Permanent scars...Vets return from Iraq...PTSD

[Mari333]

Thank god someone is printing it.





Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
Robert Shrode in his rented farmhouse. "Somebody stares at it, I get mad at them," Shrode says. "Somebody looks away, and I get mad at that."






Robert Shrode can't sleep.

At night, in the fly-speck town of Guthrie, Ky., in the rented farmhouse he shares with his 20-year-old wife, Debra, he surfs the Internet, roams the house. He lies down and gets up again. He drinks a beer and stares out the window at the black fields beyond. Hours pass. He can't sleep. Before the war, he could have six beers and sleep like a baby, but now that works against him. Drinking may help get his head to the pillow, but it also ratchets up the nightmares. For a while, he sweated out his bad dreams on the living-room couch, and it drove Debra crazy. She would come down from the bedroom, touch his shoulder, ask what the problem was. Shrode would just turn his back to her and not say a word. Now she knows better than to ask, though occasionally when the silence between them gets too deep, she'll put it out there, What're you thinking about?

''Iraq,'' he'll say. And then the silence falls again.







http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/15/magazine/15VETS.html

[ConcernedCanuk]

1. The unseen, unacknowledged part of Bushes wars - -

.
.

From the article:

(Page 2 of 11) <<< that's right, this is a LONG article <<<

Both men say they feel more vulnerable since coming back from war. When someone recently dropped a tray in the hospital cafeteria, Shrode dove, horror-struck, beneath the table. A crackling summer thunderstorm sent Bricklin into a panic, convinced he was caught in the back blast of a grenade again. Both say they have frequent nightmares. And then there's something less tangible, a visceral undercurrent of anger that makes them walk around feeling ready to explode. ''I can go from being happy-go-lucky and joking to having someone's throat in my hand, like that,'' Bricklin says, snapping his fingers. Shrode nods. ''My fuse is short,'' he says. ''It's real short.''

Shrode and Bricklin are 2 of the 2,600 United States soldiers wounded in action in Iraq as of early this month, according to the Department of Defense. The basics of their stories are hauntingly familiar: just after midnight one night in June, a rocket-propelled grenade shrieked out of nowhere and hit their Humvee, which sat parked at a police station in the Baathist city of Fallujah. What was reported in the news bore the standard sterility: ''One soldier killed; five others injured.'' What wasn't said was that Branden Oberleitner, the private who died standing almost shoulder to shoulder with Shrode, was a car buff who once planned to become a firefighter or that he was killed two weeks shy of his 21st birthday. It didn't say that his blood was all over the road.

/snip/

from Page 3:

The government's reports on the wounded can be confusing. In early February, the Department of Defense Web site listed 2,600 soldiers as wounded in action in Iraq and another 403 as injured in ''nonhostile'' incidents like helicopter or motor-vehicle accidents. Meanwhile, the Army Surgeon General's office said that only 804 soldiers have been evacuated with battle wounds and that over 2,800 have been injured accidentally. In addition, the Surgeon General's office reported that another 5,184 soldiers have been evacuated from the theater for other medical reasons, which could include anything from kidney stones to nervous breakdowns. To date, 569 of these have qualified as psychiatric casualties.

/enuf/

It's a real eye-opener if one wants to read it,

Personally, I'm "saving" each page as I go through it,

I'll read the whole thing later.

Actually, I think EVERY VOTER should have to read this before being allowed to vote

would change ALOT of minds,

but alas . .

the closed minds wouldn't even read the sad thing - -

(sigh)

[Mari333]

3. Until the mainstream media

shows this on TV, pounds these kids images into the collective heads of the public, we will only see DENIAL and people turning their heads from the truth of what that son of a bitch in the WH and the bU$sh admin is doing. Until the press grabs this by the balls and shakes it into the conciousness of every US citizen, they wont look for it.
God damn George Bush and God damn the whole administration for this.

[RedEarth]

5. So true........unless it's Janet Jackson's boob, Laci Peterson, etc..

the media doesn't have a great deal of interest in it.

Reading that story, and others, I always come away thinking.....all this suffering...for what.

[Mari333]

6. The bU$h admin is making SURE the media wont cover it

at all...and they are making SURE this occupation is sanitized news and blacked out..
God damn them for doing this to our kids.

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

2. Been there. Done that. I can't believe we have people going

through it AGAIN!
We are supposed to learn from how things were done before. I guess the DOD and the VA are not capable of such learnings.

Why am I not suprised?

[Mandate My Ass]

4. PTSD is a life sentence

My condolences to all who suffer from this affliction.

[Johnyawl]

7. Yes it is...

a visceral undercurrent of anger that makes them walk around feeling ready to explode. ''I can go from being happy-go-lucky and joking to having someone's throat in my hand,

Still, after 35 years.

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

8. Yep, I am with you there brother

Welcome home, and sleep well.