can stand on their own, what a complete ‘pussy’.