Capitol Hill Blue Forums Hot Topics & Breaking News News Suicide Epidemic Among Veterans

CBS News.com

Meanwhile defense spending is up. The Iraq "War" has cost double, $1.7B, than what it was projected and President Bush vetoes domestic spending.

Twice the non-veteran background is not surprising, considering the shameful trend of the Military of now discharging mentally ill veterans with the diagnosis of pre-existing character disorder, thus negating any responsibility for treatment or rehab.

Clearly the Pentagon has watched and learned from the insurance companies, and probably view "Sicko" as a how to manual for shirking their responsibility to veterans.

After all, from a pragmatic approach, businesslike even, what good is a soldier that cant or wont fight any longer, and is just a liability. This is just the kind of societal liability, that Grover Norquist want to pull the plug on. What have they done for us lately, anyway. This was cold-bloodedly planned and executed by the GOP by removing Veteran advocates from congressional oversight, while flagwaving jingoistic "wariors" continued to support this administraion, whose representatives overwhelmingly voted aginst the issues of the "Disabled Veterans of America".

Talk about misplaced loyalty! Gun advocates voted remarkably consistently in an inverse relationship against "Disabled Vets Issues". What can you expect from the GOP congress, when sent that kind of strong message, that guns are more important than Veterans?

You get Walter Reed, thats what!

And a dumping of Veterans into the dustheap of the no longer usefull to the efficient warmongers. But what the Hell would you expect from those whose modus operandi is opportunistically sociopathic? (I guess now we use the more politically correct term Antisocial personalty disorder, that Oh So Ironically is what the present administraition is labeling the soldiers damaged mentally by this antisocial war.)

It is yet another success for social Darwinism, as obviously these soldiers were just not mentally tough enough to stand four episodes of deployment to Iraq without cracking.

They have been selected against, tough noogies

So they go home and beat their wives, children, and then commit suicide. But who cares as their genetic stock is not really suitable for the US Military of the future, as it seems that they still have some of that humanity that makes one feel bad about the things they have seen and done. They are just not completely evolved into total antisocialism, as those types feel no guilt.

We may have to recruit more from those in prison, who are more fully evolved in this direction, to avoid PTSD disability.

Twice the rate, doenst really tell all the story as this rate just keeps on giving, that you can see if you go to the suicide wall of the Vietnam Veterans...



http://www.suicidewall.com/

http://www.suicidewall.com/SWBook1.pdf

http://www.suicidewall.com/Suicide_Wall.asp


TAT

Hmmm. So, are you claiming that any veteran that comes back and does not hang himself, is one does not have remorse or a sense of guilt and is thus bereft of human qualities (sub-human and the equivilent or less that a prison population? Or am I extrapolating?:-)
Yours,
Issodhos

Extrapolating? You mean trying to put your spinning words into my mouth? That will not work. PTSD is a natural response of many normal people, but writing these people off so they dont have to treat them, is sociopathic. Some who dont get PTSD may just be lucky or not exposed to enough trauma. It may be, however, that sociopaths would be less susceptible to PTSD, if they dont see terrible violence, brutality, and torture as traumatic.

So, are you saying that anyone who thinks that these weaklings are merely malingering lazy-assed bums with their hands out for a free ride who think society owes them just because they saw some mildly disturbing examples of the substantial progress being made in Iraq are sociopaths?

After diagraming that "sentance", and leaving out the modifying clawes, it reduces to the almost understandable:

So, are you saying that anyone who thinks that these weaklings are merely malingering lazy-assed bums, are sociopaths?

Well yes and no depending...

People who think that are typical fiscal or otherwise conservatives who think taxes should be cut, because supporting these wasted individuals is just throwing good money after bad, but they would not be sociopathic, just practical realists, recognizing that these expendables may never again be productive members of humanity or society. After all, we dont really have the money to do this, we are borrowing it from China.

And, they knew when they joined up, or should have know if they had paid attention to history of the veterans (after WW II), that there was no way the GOP was going to waste funding on them, when there were rich folks who needed tax breaks, so caveat emptor. They knew what they were getting with this administration, so they should stop whining.

The folks that actually planned this are sociopaths.

TAT

The right has never in my lifetime honoured the soldier. They instead engage in a military iconolatry using patriotic surrealism; singing nationalistic songs as the relatives and friends of others march off into the event horizon of war. They believe the price of patriotism is only the cost of an antenna flag purchased from a veterans group's table as they exit a grocery store. They believe the proof of their patriotism is to proudly allow the flag to become tattered on their vehicle, eventually ending up as highway litter when its tie-ons finally wear-away. Woe to the veteran who upon return feels compelled by honour to rise in dissent; to speak of the wrong being done to The Nation and to Humanity in a Foreign War. The right will will be a pack of rabid wolves that bloodies the veteran's heels for the rest of his/her life.

The left does not disrespect the soldier. They instead disrespect the institutions and traditions of the military; they desire to deface its symbols, including the General Staff. To this end, they provide soapboxes for the returning vets who feel compelled to speak in dissent, and they then attempt to use the dissent for their own designs, often without comprehending the veteran's message, or understanding the underlying motivations which compelled the vet to speak. Yet, the left does not coerce these speeches, and many would provide aid and succor to vets when the war sickness fever is ravaging their souls without an expectation of payment for services rendered.

Liberals pour out effusive commentaries of sympathies towards returning vets. An obsequious syrupy flood that threatens to suffocate, as assuagement for some strange manifestation of guilt born in their ritualised iterations of hand-wringing self-doubt.

Conservatives roll down their vehicles' windows at highway off ramps to loudly curse homeless vets as malcontents and lazy ne'er-do-wells, believing a sane person would willfully progress to this state of wretched destitution. They continuously shriek with harpish whinnyness about the injustice of 'their' money being spent by the VA, which is brutally underfunded to fulfill the promises conservatives made to vets as they headed off into the event horizon of war, a long time ago.

Still, no one seems able to realise what should be self-evident: with war comes the war sickness, and it will infect a substantial number of veterans upon their return home. It is malarial, recurring and never completely curable. Some, because of their fortitude upon return, and their will to retain possession of their honor while on the battlefield, are able to keep the eternal inner flame under control, locked away in a pigeon hole deep within their souls, but that is not an indication of a human's inherent worth. It is instead an indication of quality in a human's upbringing, because far too many soldiers march off into to war as ill-prepared children unable to see through the big deceits: that honour is a commodity which can be acquired upon the dark moonless fields of battle; that devotion to a deity found within the hell of war can carry one through it unscathed and righteous. Honour is not a fungible product, it can only be produced internally through hard and difficult meditations. All too often veterans who have squandered their honour cheaply in theatre, return to the discovery that there is only what remains, and that their new found god is naught but an immanent evil.

There is no group existent within the political linearity which honours the troops. They all suck with lip service, and never swallow the responsibility that flows from it.

Something about "enough trauma" struck me. How much trauma would be enough? Certainly our individual capacities for trauma absorption vary. Our responses to it vary also.

If we selected our soldiers for high trauma capacity, we would field a military made up of sociopaths and saints. An army of all sociopaths might be effective in killing whoever "the enemy" is, but you could never let them come home. An army of saints would be interesting. I don't know how effective they would be at the military end of their job, but they might be more effective at the political and public relations end of it.

Good point. When do we start recruiting?

And where?