Drinking. Brawling. Hurting. (with Iraq vets)

[KamaAina]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/31/AR2007083101395_pf.html

The wounds on my friend Pete Yazgier's head come in as many colors as Cezanne's fruit bowls.

Cherry-hued flecks dot the left half of his skull -- grim mementos of the rocket-propelled grenade that walloped his armored vehicle in Baghdad last September. A bright scar bends like a stalk of rhubarb above his left ear, the result of six surgeries to treat the brain cancer doctors found while ministering to his shrapnel wounds; they fear the tumor was caused by depleted uranium that Pete, 28, handled as an Army mechanic....

The rough-and-tumble encounters jibe with national statistics on the effects of longer, repeated tours of duty. Soldiers who've deployed to Iraq more than once have a 50 percent higher rate of combat stress, according to one Army study, and soldiers with a higher rate of combat stress exhibit approximately a 10 percent increase in anger-management issues. Simple diagnoses such as "post-traumatic stress disorder" and "generalized anxiety disorder" collapse under the weight of it.

Consider Jonathan Schulze, an Iraq vet with two Purple Hearts who got drunk at a Minnesota bar in January, then went home and hanged himself from an electrical cord wrapped around a beam in his basement. The tragedy unfolded only after the Marine machine-gunner returned from Ramadi with deep psychological wounds, threw a 200-pound potted tree through a window during a brawl, and beseeched the local Veterans Affairs Department for help, only to be told that his suicidal confessions put him 26th on the waiting list for assistance. (According to a recent Pentagon report, suicide rates are 35 percent higher for Iraq veterans than for the general population.)

My four fair-use paragraphs do not do justice to this fine piece written, I might add, by a recent graduate of my alma mater, Yale. (George W. Bush '68 is in no way typical of the new generation of Yalies!) Click and read for yourself.

[Karenina]

1. The dearth of responses are indicative of

the depth of denial.

[stillcool]

2. they too lost their life in Iraq...

and the VA can not not know, the effects war has on the human psyche. They must have reams of data from previous wars, documenting the addiction laden/high drama/violent environments that effects of war create at home. Go to any AA/NA meeting and you will find veterans of previous wars...and/or children of veterans of previous wars. Cause and effect.

[Spazito]

3. Wow, a very difficult piece to read yet a MUST READ, imo

Thanks for posting this, this is bush's legacy:

"Those seeds are sprouting like strangle-weed as the rest of America bustles along, debating the fates of Posh Spice and Harry Potter, as if war were just a pixilated thing that happens to far-away Muggles. Some of these weeds can be uprooted: More than 45,000 vets overcame the stigma of PTSD to seek medical help in the first quarter of 2007, and national legislation such as the Wounded Warriors Act promises to funnel more resources toward vets' mental health, if it ever escapes congressional molasses.

But much of the current wars' noxious overgrowth is proving ineradicable, coiling stealthily around our bars, jails, businesses and private lives."

Recommended.

[Spazito]

4. Damn it, I am going to kick this up, it deserves more than to

be lost in the multitude of Craig threads.

:kick:

[KamaAina]

5. True, there's nothing about toilet stalls, but...

Police and news reports corroborate that fighting has been mounting in nightclubs, restaurants and bars near military bases nationwide: places such as McDonough's Restaurant & Lounge near Fort Stewart, Ga.; O'Blarney's Irish Pub south of Fort Lewis, Wash.; the entire "Strip" near Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas. Drunken driving and bar brawls so plagued the area around Fort Carson, Colo., that a National Guard unit was put on "lockdown status" after returning from Afghanistan in June. In the District, the Hawk 'n' Dove, a Capitol Hill bar, has banned Marines without female dates.

I'm sure Craig, like most Hill denizens, has been to the Hawk 'n' Dove on numerous occasions. Guess he had a beard... There. Now this thread is part of "Craig's List" and can get three brazillion responses. :-)

[Spazito]

6. Sadly, that was my thought, if you had Craig/toilets/truckers in your

header, the response might well have been very different, a sad commentary, imo.

[NMDemDist2]

7. yet I found it on the Greatest page with 10 votes

personally, these types of threads have become all to sadly frequent in the past few years.

A dear friend of mine, 51 years old, is getting shipped out with our local Guard contingent for a two year tour in Germany and Iraq

:cry:

[Spazito]

9. I am sorry to hear about your friend....

It is, I am sure, a very difficult time for his/her family and friends.

I was glad to see the number of recommendations, it is just that, without comments or kicks the thread quickly drops off the 1st page and unless one checks the greatest it is lost among the shuffle.

Edited to add:

The article and others like them strike a cord with me perhaps because I am the child of a WWII vet who suffered from PTSD although it wasn't called that at the time and there was no support for those veterans either.

[Solly Mack]

8. ...

:(

[OneBlueSky]

10. the sheer number of emotionally and psychologically disabled vets . . .

who will be rejoining society after this atrocious war finally ends is staggering . . . someone's going to have to care for them . . . someone's going to have to help them get better . . . and someone -- actually, all of us -- are going to have to bear the guilt and shame that will come when one of them goes over the brink in some way or other . . .

[opihimoimoi]

11. #14,,,,Good Post Kama.....sending beer and crab