Remember the '70's TV shows with the crazed Viet Nam vet.

[Swede]

It finally became a cliche,whenever you needed a bad guy of the week. This disgrace came about because there where so many vets suffering from post distress. They only served one term in Nam. We have troops on their 3rd tour now. Chances are they will have to serve a fourth or fifth or god know's how many. Oh,and society is gonna pay for this.

[benddem]

1. You are so right

this is going to be a problem for a long long time. Many WWII, Korea and Vietnam vets are still suffering from PTSD.

[Redstone]

2. Yes. And that's not even counting the 300,000 physically sick from

Gulf War I. Which should be a national disgrace, and a subject of constant conversation, but for some reason isn't.

Redstone

[madokie]

3. This is the next saddest part after the deaths and the wounded

35 years for me and it's still here.

[jedr]

5. And you can't pull a "John Wayne" and tough it out or ;

ignore it. It will bite you in the ass , weather you want it to or not! ( BTW, John wayne never served, he stayed home and made love to Lana Turner, a real true hero like W )

[madokie]

6. sad to say you have no say. that little old ''beautiful mind" of mine

plays tricks on me sometimes.

[Warpy]

4. Society isn't going to pay as much as they are.

That's the saddest part, shattered human beings living in hideous pain and the VA will care exactly as much as it did for Vietnam vets.

Modern war destroys people who fight it as well as people who get caught in it. This is why we need to redefine the Pentagon's mission to one purely of national defense, put a choke chain collar on the generals and geopolitical wonks, and put the whole business on a very strict diet.

We can't afford the war machine gravy train. We can't afford to destroy our children in wars of corporate convenience. We can't afford war, period.

[kineneb]

7. "how many times must the cannon balls fly...

before they are forever banned..."

and how many of the walking mentally wounded will return home to explode or implode? How many will be sleeping in the streets?

:cry:

[lpbk2713]

8. And at the same time .....

BushCo and the rethugs are closing VA hospitals and robbing vets of their benefits.

[Neil Lisst]

9. good observation

In Desert Storm, we lost about 150 troops.

Two of those American troops went home to become John Mohammed and Tim McVeigh. Guess how many Americans those two vets killed? More than 150.

Who knows what lies in store in our future, since we have military who have been told they can torture and abuse prisoners in their care.