Arkansas Blog

5 U.S. Soldiers Are Killed on Military Base in Iraq
By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS 2 minutes ago

At least one news agency said that the killer was an American soldier who had opened fire on fellow troops.

Uh huh. Those chickens are still coming home to roost. And we've yet to hear if more US soldiers killed themselves than were killed by the enemy for the month of April. How much longer can Barry let this go on? This Vietnam 3 we're fighting along side Vietnam 2 in Afghanistan. Study your history folks, we can't win, there's nothing to win. All we can do is grind up more US troops until that fateful day when some President and some Congress brings the troops home and urge us to greet them with great patriotic fan fair.

Let's start the welcoming tomorrow! Let's save as many of our troops as possible and start NOW! Whatever horror happens in the Middle East after we leave will happen anyway. Unless he's shot, Obama will be in office for the next 7 and 3/4th years....we can't wait for the next administration to come along and end these Bush mistakes. We can't afford to grind up more of our future in hopes the Rapture will save face for America. Bring our troops home now!

I was talking yesterday to a guy who studies PTSD. He said that the rate of PTSD in our current soldiers coming home dwarfs the rate in any other war.

This Vietnam 3 we're fighting along side Vietnam 2 in Afghanistan.
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Obama is increasing US troops in Afghanistan to 68,000...he really needs to review the experience of Russia there and also read Kipling.

"I was talking yesterday to a guy who studies PTSD. He said that the rate of PTSD in our current soldiers coming home dwarfs the rate in any other war."

I saw 1 year of combat in Vietnam with C Company, 1/5th CAV, 1st Cavalry Division.

When I came home in 1967 no organization, especially the VA knew of PTSD or would admit it existed.
I was 'out of control' for awhile and then settled into extreme survivor's guilt for almost 40 years.

There has always been a lot of it but only in recent years has it become something we know about and try to deal with as a nation.

U.S. civilian suicide rate: 19.5 per 100,000
U.S. Army suicide rate: 20.2 per 100,000

I presume the most recent figures are age and gender matched. In past studies I've read, they have been. Frankly, I'm amazed the civilian/military suicide rates are still so close.

Thank doG the Democrats are in charge! Nice polite, well spoken war criminals... change the shame game to one fools can believe in.

This message brought to you by Mark Pryor, Obama, and Prozac for America.

Just put it on our bill.

Alligatorgar is correct.

I know a lot of my friends and buddies left a piece of themselves behind when they "came back to the world." Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) was still called "battle fatigue" or mental disorders (without any belief that Combat or stress of service "in country" were causative factors). Although all services gave combat pay, war zone tax-free benefits and investment opportunities due to acknowledged physical dangers, the mental dangers were not acknowledged.

There are a lot of Vietnam veterans with problems that relate back to the stress of their service. Drug addiction, alcoholism, etc. are ways of forgetting fear and guilt that can arise years later unbidden, unknown and incapacitating in severe cases. Sometimes the guilt is about being luckier than friends who were on the line twenty-four/seven from their arrival in country to DEROS and drawing an assignment in relative safety, with clean sheets, daily showers and meals from a mess hall instead of humping the boonies, sleeping in a pancho and developing P-38 callouses eating mostly C rations (B-1's, 2's and 3's).

The suicides are not new. In the seventies (latter days of Vietnam) at Recruit Training Command (Navy Boot Camp) on Naval Training Command Orlando, new recruits in "boot" were housed in brand new three-story barracks. Each floor was one recruit company. A "fire-guard" stood watch on each floor and the companies shared the "suicide watch" on the roofs. In reality the fire-guard's main duty was to prevent suicides as was the roof watch. Despite the guards, in my 13-week boot training period, there were two attempted suicides by jumping from the roof; sadly, one was successful. There may have been others of different methods. The roof jumping episodes were hard to miss for the clamor and activity that resulted from an attempt.

I suspect recruit training centers of all services during the Vietnam period had similar problems. You may be patriotic and volunteer, but fear, especially of the unknown, can sometimes over-ride belief and will. Plus, the majority of us were drafted, Which, quite frankly, was like winning a lottery for at least a two year active duty hitch where at least 12 to 18 months might have a good chance of combat. Or service in a country where you were cautioned against the American habit of kicking cans, because sometimes VC placed tethered grenades with the pins pulled in the cans for unsuspecting volunteers and draftees education in insurgency warfare and IED's (we called them booby-traps).

Of approximately 2,500,000 servicemen who served in Vietnam approximately 58,000 were killed in action, 2,000 went missing in action and 300,000 were wounded in action. In other words, of two hundred guys who hit boot camp the day you did, the odds were that twenty-nine would never come home from the 'Nam and you saw it on the news every day.

There are now veterans groups dedicated to helping each other with these PTSD problems. If you are a veteran or no of one who may need help Not Alone may help. CLIK

Oops! correction ". . . would never come home whole or come home at all fromt the 'Nam. . . ."

Thank you Alligatorgar for your service and risking your life and sanity for a year that I spent chasing girls and drinking beer on my Daddy's dime. What President Obama could do that would change our world forever is to switch things around and make guys my age go off to war. Start a draft of those 40 and up.

I only recommend that because I've been married twice, nothing can hurt me any more. When I was young and tender, a dirty look made an imprint on me. Everything bothered me, I got upset over anything and everything. Now.....FK it....I don't even notice 99% of the stuff that used to give me a month of sleepless nights. I'm no longer tender. If I had been shipped off to Vietnam....no telling what kind of crazy I'd have been. My god....I could hardly go to school because I couldn't grow sideburns like all my friends. What would have happened to my sanity if someone had shot at me? I ran over a dog 38 years ago and now and then the horror of that day comes back in little flashes. What If I'd been forced to kill a Vietnamese or 12?

And today we're still just busy as beavers making our future veteran basket cases. I related the story of talking to a 93 year old man who still bursts out crying if one certain week in 1944 is mentioned. Can you name anything more powerful than that? And again.......what are we fighting for...hell..not we......what are other people's kids fighting for? Can anyone name 1 thing we'll get by "winning" in Iraq or Afghanistan? Can anyone define what "winning" there is.....and how will we know when we've won?

Plain and simple....Cheney-Bush pulled at the very worst thread in the Universe. No one before them was insane enough to do it....but because these 2 draft dodgers didn't know jack shit about war....they took the occasion of a national tragedy and jerked the 880 volt thread in the Middle East and we're damn lucky WWIII hasn't started.

WE WILL NOT WIN IN THE MIDDLE EAST! Not today or 28 years from now. It simply can't be done unless we start nuking them tomorrow....and then what's next? The end of the world for........what.....what is it we're sending people to die for? Damn it...if we could only figure that out.....what a great help that would be. We should start torturing warmongering Senators until one of them spills his guts and tells us why in the hell we're keeping troops in the Middle East? Working on 7 years now....and we don't know why we're there, who we're fighting, or what we'll get if we win. And don't forget we've spent billions and billions and billions, ruined a generation of our kids, killed hundreds of thousands, maimed a million plus, and became the newest member of the despised World Torture Club to boot. President Obama.......PLEASE!

The rate of suicides in the Army last year was 20.2 per 100,000. The nation's suicide rate, in 2005, the most recent figure available, was 19.5 per 100,000.

Some numbers from the Health Department web site: www.healthyarkansas.com go to Data and Research, then Center for Health Statistics Query System.

Arkansas age-adjusted suicide rate = 13.52 deaths per 100,000 in 2007. Includes everyone from infants to 90 year olds. Males only = 23.03 per 100,000. Males 25-34 = 30.40 per 100,000.

So which is the relevant comparison? I have no idea.

"I am under a lot of pressure to not diagnose PTSD"

A secret recording reveals the Army may be pushing its medical staff not to diagnose post-traumatic stress disorder. The Army and Senate have ignored the implications.

April 8, 2009 | FORT CARSON, Colo. -- "Sgt. X" is built like the Bradley Fighting Vehicle he rode in while in Iraq. He's as bulky, brawny and seemingly impervious as a tank.

In an interview in the high-rise offices of his Denver attorneys, however, symptoms of the damaged brain inside that tough exterior begin to appear. Sgt. X's eyes go suddenly blank, shifting to refocus oddly on a wall. He pauses mid-sentence, struggling for simple words. His hands occasionally tremble and spasm."

To listen and read about the entire cover-up click on eLwood.

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Now comes the grand daddy of analysts-

"1 in 5 Iraq, Afghanistan vets has PTSD, major depression - RAND

Nearly 20 percent of military service members who have returned from Iraq and Afghanistan -- 300,000 in all -- report symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder or major depression, yet only slight more than half have sought treatment, according to a new RAND Corporation study.

In addition, researchers found about 19 percent of returning service members report that they experienced a possible traumatic brain injury while deployed, with 7 percent reporting both a probable brain injury and current PTSD or major depression.

for entire Science Blog report click on eLwood.

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I found out last week that a 'boy' I knew in Vietnam is dying of lung and liver cancer.

Sonny Cowan was there on Nov 21, 1966 when out of 104 men of Charlie Company 1/5 CAV, 32 were killed in a fight near the Cambodian border. Sonny helped gather the bodies of 1/3 of the men he knew just that morning. He used his radio to coordinate the dozens of helicopters that came and went taking out the ones that were wounded.

He was never diagnosed with PTSD.

He could not sustain any stress in a job, maintain a marriage nor face those of us who knew him from those days.

He suffered in silence for over 40 years and now his peace will come.

When I see or hear a 'chickenhawk' touting war I could smash their face in but I never will.

Sonny and I have seen smashed faces, jaws torn apart by steel and friends sitting at the base of a tree holding their guts in crying since they know they are dying.

Sorry one and all. I got emotional.

My point is war is terrible and never right. Especially the wars our country has engaged in since Korea.

Iraq is/was stupid and wrong. We have harmed millions of people on the whim of a moron.

Afganistan was worth blasting to bits but not occupying. Obama seems to want to make that his war and he is 'box of rocks' stupid if he thinks he is going to accomplish anything over what the Russians did in their 10 years there.

Gator you have no need to make an apology to any of us. You have a great deal of compassion and understanding for those who experience PTSD. Also be easy on yourself. I am sorry any of that happened to you and your fellow soldiers. I appreciate that it has taken many more years of sustained courage to remain aware of the lasting effects of service, to speak of it and to offer help to others. It takes courage to keep your eyes open to suffering. I wish you peace. I wish it for all in service now. I'm doing the things I know of that a mere citizen can do (voting, writing, educating) in respect to the service you and all veterans already gave.

Thanks, mag, for saying to Alligatorgar what I think, and what I'm trying to do in his honor, too.

With the stress of war and attacks from fellow soldiers under duress of war, military personnel have been through one trauma after another. This great website helps to ease the strain by helping them to be in touch with their loved ones and feel the bond of togetherness. This site builds your Living Diary, and gives you a precious service of preserving your communications with friends and family throughout your years of service. You can keep an everlasting memento with a DVD copy of audio and video messages with memories that will last forever.