Joseph Sarandos
Head Administrator
Global user
|
|
Reply | Quote
|
|
URGENT reading! "Iraq Vets Come Home Physically, Mentally Butchered."
The below-quoted article is only the most recent recapitulation and statistical documentation with regard to how our troops are being physically, mentally and emotionally damaged, and as to the inadequate treatments they are receiving from vastly overwhelmed facilities in the Middle East and in America, at a rate that is unprecedented in all previous wars including Vietnam.
Thanks mostly to Aaron (Incog4), The Full Truth Forum has been addressing these very issues since the outset of official reporting on them, as “quiet,” under-stated and deceitful were and are such official reports in the Mass News Media.
Thanks mostly to Greg (Namvet2), who is a leading member of at least one, sizable organization of American Veterans that maintains a private E-mail ring, these same issues, reports and threads as were collated in TFTF have been widely read and disseminated among proactive objectors and dissenters, who are and have been effectively petitioning high officials within the political and military establishments, some of which officials have “bent to” such pleas and petitions and have altered their own recommendations, decisions and actions accordingly.
However great or slight have been the separate effects of such officials, their joint effects have had marked and visible results toward moving the G.W. Bush Administration away from its “Stay the course in Iraq at all costs” attitude, sadly regardless of the subsequent errors and blunders that this now-desperate President/Commander In Chief is making in his attempt to salvage his “legacy” while pleasing his Zionist and special-interest financiers.
Here are some of the previous related threads in TFTF, that I’ve just now “bumped” back to the first page of this forum-section:
“Bush is allowing SUICIDAL AND HOMICIDAL men to fight in Iraq!”
http://com3.runboard.com/btheowlsnest.f14.t167
“M-E Wars creating more 'Nam-War type "head cases" among vets”
http://com3.runboard.com/btheowlsnest.f14.t176
“DRASTIC increases of American Troops killed and maimed in Iraq”
http://com3.runboard.com/btheowlsnest.f14.t10737
“Iraq War is creating the HIGHEST PERCENTAGE of Disabled Veterans EVER!”
http://com3.runboard.com/btheowlsnest.f14.t168
Now, I implore all of you members and readers of this board to carefully and thoroughly read and digest the following article, with reference to the above-hyperlinked threads, and to dissemiate the URL of this thread among your relatives, friends and associates.
Yours in our common good cause,
Joseph Sarandos
-----------------------
http://www.antiwar.com/glantz/?articleid=10262
January 4, 2007
Iraq Vets Come Home Physically, Mentally Butchered
by Aaron Glantz
On New Year's Eve, the number of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq passed 3,000. By Tuesday, the death toll had reached 3,004 – 31 more than died in the Sep. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
But the number of injured has far outstripped the dead, with the Veterans Administration reporting that more than 150,000 veterans of the Iraq war are receiving disability benefits.
Advances in military technology are keeping the death rate much lower than during the Vietnam War and World War Two, Dr. Col. Vito Imbascini, an urologist and state surgeon with the California Army National Guard, told IPS, but soldiers who survive attacks are often severely disabled for life.
"If you lost an arm or a leg in Vietnam, you were also tremendously injured in your chest and abdomen, which were not protected by the armor plates back then," he said. "Now, your heart and chest and lungs and heart are protected by armor, leaving only your extremities exposed."
Dr. Imbascini just returned from a four-month deployment to Germany, where he treated the worst of the U.S. war wounded. He said that an extremely high number of wounded soldiers are coming home with their arms or legs amputated. Imbascini said he amputated the genitals of one or two men every day.
"I walk into the operating room and the general surgeons are doing their work and there is the body of this Navy SEAL, which is a physical specimen to behold," he told IPS. "And his abdomen is open, they're exploring both intestines. He's missing both legs below the knee, one arm is blown off, he's got incisions on his thighs to relieve the pressure on the parts of the legs that are hopefully gonna survive and there's genital injuries, and you just want to cry."
According to documents obtained by the National Security Archive at George Washington University, 25 percent of veterans of the "global war on terror" have filed disability compensation and pension benefit claims with the Veterans Benefits Administration.
One is a Jul. 20, 2006, document titled "Compensation and Pension Benefit Activity Among Veterans of the Global War on Terrorism," which shows that 152,669 veterans filed disability claims after fighting in Iraq or Afghanistan. Of the more than 100,000 claims granted, Veterans Administration records show at least 1,502 veterans have been compensated as 100 percent disabled.
Pentagon studies show that 12 percent of soldiers who have served in Iraq suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. The group Veterans for America, formerly the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation, estimates 70,000 Iraq war veterans have gone to the VA for mental health care.
New guidelines released by the Pentagon released last month allow commanders to redeploy soldiers suffering from traumatic stress disorders.
According to the military newspaper Stars and Stripes, servicemembers with "a psychiatric disorder in remission, or whose residual symptoms do not impair duty performance" may be considered for duty downrange. It lists post-traumatic stress disorder as a "treatable" problem.
"As a layman and a former soldier I think that's ridiculous," Steve Robinson, the director of Veterans Affairs for Veterans for America, told IPS.
"If I've got a soldier who's on Ambien to go to sleep and Seroquel and Qanapin and all kinds of other psychotropic meds, I don't want them to have a weapon in their hand and to be part of my team because they're a risk to themselves and to others," he said. "But apparently, the military has its own view of how well a soldier can function under those conditions and is gambling that they can be successful."
Robinson said problems with the policy are already starting to arise.
On Christmas, for example, Army Reservist James Dean barricaded himself in his father's home with several weapons and threatened to kill himself. After a 14-hour standoff with authorities, Dean was killed by a police officer after he aimed a gun at another officer, authorities told the Washington Post.
Veterans for America's Robinson told IPS that Dean, who had already served 18 months in Afghanistan, had been diagnosed with PTSD. He had just been informed that his unit would be sent to Iraq on Jan. 14.
"We call that suicide by cop," Robinson said.
After his death, Dean's friends told the Washington Post that the reservist enjoyed hunting and fishing but had lost much of his enthusiasm for life when he found out that he was being deployed to Iraq.
"When Congress comes back in session we're looking forward to accountability hearings," Robinson said. "We want to see veterans helped in the first 100 hours of the new session. We want to see the word 'veteran' somewhere in that first hundred hours."
Robinson says his organization has also documented the existence of at least 1,000 homeless veterans of the Iraq war.
"We need to get on top of the problem of homelessness," he said. "It's too soon to be seeing homelessness. I want to be seeing a commitment from the Democratic Congress to dealing with the war and the needs of the soldiers in the first hundred hours of them coming to power."
(Inter Press Service)
---------------------------------------
|
|
1/4/2007, 10:58 pm
|
Send Email to Joseph Sarandos
Send PM to Joseph Sarandos
|
Incog4
Senior Member
Global user
|
|
Reply | Quote
|
|
Re: URGENT reading! "Iraq Vets Come Home Physically, Mentally Butchered."
Joseph,
I can't thank you enough for bringing these issues "onto a front burner" as you did.
It's a crying shame that the www did not exist in its current form while more than 50,000 of us were dying and multiples more were "coming home physically and mentally butchered" during the Vietnam war era.
But it does exist now, and so it should be used as we are using it, to support our active troops in the ways that they want and need support, which is against "being sacrificed on the altar" of GWB's hubris like our counterparts did on that of LBJ, in a losing cause that is not America's own.
A/G
|
|
1/5/2007, 2:58 pm
|
Send Email to Incog4
Send PM to Incog4
|
NamVet2
Senior Member
Global user
|
|
Reply | Quote
|
|
Re: URGENT reading! "Iraq Vets Come Home Physically, Mentally Butchered."
“Thanks mostly to Greg (Namvet2), who is a leading member of at least one, sizable organization of American Veterans that maintains a private E-mail ring, these same issues, reports and threads as were collated in TFTF have been widely read and disseminated among proactive objectors and dissenters, who are and have been effectively petitioning high officials within the political and military establishments, some of which officials have “bent to” such pleas and petitions and have altered their own recommendations, decisions and actions accordingly.
However great or slight have been the separate effects of such officials, their joint effects have had marked and visible results toward moving the G.W. Bush Administration away from its “Stay the course in Iraq at all costs” attitude, sadly regardless of the subsequent errors and blunders that this now-desperate President/Commander In Chief is making in his attempt to salvage his “legacy” while pleasing his Zionist and special-interest financiers.”
“It's a crying shame that the www did not exist in its current form while more than 50,000 of us were dying and multiples more were "coming home physically and mentally butchered" during the Vietnam war era.
But it does exist now, and so it should be used as we are using it, to support our active troops in the ways that they want and need support, which is against "being sacrificed on the altar" of GWB's hubris like our counterparts did on that of LBJ, in a losing cause that is not America's own.”
Truer words were never spoken, Chief and Aaron.
Whether volunteers or draftees, none of us in Vietnam, and none of them in Iraq and Afghanistan, had signed-on to kill and maim, or to be killed and maimed, by foreign civilians, having nothing to do with the defense of our nation and its constitution.
While we were in their same positions as active troops, we also had no legal and non-punishable means by which to protest or refuse the orders that were being filtered down to us from the White House, and our only viable options were to kill or be killed under nightmarish circumstances.
But now, because we as veterans are no longer subject to the UCMJ, it is not only our right, but more our responsibility and duty, to do whatever we can and as much as we can, toward echoing the feelings and sentiments that we know with certainty to be the same among the troops in the M-E as they were among us in especially Vietnam, but also in Korea.
Ours is a truly noble and patriotic cause that none of us should ignore or shrink from.
Greg
|
|
1/5/2007, 3:50 pm
|
Send Email to NamVet2
Send PM to NamVet2
|
Add a reply
Powered by AkBBS 0.9.5b - Link to us
- Blogs
- Hall of Honour
- Chat
Click here to get your own free message board
|
You are not logged in (login)
Board's time is: 1/7/2009, 9:14 pm
|
|
|
