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came on the teevee ... and I thought: I wonder if many of those youngsters who see these ads and are tempted by the "exciting career" they see portrayed in them are also hearing the news coming out about Walter Reed and the rest of the system for military "healthcare"?
I hope so! And if they go so far as to visit a recruiter, I hope they keep in mind what they've learned about how "wounded warriors" are actually treated -- MIStreated and neglected is more like it.
<Inserting "Rant Alert!" here>
Of the many stories I've heard lately along these lines, one was from a 17-year-old whose parents signed for him to join the Marines. He was quick-trained and immediately sent to Iraq. Back home now (but for how long?), he replied to a question that both he and his parents were "surprised" that he was sent to war so fast.
The truth that must be conveyed to the young people who are thinking of signing up, for whatever reasons, is that recruiters lie on a regular basis. All those promises of "world class healthcare free for life" after they serve are just so much smelly crap!
I'm glad to hear that apparently clips from today's Walter Reed hearings are showing up on youtube and hopefully elsewhere (including DU's video section)! We need to do all we can to keep this story front and center, until there's no excuse for anyone not understanding just how abusive and neglectful this administration is of our military servicemembers and their families.
I've been a staunch friend and supporter of Vietnam vets ever since "their" war, and I've helped as many of them as I can to fight the paperwork-heavy bureaucracy of the VA to get the disability ratings (service-related!) and compensation and patient care they need. It's a nightmare for them, because of course the VA requires them, if they are having symptoms of PTSD, to endure a horrendously painful period of remembering and reliving the horrors which damaged them.
One of my best vet friends, named Rick, was dyslexic as a child and stuck in the "slow" classes at school, so he didn't do well and barely graduated high school. That was in 1967, however (same year I graduated), and the Army had no problem at all finding him totally suitable for duty -- as cannon fodder, another 11B or infantry "grunt" -- in the meatgrinder that was Vietnam.
The "stressor" experience most responsible for his PTSD was truly horrific, as I learned when he told me after his three-week inpatient stint in the Seattle VA for PTSD assessment where they pushed him to remember and relive the event.
Rick was dropped along with the rest of his company into a raging firefight, and the confusion in the darkness was such that the group was separated and scattered quickly while under heavy fire. Rick had only been incountry for a few weeks at that point -- yet he had already before then seen one of his fellows killed by a sniper wound to the chest when the guy was simply walking back from the latrine.
In the firefight, Rick realized the men in his company were getting separated and was looking back behind him as he tried to move to a hill where he believed they were supposed to regroup. What he saw -- the "stressor" event he finally related to the VA staff -- was so horrific the mind recoils to even imagine it.
This was an occasion of "friendly fire" where some members in the rear of Rick's company were napalmed by air strikes -- and what Rick saw when he turned around as he ran were guys who were on fire ... hair and uniforms literally ablaze with that gellied gasoline mix that couldn't be cleaned off to stop the burning of flesh. They were guys he knew, from his own company, new "brothers" he could identify in the light of the damn fires ... running directly at him!
It was sheer madness, like he was looking right into the yawning mouth of hell.
Rick had not exactly "forgotten" that incident, or any of the others that traumatized him. But he had pretty successfully suppressed the memories, and the last thing he wanted to do was to try real hard to think back and recall every detail.
But that's precisely what they need a soldier or veteran to do in order to assess him as suffering from PTSD, though there is much more to the process than that. He didn't even get any individual counseling, either -- it was all "group" because there wasn't enough funding for individual therapy!
Even though he did eventually receive his psych disability rating for PTSD, 100% and permanent, Rick was actually quite a lot worse after his assessment period in Seattle than he'd been before it. They had to increase his dosage of meds twice before he could sleep at all, and then he'd have flashbacks and nightmares like he hadn't had in several years before then.
Rick was an artist, but he had never once painted anything from his war experience. He just couldn't, he didn't want to, he avoided thinking about that time in his life.
But he had never been able to hold down a job after returning home. He tried, over and over again, but he couldn't deal with a lot of people and couldn't handle any sort of confrontation.
He was homeless as a result, off and on over the years, though his wife was willing to stand by him and she managed to work enough to keep a roof over their heads and raise their daughter. Rick felt he was bad for them both and a burden, so sometimes he would just leave and live on the road like a vagabond.
Finally he had managed to stay home, was given a small percentage disability rating from Social Security and a tiny check each month, and he did volunteer work at local nursing homes, teaching old folks to paint! He loved that.
But his fellow vets we knew online kept telling him he deserved 100% rating and urged him to seek re-assessment to get that -- which is how he ended up as an inpatient for a three-week evaluation. Took him a long time just to get back close to where he'd been before then.
Sorry for the long story; but trust me, this is only ONE of the hundreds -- literally hundreds! -- of horror stories I heard from my Nam vet friends over a period of about ten years when I worked intensively for them to get help from the VA.
And Rick's story is not at all unlike what so many of our current soldiers are experiencing.
The first time I heard on the news about I.E.D.'s, the "roadside bombs," I remember saying that we were going to have a very high rate of PTSD among the troops sent to Iraq, due to the very nature of those weapons deployed against them. Soldiers are driving or walking along, patroling, and without any warning, BOOM! Chaos and blood and ripped flesh and screams, dead and wounded all around....
One needn't suffer physical wounds but merely witness such events -- or what happens afterwards -- in order to have sufficient trauma for PTSD. Those who are not wounded often feel they should not complain about nightmares or flashbacks or crippling anxiety attacks ... after all, they didn't get hurt, right?
I was astonished to read that 1.5 million U.S. troops have by now served in Iraq and Afghanistan. I remember learning years ago that approximately 2.3 million total were veterans of Vietnam. The horrors just keep multiplying as the years of war continue on unabated, so much like then!
And the war experience is only the beginning of the problems for those who serve in Bu$h's profiteering adventures in the Middle East. So much of the psychological damage they eventually suffer occurs after they return home. The public may treat them far better than vets from Vietnam were treated, but that was only a part of the picture.
When the very system which is supposed to be meeting the needs, medical and psychological, of our returning soldiers lets them down, the damage continues. When they have to wade through reams of paperwork and fight tooth and nail against a bureaucratic monster that swallows them whole, the damage continues.
When they are told by medical staff or someone with rank that their wounds or their symptoms of PTSD are not as severe as they know them to be -- that they should be well healed or are not severely impaired -- they are hugely wronged and the damage continues.
When they find they can only really talk about their problems to their "brothers" (and sisters!) whom they know have lived through the same thing, the damage continues and their world shrinks. Their lives are diminished, at the very least, and for a great many their lives are impaired to a significant degree -- and forever.
They may be "volunteering," yes. But they are tempted and then pressured by recruiters and their own slim opportunities in life, and they really do NOT know what they are volunteering FOR. They think they do, but they don't. They are lied to, promised things they'll never get, and the most important of those things they're denied is proper healthcare!
It's a crime of immense proportions, that's for certain. And as one of the Congresspersons said today at the Walter Reed hearings, "They are 'wounded warriors' NOW; but soon they'll just be 'vets' ...."
What will happen to them then? Ask a Vietnam vet....
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