There's no armor, it turns out, for conscience.
So
our men and women are coming home from the killing fields wounded in
their heads, used up, greeted only by the military's own meat grinder
of inadequate health care and intolerance for "weakness."
WASHINGTON - The number of US veterans who died in 2008 because they lacked health insurance was 14 times higher than the US military death toll in Afghanistan that year, according to a new study.
The analysis produced by two Harvard medical researchers estimates that 2,266 US military veterans under the age of 65 died in 2008 because they lacked health coverage and had reduced access to medical care.
That figure is more than 14 times higher than the 155 US troop deaths in Afghanistan in 2008, the study says.
It's time to take care of your troops, America. We are mired in violence and gun lust, post traumatic stress and substance abuse; outward anxiety and inward extremism. Maj. Nidal Hassan is one of us.
Eight years we've been at war now. The youngest victim of Hassan's murderous rampage was but 11 when the towers fell. For years, Maj. Hassan listened to the horrors of the occupations which resulted, and it made him crazy, as it made me crazy. Then they told him it was his turn to go, as they told me it was my turn.
[Research support for this article was provided by the Investigative Fund at the Nation Institute.]
On May 1st at Fort Hood in central Texas, Specialist Victor Agosto
wrote on a counseling statement, which is actually a punitive U.S. Army
memo:
By this point, we should not be surprised to realize that the media,
after a brief flurry of coverage, quickly dropped the story of John
Russell, the Army sergeant being treated for mental issues, who gunned
down five colleagues at a stress clinic in Baghdad earlier this month.
That's why I was startled to see that Bob Herbert highlighted this
episode in his New York Times column today, under the title, "War's Psychic Toll." It was the first mention I'd seen in quite a few days.
As Americans are inundated with revelations about the lies, torture and other crimes that
accompanied the US-led war in Iraq, many who resisted continue to be
punished for refusing to participate in those crimes.
Editor's Note from The Nation: The following commentary is based on an interview by Z.P. Heller, editorial director of Brave New Films.
I was on liberty in Australia, dancing at a club I can't remember
sometime around midnight, when it happened. The music shut off and an
announcement came on: "America is under attack. Head back to your
ships." This was the worst--the impossible. This was September 11,
2001.
Everyone - the father, the son, the army - agrees that three tours of Iraq drove Sergeant John Russell to the edge.
But
what pushed him over, into shooting dead five of his comrades in an
army that was his life for 16 years, is a matter of bitter dispute.
The
military has suggested that Russell's work cannibalising and
rebuilding robots used to set off roadside bombs brought him into
regular contact with gruesome casualties, and that took a toll that
exploded at Camp Liberty in Baghdad this week.
New American Media Editor's Note: When a US Army Sergeant went on a shooting spree in
Iraq, killing five fellow soldiers, his targets were different from the
victims of previous rampages like Haditha. But NAM contributor Aaron
Glantz says the source of the trauma and the rage is the same. Aaron
Glantz reported extensively from Iraq from 2003 to 2005 and is author
of The War Comes Home: Washington's Battle Against America's Veterans.
In the past few years, Dr. Michael Koopmeiners has seen a surge in the number of veterans seeking help for war-related disabilities at the Minneapolis VA Medical Center.
At Koopmeiners' clinic, which evaluates new disability claims, business has more than doubled since 2004 -- from 6,800 to nearly 15,000 patients a year.
But only a fraction of the cases have anything to do with Iraq or Afghanistan.
