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

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 coöper­ate, 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 US mil­i­tary has loos­ened reg­u­la­tions, issu­ing “moral waivers” allow­ing con­victed crim­i­nal to join up just as they did dur­ing Viet­nam. GIs suf­fer­ing from PTSD and TBI are being called back into com­bat for third and fourth tours to make up for the 99% of the US that do not care to enlist. Read my essay about draft­ing war sup­port­ers here

Nev­er­the­less, despite Army reg­u­la­tions that pro­hibit sol­diers from par­tic­i­pat­ing in racist groups the mil­i­tary have hit a new low as to meet­ing their recruit­ment needs and are accept­ing white suprema­cists.

Fol­low­ing an inves­ti­ga­tion of white suprema­cist groups, a 2008 FBI report declared: “Mil­i­tary expe­ri­ence — rang­ing from fail­ure at basic train­ing to suc­cess in spe­cial oper­a­tions forces — is found through­out the white suprema­cist extrem­ist move­ment.” In white suprema­cist inci­dents from 2001 to 2008, the FBI iden­ti­fied 203 vet­er­ans. Most of them were asso­ci­ated with the National Alliance and the National Social­ist Move­ment, which pro­mote anti-Semitism and the over­throw of the U.S. gov­ern­ment, and assorted skin­head groups.

Because the FBI focused only on reported cases, its num­bers don’t include the many extrem­ist sol­diers who have man­aged to stay off the radar. But its report does pin­point why the white suprema­cist move­ments seek to recruit vet­er­ans — they “may exploit their accesses to restricted areas and intel­li­gence or apply spe­cial­ized train­ing in weapons, tac­tics, and orga­ni­za­tional skills to ben­e­fit the extrem­ist movement.”

In fact, since the movement’s incep­tion, its lead­ers have encour­aged mem­bers to enlist in the U.S. mil­i­tary as a way to receive state-of-the-art com­bat train­ing, cour­tesy of the U.S. tax­payer, in prepa­ra­tion for a domes­tic race war. The con­cept of a race war is cen­tral to extrem­ist groups, whose adher­ents imag­ine an erup­tion of vio­lence that pits races against each other and the government.

Given the mil­i­tary are not focused on win­ning hearts and minds or nation build­ing it may seem incon­se­quen­tial to have extrem­ists of this type in the mil­i­tary unless, of course, the guy back­ing you up or giv­ing you orders is black or Jew­ish or His­panic, or heaven for­bid, Gay! and the suprema­cist is depend­ing upon them to survive.

It is sad that peo­ple like this exist. It is crim­i­nal that peo­ple like this should be allowed into the mil­i­tary and taught how to use weapons. It is sick­en­ing that peo­ple like this live in Coos County.

Talk about scrap­ing the bot­tom of the barrel.

Fol­low this link and read about the Medal of Honor recip­i­ents for every war or con­flict since 1861. Most, sadly, are given posthu­mously as was the case with all three given for the Iraq war.

As men­tioned before a friend’s son has been wounded in Iraq and she has asked for prayers and good energy sent his way. Here is an update from Marlene

Thank you to all for your prayers and good wishes…the light, energy, angels and all in which you believe are help­ing. My son is sta­ble. While his head injury is seri­ous, there is no infor­ma­tion that a bul­let or shrap­nel pen­e­trated his brain. He has been trans­ported to Ger­many, where is he is under what we believe to be good care. He is being kept heav­ily sedated so that noth­ing causes activ­ity of any sort in order to sup­port heal­ing. The swelling seems to have tapered. His orbital socket is dam­aged, but it seems his eye is okay. He has sus­tained some burns on var­i­ous parts of his body due to the blast, but those are not his more seri­ous injuries. We con­tinue to hope for good news.

Please, if you will, con­tinue to pray for his recov­ery and the well being of his wife and child. I am grate­ful to all of you for all your sup­port and please feel free to share this note with those whom I have overlooked—please know that that was not inten­tional. Love, Mar

The agony of hav­ing loved ones in harms way is so intense I some­times threw up when I heard of a Marine being wounded in Ramadi. Know­ing they are wounded and not yet being able to be with them must be the great­est kind of hell. My heart is with you, Marlene.

After the humil­i­at­ing rebuke by Paul Wol­fowitz (who never served in the mil­i­tary), for dar­ing stand up to Don­ald Rums­feld (who also never served in the mil­i­tary) and insist that we needed more troops on the ground in Iraq, Shin­seki has been appointed to head Vet­er­ans Affairs by Obama. For more on the dis­grace­ful man­ner in which Gen­eral Shin­seki was treated please read James Fal­lows in The Atlantic.

The show­down came just before the war began. Shin­seki, who had direct expe­ri­ence with land war­fare (in Viet­nam) and post-combat occu­pa­tion (in the Balkans), was urg­ing that the U.S. go in with a force large enough to ensure that it could main­tain order and gen­uinely con­trol Iraq’s siz­able ter­ri­tory and poten­tially frac­tious soci­ety after it ousted Sad­dam. Rums­feld and Wol­fowitz hated this whole idea.

Rums­feld rightly suf­fered his own well deserved dis­grace when he was forced out of office after the GOP were slaugh­tered dur­ing the 2006 elec­tion cycle. That slaugh­ter being widely attrib­uted to the poor han­dling of the Iraq war as envi­sioned in Rumsfeld’s ‘lighter, faster, dead­lier’ doc­trine which turned out to be a disaster.