This is a story everyone needs to read, not only veterans. It will be beneficial for a veteran to help the civilian understand the command structure, terminology, and anything having to do with the military. The Vietnam veteran has the most understanding of some reasoning behind the actions that were made in this unfortunate story. It is a terribly sad truth of the military way of life. I want to make it clear, I do not agree, accept, nor understand the decisions made that led up to this loss of life. My condolences to the Tillman Family and I hope that they find the closure that they deserve. theblogmeister
Please click on following link to read The Tillman Story
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/12/pat-tillmans-father-to-ar_n_680128.html
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Draft Status
I am not sure what the problem of the post that I published to warrant a 'draft status' feature. Someone was offended by parts or all of the story that was told. I understand that it is my responsibility to not write anything that will be derogatory or defame any race, religious belief, sexual preferences, all the while asserting my first amendment right of free speech. Unfortunately, the person I offended did not attempt to reach me to state his reason of the offense. It may have been the actual owner of my blog, blogger.com. I sent them an email and apologized for what ever it was that I had done wrong. It may be hard not to repeat the offense because of that lack of knowledge. I will certainly try. If I offend any reader please go to my profile and get my email and let me know. I am trying to connect to anyone that may have or have been diagnosed with PTSD. The only person that can relate to my story is someone who may have partially lived my story. You would be surprised to find there are quite a few that can relate and can find ways to help each other. The last thing I want to do is offend my audience. I want ease, not dis-ease. thanks, theblogmeister
Special Forces in Afghanistan
OUTPOST NOLEN | Tue Jul 27, 2010 9:57pm EDT
OUTPOST NOLEN Afghanistan (Reuters) - Elite U.S. special forces soldiers are relieving insurgent pressure on American outposts in the volatile Arghandab Valley with a series of night attacks on suspected Taliban hideouts.
The raids, backed by a "Spectre" C-130 gunship and Afghan commandos, began four days ago in the village of Khosrow Sofla, and followed weeks of near-daily attacks by insurgents on American bases near the town of Jelawar.
"We considered it an area of Taliban sanctuary, or at least of tacit or semi-permissive support," said U.S. Army Major Brendan Raymond, of Woodbridge, Virginia.
Last month, the U.S. military said special operations forces in Afghanistan had nearly tripled over the last year and that Afghan authorities were increasingly involved in their missions.
U.S. special forces have also set up local defense forces in Arghandab, where armed villagers are trained and mentored to protect their own villages.
The scheme is controversial, with critics saying it amounts to forming local militias separate to government forces, but U.S. commanders on the ground say it deters the flow of insurgents into their areas.
The Arghandab river valley is an important infiltration route used by the Taliban to attack U.S. forces and smuggle weapons and men a few miles east to Kandahar city.
U.S. troops are launching a series of operations in Arghandab and other districts around Kandahar in a bid to drive the insurgents out of their spiritual heartland.
The militants in Arghandab, however, are tying up a brigade of U.S. troops with mines and hit-and-run attacks launched from thick cover in ripening grape and pomegranate plantations.
BIRTHPLACE OF THE TALIBAN
The area is the birthplace of the Taliban and insurgents have taken a heavy toll on U.S. soldiers in outlying combat bases, with many maimed by buried mines and bombs, and several armored vehicles destroyed in recent days.
During one night operation, U.S. troops belonging to the 101st Airborne Division observed an insurgent laying a roadside bomb and tracked him to his home. The house was raided and bomb-making materials seized.
Another attack killed and wounded a "large number" of Taliban who fled to a canal and came under C-130 fire while sheltering there, easing pressure on Combat Outpost Nolen, which has experienced frequent mine and rocket grenade attacks.
One assault involved Afghan commandos under the guidance of U.S. special operations soldiers. One Afghan died in the attack and several U.S. and Afghan troops were wounded after their helicopter landed in a site daisy-chained by IEDs.
American planners believe 40 to 50 hardcore insurgents are concentrating their efforts on Outpost Nolen, which Raymond said had become a "big shining ball" for the Taliban. They are less clear on the reasons why.
The area around the base has become no-man's-land, with fighters moving into the farming area from nearby towns to engage U.S. and Afghan National Army forces inside, battalion commander Lt.-Col. David Flynn said.
Smaller villages are, or appear, almost deserted by local families fleeing the fighting and leaving cash-producing grape crops to wither on vines. Coalition forces are keen to secure access to the fields for the locals to win their support.
U.S. troops in the valley hope ultimately to encourage between 57,000 and 100,000 villagers to turn against the Taliban and back district and provincial leaders friendly to President Hamid Karzai's government and coalition forces.
But surrounding fields and roads have also been seeded heavily with mines, with several loud blasts heard at night believed to be accidental explosions as insurgents try to lay more IEDs for U.S. patrols.
"They probably just want us to leave," said one junior officer at Nolen who asked not to be identified. "But it has been quieter the last few nights since the special forces started up."
OUTPOST NOLEN Afghanistan (Reuters) - Elite U.S. special forces soldiers are relieving insurgent pressure on American outposts in the volatile Arghandab Valley with a series of night attacks on suspected Taliban hideouts.
The raids, backed by a "Spectre" C-130 gunship and Afghan commandos, began four days ago in the village of Khosrow Sofla, and followed weeks of near-daily attacks by insurgents on American bases near the town of Jelawar.
"We considered it an area of Taliban sanctuary, or at least of tacit or semi-permissive support," said U.S. Army Major Brendan Raymond, of Woodbridge, Virginia.
Last month, the U.S. military said special operations forces in Afghanistan had nearly tripled over the last year and that Afghan authorities were increasingly involved in their missions.
U.S. special forces have also set up local defense forces in Arghandab, where armed villagers are trained and mentored to protect their own villages.
The scheme is controversial, with critics saying it amounts to forming local militias separate to government forces, but U.S. commanders on the ground say it deters the flow of insurgents into their areas.
The Arghandab river valley is an important infiltration route used by the Taliban to attack U.S. forces and smuggle weapons and men a few miles east to Kandahar city.
U.S. troops are launching a series of operations in Arghandab and other districts around Kandahar in a bid to drive the insurgents out of their spiritual heartland.
The militants in Arghandab, however, are tying up a brigade of U.S. troops with mines and hit-and-run attacks launched from thick cover in ripening grape and pomegranate plantations.
BIRTHPLACE OF THE TALIBAN
The area is the birthplace of the Taliban and insurgents have taken a heavy toll on U.S. soldiers in outlying combat bases, with many maimed by buried mines and bombs, and several armored vehicles destroyed in recent days.
During one night operation, U.S. troops belonging to the 101st Airborne Division observed an insurgent laying a roadside bomb and tracked him to his home. The house was raided and bomb-making materials seized.
Another attack killed and wounded a "large number" of Taliban who fled to a canal and came under C-130 fire while sheltering there, easing pressure on Combat Outpost Nolen, which has experienced frequent mine and rocket grenade attacks.
One assault involved Afghan commandos under the guidance of U.S. special operations soldiers. One Afghan died in the attack and several U.S. and Afghan troops were wounded after their helicopter landed in a site daisy-chained by IEDs.
American planners believe 40 to 50 hardcore insurgents are concentrating their efforts on Outpost Nolen, which Raymond said had become a "big shining ball" for the Taliban. They are less clear on the reasons why.
The area around the base has become no-man's-land, with fighters moving into the farming area from nearby towns to engage U.S. and Afghan National Army forces inside, battalion commander Lt.-Col. David Flynn said.
Smaller villages are, or appear, almost deserted by local families fleeing the fighting and leaving cash-producing grape crops to wither on vines. Coalition forces are keen to secure access to the fields for the locals to win their support.
U.S. troops in the valley hope ultimately to encourage between 57,000 and 100,000 villagers to turn against the Taliban and back district and provincial leaders friendly to President Hamid Karzai's government and coalition forces.
But surrounding fields and roads have also been seeded heavily with mines, with several loud blasts heard at night believed to be accidental explosions as insurgents try to lay more IEDs for U.S. patrols.
"They probably just want us to leave," said one junior officer at Nolen who asked not to be identified. "But it has been quieter the last few nights since the special forces started up."
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Comments Are Not Illeagal
I was looking back through some of my posts and found moderately few comments. I know of one person that probably checks in on my blog from time to time. My psychologists. I know , believe me. I stopped writing there for a while. My meds were upped (is that even a real word) and I get real sleepy LOT EARLIER THAN USUAL. The heck with it. I ain't gonna erase it. It seems that I am looking at a producer and he is giving me the 'stretch it' sign. It must mean that I do not have very much to say. While I am sitting here with a temporary case of Alzheimer's this would be a good time to thank all of our men in uniform. No, not the orange jumpsuit! Our men in the military. We, without a doubt, have the ultimate, most sophisticated and dedicated military in the world. We have two wars, with one drawing down soon, involving hundreds of thousands of men, millions of tons of equipment, and a group of guys making sure everyone gets what they need. Well, most of the time. Do you understand what a logistical magic show that is? It boggles my mind. That is not saying much about me. I boggle my own mind. Went to the store the other day and the attendant says, "Can I help you?" I had no idea if he could or not. So, I told him. He gave me the strangest look I have ever seen. Then he just stood there and stared at me. I don't know about him, but my parents taught me not to stare. He ignored me and asked the lady standing behind me if he could help her. Talk about rude! Well, I won't be going back in that store, again. Please, leave a comment. I don't care if it is rude or not. And, I promise you that you will not go to jail. Thanks, theblogmeister
Terror
Webster defines the word terror as 1)a state of intense fear 2)a.one that inspires fear b)a frightening aspect c)a cause of anxiety d)an appalling person or thing. When you look at the definition of a word, you appreciate the context on which the word was used. I have used the word terror to explain what,up until a few months ago, plagued me several nights per week. Think about that for a moment. To experience terror on a regular basis was a part of my life for 31 years. Can you imagine the stress that would cause? A state of intense fear. Think of the scariest movie you have ever seen or having someone jump out at you from a closed room. Whatever the scenario may be. One that inspires fear. Use your imagination. A John Carpenter movie. Someone pointing a gun at you demanding your money. A frightening aspect. We just about covered that one, too. A cause of anxiety. What makes you anxious? Public speaking? A car pulling out in front of you and you just barely missed him? An appalling person or thing. That could be a homeless man taking a swig of your cold drink. How about being the first to arrive on a fatal car crash? These actions are a great definition of terror. Now, can you imagine dealing with terror on a regular basis for many years? I bet I know what you are thinking. Fix the problem. Eliminate the terror.Problem solved. Right? eeehhh! When I graduated high school in 1977 I had made up my mind that I was going to be a doctor. My family, 4 boys and a girl, not counting my parents, Paying for college was out of the question. So, I joined the Air Force and became a medic with the intention of attending college to major in Pre- Med. The Air Force would then send me to Officers Training School ultimately, to medical school. I would then be indebted to the Air Force for the next 6 years practicing medicine. It was a perfect way to get a jump on the younger med students while learning the one thing that I had dreamed about since I was a kid; becoming an M.D. I had a good friend from South Carolina who had the same aspirations as I. He is an M.D. practicing medicine in Jefferson City, MO. My plans were derailed not long after meeting Col. DeBarge. You can look back through my old posts and find out just what experiencing terror on a regular basis will do to someone. It has been the hardest thing leaving the one profession that I loved. There was no way that I could stay after killing the Col. I had violated the trust and oath of the medical doctors. The part of the Hippocratic oath, " I will do no harm..." has played constantly for 31 years. It has cranked up, again. Thanks, theblogmeister
Sunday, August 8, 2010
I Am Afraid To Go Sleep
It is true. I am actually afraid to sleep after who paid me a visit last night. I have not felt this way in a long time. The past couple of months I have enjoyed sleeping through the night. Sounds like a small child, doesn't it? No, I am 51 years old and have been diagnosed as suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I was in the military, however, I was not in combat. So, how does one get such a diagnosis if that person has never been in a war. That is the very same question I asked my psychiatrist. It is rather simple. If a person has experienced a very traumatic event in his/her life and suffers the symptomatology the diagnosis of PTSD is made. PTSD is not handed down to someone who had experienced a bad day and as a result lost a few hours of sleep. PTSD is a very serious and scary disease. As you read in my two previous posts you would know what I mean. When I put the Col. out of his misery, a statement my therapist rather I use when I actually killed him, with his consent,(like that made it okay)I never imagined how that traumatic event affected me for the rest of my life. As I stated before, he took advantage of my youth, our friendship and convinced me it was much better than the continued extreme pain that he was about to endure. I did not want to do it, yet, he convinced me to carry it out. I made sure he had enough morphine in him as to not feel the pain of his heart stopping when I administered the potassium chloride. I walked out of his room in a daze made an immediate right turn down the stairwell and across the parking lot to my car. I do not remember driving home. The phone was ringing when I walked into the house. It was the hospital asking me to come back and gave me a lame excuse why I should return. I knew why I was going back. I hoped I didn't give myself away by my actions. The whole second floor knew how much the Col. meant to me. If a nurse had a problem starting an IV on another unit they would usually call me because I was so good at it. At most of the time that is where I would be found. Hanging out with the Col. He was a retired full bird fighter pilot in WWII and Korea and had some fantastic stories. I spent a lot of time with him. So, everyone was worried about how I would take the news that the Col. had died. I could feel their stares as I stepped off the elevator. I turned the corner and there were several nurses and Bunny, the Col.'s wife, standing there with eyes filled with tears. I broke down, not for his passing,however,because I caused so much pain in many people's lives. Especially Bunny. She stood by him through two wars, many,many deployments and the hardest thing he ever tried, living with a cancer that had metastasized. After we hugged and cried together she told me that the Col. wanted me to have his golf clubs. We both loved the game and he couldn't wait until Monday's to hear how I played that weekend. Sometimes I wonder if Bunny knew what I had done and agreed to it. I can't prove it. It is probably a way for me to ease the pain. The pain only got worse for me. Not the physical that the Col. was feeling but the emotional of what I had done. I got out of medicine and found the only thing that ease my pain. Drugs. After almost 15 years in prison I sought help through the Tuscaloosa VA. Those Vietnam Vets told me that my pain was no different from theirs. I stayed inpatient for a little over two months and started therapy with a great man at the Gadsden, AL. clinic. He did a lot for me. I guess I need to get back to doing what I did to drive the Col. from my dreams. I will still read articles and post ones I feel are important. I do not sign my name to someone else's post but this one has come from the heart. I am sorry, Bunny. I know ya'll are together and I pray that you will forgive me. Thanks for the memories. I love you, both. theblogmeister
Saturday, August 7, 2010
He's Back part 2
I did not think the Col. was serious. He was serious. You have to understand, I was a 19 year old kid. I grew to love that man. In retrospect, I can see what and why he was wanting me to end his life. If he committed suicide his wife, Bunny, could not collect any life insurance, pension, or anything. So, he played me masterfully. It took about 3 weeks for him to convince me it was the best for all. He did not take into consideration what it would do for me. I did it. It was painless and quick. I cried with Bunny and said how sorry I was. I did not tell her that I killed him. This was 31 years ago. He has been haunting me for 31 years. I had a great therapist who helped me more than anything. I had not dreamt of the Col. for a while until tonight. I guess I stopped doing what Tom suggested. I don't know. I have to put the Col. Back where he belongs. In the past. It is tough. theblogmeister
He's Back
It is almost 2am and most people are asleep. I was, until a few minutes ago. The Col. is back. Who is the colonel? He is the demon of my dreams. For those of you that do not know what I am talking about I ask you to go back and read some of my posts from a year ago. It helps me to tell it, so, I will. I was a young airman first class in the Air Force when I first met the Col. He was admitted on my floor because we had a single bed room that was not being used. I treated him as I did with all my patients, with care, empathy, and good medicine. We became close friends in no time. He was smart, intriging, and a pleasure to be around. He was also dying. It was a painful death, too. My commanding officer told me not to get too emotionally attached because of his impending death. I tried. The Col. asked that no other med tech care for him other than I. To appease him my C.O. told me that I was to take him as my patient on a full time basis. When I was not at work he would not let any other tech come into his room. He had a plan for me. After several months of inpatient treatment he asked me a question. "Would you put an end to all this, for me?" he asked. I asked him what he meant. He meant kill him. Of course I said NO! I'm sorry, I will have to finish this later. Thank you. theblogmeister
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Benefits for PTSD Diagnosed Veterans
In addition to the pensions and benefits to which you may be entitled because of both public and private employment, you may also be eligible for certain benefits based on your military service. The following is a summary of veteran's benefits and what you need to know about them:
Major Veteran Benefit Programs
PTSD Support
Important Documents
Eligibility
Application
Related Links
Major Veteran Benefit Programs
The Department of Veterans Administration operates a number of programs providing financial, medical and other assistance to veterans. For Americans who received an honorable or general discharge, there are 4 major benefit programs:
Disability compensation
Veteran's pension programs
Free or low-cost medical care through VA hospitals and medical facilities
Education Programs
There are also benefit programs concerning:
Housing and Home Loan Guarantees
Job Training
Small Businesses and business loans (Through Small Business Administration)
Counseling
Burials and Memorials
Franchise Opportunities (Vet Fran)
PTSD Support (National Center for PTSD Website)
PTSD Support
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is a disorder that occurs after a life-threatening event, such as personal assault, natural disaster, or military combat. The affects of PTSD can be debilitating with symptoms ranging from severe nightmares and flashbacks to insomnia and increasing social isolation. It is common for servicemembers to deal with post-combat depression, insomnia, nightmares and family issues; however, it's the duration and intensity that differentiates PTSD. Each military branch has programs for its servicemembers, and the Department of Veterans Affairs offers free counseling sessions. For more information on PTSD or VA assistance, go to the National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder website.
Important Documents:
If you are applying for a VA benefit for the first time you must submit a copy of your service discharge form (DD-214, DD-215, or for WWII veterans, a WD form), which documents your service dates and type of discharge, or give your full name, military service number, branch and dates of service.
Your service discharge form should be kept in a safe location accessible to the veteran and next of kin or designated representative. Your preference regarding burial in a national cemetery and use of a headstone provided by VA should be documented and kept with this information.
The following documents will be needed for claims processing related to a veteran's death: (1) veteran's marriage certificate for claims of a surviving spouse or children; (2) veteran's death certificate if the veteran did not die in a VA health care facility; (3) children's birth certificates or adoption papers to determine children's benefits; (4) veteran's birth certificate to determine parents' benefits.
VA Benefits Eligibility:
Eligibility for most VA benefits is based on discharge from active military service under other than dishonorable conditions. Active service means full-time service as a member of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, or as a commissioned officer of the Public Health Service, the Environmental Services Administration or the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Current and former members of the Selected Reserve:
You may be eligible for certain benefits, such as home loan guarantees and education, if you meet the time-in-service and other criteria.
Honorable and general discharges qualify a veteran for most VA benefits. Dishonorable and bad conduct discharges issued by general courts-martial may bar VA benefits. Veterans in prison and parolees may be eligible for certain VA benefits. VA regional offices can clarify the eligibility of prisoners, parolees and individuals with multiple discharges issued under differing conditions.
Major Veteran Benefit Programs
PTSD Support
Important Documents
Eligibility
Application
Related Links
Major Veteran Benefit Programs
The Department of Veterans Administration operates a number of programs providing financial, medical and other assistance to veterans. For Americans who received an honorable or general discharge, there are 4 major benefit programs:
Disability compensation
Veteran's pension programs
Free or low-cost medical care through VA hospitals and medical facilities
Education Programs
There are also benefit programs concerning:
Housing and Home Loan Guarantees
Job Training
Small Businesses and business loans (Through Small Business Administration)
Counseling
Burials and Memorials
Franchise Opportunities (Vet Fran)
PTSD Support (National Center for PTSD Website)
PTSD Support
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is a disorder that occurs after a life-threatening event, such as personal assault, natural disaster, or military combat. The affects of PTSD can be debilitating with symptoms ranging from severe nightmares and flashbacks to insomnia and increasing social isolation. It is common for servicemembers to deal with post-combat depression, insomnia, nightmares and family issues; however, it's the duration and intensity that differentiates PTSD. Each military branch has programs for its servicemembers, and the Department of Veterans Affairs offers free counseling sessions. For more information on PTSD or VA assistance, go to the National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder website.
Important Documents:
If you are applying for a VA benefit for the first time you must submit a copy of your service discharge form (DD-214, DD-215, or for WWII veterans, a WD form), which documents your service dates and type of discharge, or give your full name, military service number, branch and dates of service.
Your service discharge form should be kept in a safe location accessible to the veteran and next of kin or designated representative. Your preference regarding burial in a national cemetery and use of a headstone provided by VA should be documented and kept with this information.
The following documents will be needed for claims processing related to a veteran's death: (1) veteran's marriage certificate for claims of a surviving spouse or children; (2) veteran's death certificate if the veteran did not die in a VA health care facility; (3) children's birth certificates or adoption papers to determine children's benefits; (4) veteran's birth certificate to determine parents' benefits.
VA Benefits Eligibility:
Eligibility for most VA benefits is based on discharge from active military service under other than dishonorable conditions. Active service means full-time service as a member of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, or as a commissioned officer of the Public Health Service, the Environmental Services Administration or the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Current and former members of the Selected Reserve:
You may be eligible for certain benefits, such as home loan guarantees and education, if you meet the time-in-service and other criteria.
Honorable and general discharges qualify a veteran for most VA benefits. Dishonorable and bad conduct discharges issued by general courts-martial may bar VA benefits. Veterans in prison and parolees may be eligible for certain VA benefits. VA regional offices can clarify the eligibility of prisoners, parolees and individuals with multiple discharges issued under differing conditions.
A Happy Ending
U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Jeff Ethington returned home to Madison two days before Christmas after serving two back-to-back tours in Iraq. He's humble, but proud of what his unit accomplished.
"During the time that I was there we opened maybe four hospitals, six schools, and built all these parks all with the help of the 2nd Brigade, 2nd Cavalry Division," said Ethington.
Ethington's unit also trained Iraqi National Police and renovated one of the most dangerous boulevards in Baghdad, WISC-TV reported.
"It used to be known as Purple Heart Boulevard," said Ethington. "You'd get out of your truck and get shot at, you'd get out of your truck and someone would throw a grenade at you."
Ethington said he didn't dwell on the fact that he was in constant mortal danger.
"It was always in the back of my mind," he said.
In the back of his mind for the 29 months he served in Iraq.
After returning home in late December, Ethington re-enrolled in classes at the University of Wisconsin, eager to get back to his degree, back to his friends, back to his life.
"Between my first and second deployment, my brother said I didn't seem the same," said Ethington. "It seemed like I wasn't transitioning well. I thought about getting help then and then I got deployed again."
This time, when he re-entered campus, Ethington himself noticed the change.
"One specific day when school was starting, the crowds are bigger, you're always in the crowds, and you're in class. I just started to feel shaky and panicky, like really, really uncomfortable," he said.
Ethington was experiencing symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.
"PTSD looks the same whether you're someone who was tortured in Africa, or if you're a woman who's been raped, or you're a combat veteran," said Veterans Hospital psychologist Dr. Tracey Smith. "It's the body and mind's way to make sense of these terrible events."
PTSD is a serious anxiety disorder, health professionals said.
"We're evolutionarily primed to respond to danger," said Smith. "PTSD is that you were really good at responding to danger and threat and now that system is sort of over-sensitized."
Smith is part of a dedicated PTSD team at Madison's VA Hospital. The hospital had 352 PTSD referrals in 2007. In the first quarter of 2008, the numbers were up 38 percent, officials said.
She said PTSD usually peaks in soldiers four to six months after returning from Iraq. Symptoms can include re-experiencing the event.
"They are intrusive thoughts," explained Smith. "That you remember the event when you don't want or have to and you try to push the memory away and it just keeps coming back or chronic nightmares where the trauma gets played over and over again.
Another symptom is hyper-arousal.
"That is like an exaggerated startle response if they hear a car backfire, or they are always on edge," explained Smith. "When they go into a restaurant they have to sit with their back to the wall or they are always scanning the environment not sure who to trust."
Ethington said this is the symptom he was having trouble with.
"I went to the doctor and there was a fish tank. I sat next to the fish tank and that's all that was there, a few chairs next to me and I could see the whole room," said Ethington.
He also said he found it difficult to walk to class in the sea of students and was constantly scanning rooftops for snipers.
The final symptom for some veterans is avoidance or numbing.
"That means they work so hard to try to avoid thinking about the event or having their negative emotions work so hard at suppressing or they constrict their life so much to avoid being triggered by events that happen in the outside world that they end up sort of never working through the traumatic event," said Smith.
At Madison's Veterans Hospital, PTSD programs are individualized for each soldier. The hospital offers substance abuse programs, group sessions and classes for couples, but the most widely-used program for veterans is the Cognitive Processing Therapy, or CPT, which is a 12-week program where a veteran meets one-on-one with a therapist.
"We focus on the connection between events thoughts and feelings," said Smith. "We ask veterans to think about the traumatic events that occurred, write about those events, discuss them with the therapist and try to figure out, 'How do I make sense of this and fit it into my life now?'"
"It's difficult to do," said Ethington. "It's the stuff you don't want to remember, but if you keep it buried inside you're just going to keep having problems."
Ethington is a few weeks into his CPT.
For veterans who are unable or unwilling to write or talk about the most traumatic experiences, there is another form of CPT where no trauma is discussed in group, WISC-TV reported.
"We are trying to give access to care and reach out to veterans who are struggling," said Smith.
Reaching more veterans is why the VA Hospital also offers tele-mental health, where veterans don't have to come to Madison to meet with a therapist. They can attend therapy sessions in a private teleconference from a VA satellite clinic, anywhere across the state.
"For some veterans, that's it," said Smith. "They get markedly better with the treatment and don't feel they need more treatment."
But for veterans who don't seek treatment, PTSD could have long-lasting psychological and physical impacts on their lives and bodies. Smith likened it to a ripple effect.
"They have problems controlling their impulsivity and emotions so many times they'll end up getting divorced because they're not good at sitting down and rationally discussing things with their partners," said Smith. "Some veterans end up having multiple jobs because they get fired or divorced several times."
It can lead to depression and suicide, officials said.
Ethington said the sessions are helping him refocus on what is important in his life right now, which is his education.
"It's to help realize what happened in Baghdad is in Baghdad, here is civilian life. I don't need to be looking at rooftops looking for people who are going to try to shoot at me, I can walk down the street and be fine, these crowds, no one is going to try to blow themselves up in front of you and try to kill people here in Madison at all."
Ethington said if there is no additional deployment, he'll graduate in May 2009 and begin medical school. He's enlisted through 2013.
"During the time that I was there we opened maybe four hospitals, six schools, and built all these parks all with the help of the 2nd Brigade, 2nd Cavalry Division," said Ethington.
Ethington's unit also trained Iraqi National Police and renovated one of the most dangerous boulevards in Baghdad, WISC-TV reported.
"It used to be known as Purple Heart Boulevard," said Ethington. "You'd get out of your truck and get shot at, you'd get out of your truck and someone would throw a grenade at you."
Ethington said he didn't dwell on the fact that he was in constant mortal danger.
"It was always in the back of my mind," he said.
In the back of his mind for the 29 months he served in Iraq.
After returning home in late December, Ethington re-enrolled in classes at the University of Wisconsin, eager to get back to his degree, back to his friends, back to his life.
"Between my first and second deployment, my brother said I didn't seem the same," said Ethington. "It seemed like I wasn't transitioning well. I thought about getting help then and then I got deployed again."
This time, when he re-entered campus, Ethington himself noticed the change.
"One specific day when school was starting, the crowds are bigger, you're always in the crowds, and you're in class. I just started to feel shaky and panicky, like really, really uncomfortable," he said.
Ethington was experiencing symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.
"PTSD looks the same whether you're someone who was tortured in Africa, or if you're a woman who's been raped, or you're a combat veteran," said Veterans Hospital psychologist Dr. Tracey Smith. "It's the body and mind's way to make sense of these terrible events."
PTSD is a serious anxiety disorder, health professionals said.
"We're evolutionarily primed to respond to danger," said Smith. "PTSD is that you were really good at responding to danger and threat and now that system is sort of over-sensitized."
Smith is part of a dedicated PTSD team at Madison's VA Hospital. The hospital had 352 PTSD referrals in 2007. In the first quarter of 2008, the numbers were up 38 percent, officials said.
She said PTSD usually peaks in soldiers four to six months after returning from Iraq. Symptoms can include re-experiencing the event.
"They are intrusive thoughts," explained Smith. "That you remember the event when you don't want or have to and you try to push the memory away and it just keeps coming back or chronic nightmares where the trauma gets played over and over again.
Another symptom is hyper-arousal.
"That is like an exaggerated startle response if they hear a car backfire, or they are always on edge," explained Smith. "When they go into a restaurant they have to sit with their back to the wall or they are always scanning the environment not sure who to trust."
Ethington said this is the symptom he was having trouble with.
"I went to the doctor and there was a fish tank. I sat next to the fish tank and that's all that was there, a few chairs next to me and I could see the whole room," said Ethington.
He also said he found it difficult to walk to class in the sea of students and was constantly scanning rooftops for snipers.
The final symptom for some veterans is avoidance or numbing.
"That means they work so hard to try to avoid thinking about the event or having their negative emotions work so hard at suppressing or they constrict their life so much to avoid being triggered by events that happen in the outside world that they end up sort of never working through the traumatic event," said Smith.
At Madison's Veterans Hospital, PTSD programs are individualized for each soldier. The hospital offers substance abuse programs, group sessions and classes for couples, but the most widely-used program for veterans is the Cognitive Processing Therapy, or CPT, which is a 12-week program where a veteran meets one-on-one with a therapist.
"We focus on the connection between events thoughts and feelings," said Smith. "We ask veterans to think about the traumatic events that occurred, write about those events, discuss them with the therapist and try to figure out, 'How do I make sense of this and fit it into my life now?'"
"It's difficult to do," said Ethington. "It's the stuff you don't want to remember, but if you keep it buried inside you're just going to keep having problems."
Ethington is a few weeks into his CPT.
For veterans who are unable or unwilling to write or talk about the most traumatic experiences, there is another form of CPT where no trauma is discussed in group, WISC-TV reported.
"We are trying to give access to care and reach out to veterans who are struggling," said Smith.
Reaching more veterans is why the VA Hospital also offers tele-mental health, where veterans don't have to come to Madison to meet with a therapist. They can attend therapy sessions in a private teleconference from a VA satellite clinic, anywhere across the state.
"For some veterans, that's it," said Smith. "They get markedly better with the treatment and don't feel they need more treatment."
But for veterans who don't seek treatment, PTSD could have long-lasting psychological and physical impacts on their lives and bodies. Smith likened it to a ripple effect.
"They have problems controlling their impulsivity and emotions so many times they'll end up getting divorced because they're not good at sitting down and rationally discussing things with their partners," said Smith. "Some veterans end up having multiple jobs because they get fired or divorced several times."
It can lead to depression and suicide, officials said.
Ethington said the sessions are helping him refocus on what is important in his life right now, which is his education.
"It's to help realize what happened in Baghdad is in Baghdad, here is civilian life. I don't need to be looking at rooftops looking for people who are going to try to shoot at me, I can walk down the street and be fine, these crowds, no one is going to try to blow themselves up in front of you and try to kill people here in Madison at all."
Ethington said if there is no additional deployment, he'll graduate in May 2009 and begin medical school. He's enlisted through 2013.
Combat is not a symptom of PTSD
St. Paul, Minn. — Military officials released a statement Thursday saying a Minnesota Marine diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder never engaged in combat while deployed to Iraq.
Pvt. Travis Hafterson's mother, Jamie Hafterson, has spoken publicly about her son's diagnosis and raised questions about whether he will receive adequate treatment at Camp Lejeune, N.C. Her son, who went AWOL, turned himself in to Fort Snelling last week before going to the Marine base.
Based on medical assessments in Minnesota, a judge had ordered Hafterson to be committed to Regions Hospital in St. Paul for treatment of his mental illness. Instead, the military held Hafterson at Fort Snelling before taking him to Camp Lejeune.
Jamie Hafterson has said her son's PTSD is linked to serving two tours in Iraq, where she said he killed people and saw a suicide bomb seriously injure other Marines.
But on Thursday, Marine Maj. Kelly Frushour said a Marine Corps investigation on the matter showed Hafterson did not witness the bombing that injured a lieutenant in his command and did not engage in any combat while deployed. Frushour also said Hafterson did not kill anyone or even fire his weapon.
Frushour said in the statement that she couldn't release Hafterson's medical record because of privacy concerns. She said all Marines undergo a health assessment when returning from deployment that includes a review of the Marine's combat experiences and living conditions.
Pvt. Hafterson's attorney, Ron Bradley, said Thursday that he was "surprised and skeptical" of the Marines investigation, noting that a psychologist and psychiatrist in Minnesota had both found that Hafterson suffers from PTSD. Bradley also said Hafterson was part of an infantry unit, which he said makes it likely that he engaged in combat.
"Can I prove anything? No. I have no firsthand knowledge. Do I believe the military? No," Bradley said. "I believe my client."
Even if the Marines are correct and Hafterson never engaged in combat, Bradley said the 21-year-old still needs help.
"The kid's got mental health problems whether his allegations of what he experienced in combat are true or not," he said.
Jamie Hafterson said she hadn't yet seen the statement released by the Marines, but she said it doesn't sound right. Her son sent hand-written letters back home during his deployment describing his combat experiences, she said.
"He has way too much detail to be making it up," Hafterson said. "The stories are consistent, and I don't think he's reread the letters he sent."
Bradley said Pvt. Hafterson remains in custody at Camp Lejeune on charges of unauthorized absence.
I saw this story and thought it important enough to comment on. The military states that this soldier does not have PTSD because he was not involved in a combat situation. Bullshit! Our military needs to quit trying to diagnose soldiers, that is the job of the medical profession, not company commanders.
Pvt. Travis Hafterson's mother, Jamie Hafterson, has spoken publicly about her son's diagnosis and raised questions about whether he will receive adequate treatment at Camp Lejeune, N.C. Her son, who went AWOL, turned himself in to Fort Snelling last week before going to the Marine base.
Based on medical assessments in Minnesota, a judge had ordered Hafterson to be committed to Regions Hospital in St. Paul for treatment of his mental illness. Instead, the military held Hafterson at Fort Snelling before taking him to Camp Lejeune.
Jamie Hafterson has said her son's PTSD is linked to serving two tours in Iraq, where she said he killed people and saw a suicide bomb seriously injure other Marines.
But on Thursday, Marine Maj. Kelly Frushour said a Marine Corps investigation on the matter showed Hafterson did not witness the bombing that injured a lieutenant in his command and did not engage in any combat while deployed. Frushour also said Hafterson did not kill anyone or even fire his weapon.
Frushour said in the statement that she couldn't release Hafterson's medical record because of privacy concerns. She said all Marines undergo a health assessment when returning from deployment that includes a review of the Marine's combat experiences and living conditions.
Pvt. Hafterson's attorney, Ron Bradley, said Thursday that he was "surprised and skeptical" of the Marines investigation, noting that a psychologist and psychiatrist in Minnesota had both found that Hafterson suffers from PTSD. Bradley also said Hafterson was part of an infantry unit, which he said makes it likely that he engaged in combat.
"Can I prove anything? No. I have no firsthand knowledge. Do I believe the military? No," Bradley said. "I believe my client."
Even if the Marines are correct and Hafterson never engaged in combat, Bradley said the 21-year-old still needs help.
"The kid's got mental health problems whether his allegations of what he experienced in combat are true or not," he said.
Jamie Hafterson said she hadn't yet seen the statement released by the Marines, but she said it doesn't sound right. Her son sent hand-written letters back home during his deployment describing his combat experiences, she said.
"He has way too much detail to be making it up," Hafterson said. "The stories are consistent, and I don't think he's reread the letters he sent."
Bradley said Pvt. Hafterson remains in custody at Camp Lejeune on charges of unauthorized absence.
I saw this story and thought it important enough to comment on. The military states that this soldier does not have PTSD because he was not involved in a combat situation. Bullshit! Our military needs to quit trying to diagnose soldiers, that is the job of the medical profession, not company commanders.
Monday, August 2, 2010
The Military is Part of the PTSD Treatment Problem
Iraq war veteran Eric Jasinski, after seeking treatment for his post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), is being punished by the Army.
Jasinski turned himself in to the Army late last year, after having gone absent without leave (AWOL) in order to seek help for his PTSD. Help, he told Truthout, he was not receiving from the Army, even after requesting assistance on multiple occasions.
He was court-martialed and jailed for 25 days for having gone AWOL, during which time he was escorted in shackles to therapy sessions for his PTSD. After being released from prison, he was informed that he would be given an other-than-honorable discharge, which means he is likely ineligible for full PTSD treatment from the Veterans' Administration (V.A.) after he leaves the service.
Jasinski enlisted in the military in 2005, and deployed to Iraq in October 2006 as an intelligence analyst with the U.S. Army. He collected intelligence in order to put together strike packets - where air strikes would take place.
Upon his return to the U.S. after his tour, Jasinski was suffering from severe PTSD due to what he did and saw in Iraq, along with remorse and guilt for the work he did that he knows contributed to the loss of life in Iraq.
"What I saw and what I did in Iraq caused my PTSD," Jasinski, 23-years-old, told Truthout during a phone interview. "Also, I lost a good friend in Iraq, and I went through a divorce - she left right before I deployed - and my grandmother passed away when I was over there, so it was all super rough on me."
Upon returning home in December 2007, Jasinski tried to get treatment via the military. He was self-medicating by drinking heavily, and an over- burdened military mental health counselor sent him to see a civilian doctor, who diagnosed him with severe PTSD.
"I went to get help, but I had an eight hour wait to see one of five doctors. But after several attempts, finally I got a periodic check up and I told that counselor what was happening, and he said they'd help me... but I ended up getting a letter that instructed me to go see a civilian doctor, and she diagnosed me with PTSD," Jasinski explained. "Then, I was taking the medications and they were helping, because I thought I was to get out of the Army in February 2009 when my contract expired."
As the date approached, Jasinski was stop-lossed (an involuntary extension of his contract), an event that he said "pushed me over the edge" because he was told he was to be sent to Iraq within a month.
During his pre-deployment processing, "They gave me a 90-day supply of meds to get me over to Iraq, and I saw a counselor during that period, and I told him,' I don't know what I'm going to do if I go back to Iraq.'"
"He asked if I was suicidal," Jasinski explained, "and I said not right now, I'm not planning on going home and blowing my brains out. He said, 'Well, you're good to go then.' And he sent me on my way. I knew at that moment, when they finalized my paperwork for Iraq, that there was no way I could go back with my untreated PTSD. I needed more help."
Jasinski went AWOL, where he remained out of service until Dec. 11, 2009, when he returned to turn himself in to authorities at Fort Hood, in Killeen, Texas.
"He has heavy-duty PTSD and never would have gone AWOL if he'd gotten the help he needed from the military," James Branum, Jasinski's civilian lawyer, told Truthout. "This case highlights the need of the military to provide better mental health care for its soldiers."
Branum, who is also co-chair of the Military Law Task Force, told Truthout in December, "Our hope is that his unit won't court-martial him, but puts him in a warrior transition unit where they will evaluate him to either treat him or give him a medical discharge. He'd be safe there, and eventually, they'd give him a medical discharge because his PTSD symptoms are so severe."
But the Army scheduled a Summary Court Martial for March 31. At it, Jasinski was sentenced to 30 days in the Bell County Jail in Texas. Laura Barrett, Jasinski's mother, told the Temple Herald Telegram, "This has been a total outrage. I cannot believe my son who is diagnosed with PTSD from his deployment to Iraq would be sent to jail."
Branum submitted a clemency request asking that Jasinski be released on mental health grounds, or that he be transferred to the psych ward at Darnall Army Medical Center to complete his sentence. The Army did not respond.
Branum said, "We, as Americans, need to see how combat vets are treated today. Eric is in jail because he has PTSD and was denied the care he needed. His 'desertion' was an act of desperation, the act of a soldier who had no other options."
Jasinski wrote a letter from the Bell County Jail that said the following:
"When I am taken out of jail back to Fort Hood for any appointments I am led around in handcuffs and ankle shackles in front of crowds of soldiers... which is overwhelming on my mind. My guilt from treating prisoners in Iraq sub-human and I did things to them and watched my unit do cruel actions against prisoners, so being humiliated like that forces me to fall into the dark spiral of guilt. I now know what it feels like to have no rights and have people stare and judge based on your shackles and I feel even more like a monster cause I used to do this to Iraqi people.
"Even worse is the fact that this boils down to the military failing to treat my PTSD but I am being punished for it... I feel as if I am being a threat to others or myself and still the Army mental health professional blow me off just like in 2009 when I felt like I had no choice but to go AWOL, since I received a 5 minute mental evaluation and was stop-lossed despite my PTSD, and was told that they could do nothing for me. The insufficient mental evaluation from a doctor I had never seen before, combined with the insufficient actions by the doctor on 9 April show the Army is not trying to make progress."
Jasinski was released from jail on April 24, having served 25 days of a 30-day sentence. He has since been informed he will receive an other-than-honorable discharge, which means he will not have full health benefits with the Veterans' Administration, and thus little to no assistance from the military for treating his PTSD.
According to the Army, every year from 2006 onwards has seen a record number of reported and confirmed suicides. A 2008 Rand Corporation report revealed that at least 300,000 veterans returning from both wars had been diagnosed with severe depression or PTSD.
Jasinski's case is representative of a growing number of soldiers returning from the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan who are going AWOL when they are unable to get proper mental health care treatment from the military for their PTSD.
Jaskinski's experience with the military has inspired him to offer advice for other soldiers who need PTSD treatment but are not receiving it.
When asked what he feels the military needs to do in order to rectify this problem, he said, "A total overhaul of the mental health sector in the military is needed... we had nine psychiatrists at our center, and that's simply not enough staff, they are going to get burned out after seeing 50 soldiers each in one day. We need an overhaul of the entire system, and more good psychiatrists, not those just coming for a job, but good, experienced mental health professionals need to be involved."
Chuck Luther, who served 12 years in the military, is a veteran of two deployments to Iraq, where he was a reconnaissance scout in the 1st Cavalry Division. The former sergeant was based at Fort Hood, Texas, where he lives today. Luther told Truthout in November that the military tried to discharge him without assisting him with his PTSD, instead diagnosing him with "personality disorder."
In response, Luther went on to found and direct "The Soldier's Advocacy Group of Disposable Warriors."
"The way things are set up right now in the military is that if a soldier gets a chance to go to mental health, which is something military commanders tend to try to prevent from happening in the first place, but if soldiers go, psychologists and psychiatrists address and diagnose their PTSD and write it up, but this does not mean that they will get treatment," Luther explained to Truthout.
At the time, he described a situation very similar to that of Jasinski's.
"The doctors then send it to command, but that doesn't mean the soldiers will get treatment," said Luther. "The soldier can push it up to the commander, but the commander can deny it and that's as high as it gets. Soldiers are listed as not being able to serve by a military doctor, but they are nonetheless medicated and sent out into combat anyway."
"The military is trying to get everybody these 'other-than-honorable discharges' or diagnosing them with 'personality disorder' so they don't have to take care of them after they discharge," Aaron Hughes, an Iraq war vet, told Truthout.
Hughes, a national organizer for the group Iraq Veteran's Against the War, said that Jasinski was already involved in the paperwork process required by the military for him to receive a medical discharge.
"This was underway when he went to jail," Hughes added, "He would do his time for going AWOL, then get a medical discharge. Instead, they are switching this mid-stream and giving him an 'other-than-honorable' discharge, which means he gets no benefits. My main concern is that he did his time and did everything he was supposed to do, and they are still not living up to their side of the bargain."
Kernan Manion is a board-certified psychiatrist who treated Marines returning from war who suffer from PTSD and other acute mental problems born from their deployments, at Camp Lejeune - the largest Marine base on the East Coast. While he was engaged in this work, Manion warned his superiors of the extent and complexity of the systemic problems, and he was deeply worried about the possibility of these leading to violence on the base and within surrounding communities.
"If not more Fort Hoods, Camp Liberties, soldier fratricide, spousal homicide, we'll see it individually in suicides, alcohol abuse, domestic violence, family dysfunction, in formerly fine young men coming back and saying, as I've heard so many times, 'I'm not cut out for society. I can't stand people. I can't tolerate commotion. I need to live in the woods,'" Manion explained to Truthout. "That's what we're going to have. Broken, not contributing, not functional members of society. It infuriates me - what they are doing to these guys, because it's so ineptly run by a system that values rank and power more than anything else - so we're stuck throwing money into a fragmented system of inept clinics and the crisis goes on."
"It's not just that we're going to have an immensity of people coming back, but the system itself is thwarting their effective treatment," said Manion.
Jasinski told Truthout that his previous commander, who he referred to as Captain Floer, told his mother that Jasinski was "faking my PTSD symptoms," since "the job he held {in Iraq] was behind a computer."
While in jail, Jasinski was denied access to his regular therapy sessions. He was taken periodically to other sessions, but he told Truthout, "The mental health center on Fort Hood told me I had to wait for more help."
At a later session at the same center, Jasinski said,"I was told upon my follow-up visit that my suicidal ideations were all in my head and was sent on my way."
"Again the military is casting its soldiers aside, and shows no mercy for soldiers or their families," Jasinski told Truthout, "I do not want their money, but I want them to at least acknowledge and act upon the problems in order to repair the broken system. I want them to take action instead of worrying about public relations."
Jasinski turned himself in to the Army late last year, after having gone absent without leave (AWOL) in order to seek help for his PTSD. Help, he told Truthout, he was not receiving from the Army, even after requesting assistance on multiple occasions.
He was court-martialed and jailed for 25 days for having gone AWOL, during which time he was escorted in shackles to therapy sessions for his PTSD. After being released from prison, he was informed that he would be given an other-than-honorable discharge, which means he is likely ineligible for full PTSD treatment from the Veterans' Administration (V.A.) after he leaves the service.
Jasinski enlisted in the military in 2005, and deployed to Iraq in October 2006 as an intelligence analyst with the U.S. Army. He collected intelligence in order to put together strike packets - where air strikes would take place.
Upon his return to the U.S. after his tour, Jasinski was suffering from severe PTSD due to what he did and saw in Iraq, along with remorse and guilt for the work he did that he knows contributed to the loss of life in Iraq.
"What I saw and what I did in Iraq caused my PTSD," Jasinski, 23-years-old, told Truthout during a phone interview. "Also, I lost a good friend in Iraq, and I went through a divorce - she left right before I deployed - and my grandmother passed away when I was over there, so it was all super rough on me."
Upon returning home in December 2007, Jasinski tried to get treatment via the military. He was self-medicating by drinking heavily, and an over- burdened military mental health counselor sent him to see a civilian doctor, who diagnosed him with severe PTSD.
"I went to get help, but I had an eight hour wait to see one of five doctors. But after several attempts, finally I got a periodic check up and I told that counselor what was happening, and he said they'd help me... but I ended up getting a letter that instructed me to go see a civilian doctor, and she diagnosed me with PTSD," Jasinski explained. "Then, I was taking the medications and they were helping, because I thought I was to get out of the Army in February 2009 when my contract expired."
As the date approached, Jasinski was stop-lossed (an involuntary extension of his contract), an event that he said "pushed me over the edge" because he was told he was to be sent to Iraq within a month.
During his pre-deployment processing, "They gave me a 90-day supply of meds to get me over to Iraq, and I saw a counselor during that period, and I told him,' I don't know what I'm going to do if I go back to Iraq.'"
"He asked if I was suicidal," Jasinski explained, "and I said not right now, I'm not planning on going home and blowing my brains out. He said, 'Well, you're good to go then.' And he sent me on my way. I knew at that moment, when they finalized my paperwork for Iraq, that there was no way I could go back with my untreated PTSD. I needed more help."
Jasinski went AWOL, where he remained out of service until Dec. 11, 2009, when he returned to turn himself in to authorities at Fort Hood, in Killeen, Texas.
"He has heavy-duty PTSD and never would have gone AWOL if he'd gotten the help he needed from the military," James Branum, Jasinski's civilian lawyer, told Truthout. "This case highlights the need of the military to provide better mental health care for its soldiers."
Branum, who is also co-chair of the Military Law Task Force, told Truthout in December, "Our hope is that his unit won't court-martial him, but puts him in a warrior transition unit where they will evaluate him to either treat him or give him a medical discharge. He'd be safe there, and eventually, they'd give him a medical discharge because his PTSD symptoms are so severe."
But the Army scheduled a Summary Court Martial for March 31. At it, Jasinski was sentenced to 30 days in the Bell County Jail in Texas. Laura Barrett, Jasinski's mother, told the Temple Herald Telegram, "This has been a total outrage. I cannot believe my son who is diagnosed with PTSD from his deployment to Iraq would be sent to jail."
Branum submitted a clemency request asking that Jasinski be released on mental health grounds, or that he be transferred to the psych ward at Darnall Army Medical Center to complete his sentence. The Army did not respond.
Branum said, "We, as Americans, need to see how combat vets are treated today. Eric is in jail because he has PTSD and was denied the care he needed. His 'desertion' was an act of desperation, the act of a soldier who had no other options."
Jasinski wrote a letter from the Bell County Jail that said the following:
"When I am taken out of jail back to Fort Hood for any appointments I am led around in handcuffs and ankle shackles in front of crowds of soldiers... which is overwhelming on my mind. My guilt from treating prisoners in Iraq sub-human and I did things to them and watched my unit do cruel actions against prisoners, so being humiliated like that forces me to fall into the dark spiral of guilt. I now know what it feels like to have no rights and have people stare and judge based on your shackles and I feel even more like a monster cause I used to do this to Iraqi people.
"Even worse is the fact that this boils down to the military failing to treat my PTSD but I am being punished for it... I feel as if I am being a threat to others or myself and still the Army mental health professional blow me off just like in 2009 when I felt like I had no choice but to go AWOL, since I received a 5 minute mental evaluation and was stop-lossed despite my PTSD, and was told that they could do nothing for me. The insufficient mental evaluation from a doctor I had never seen before, combined with the insufficient actions by the doctor on 9 April show the Army is not trying to make progress."
Jasinski was released from jail on April 24, having served 25 days of a 30-day sentence. He has since been informed he will receive an other-than-honorable discharge, which means he will not have full health benefits with the Veterans' Administration, and thus little to no assistance from the military for treating his PTSD.
According to the Army, every year from 2006 onwards has seen a record number of reported and confirmed suicides. A 2008 Rand Corporation report revealed that at least 300,000 veterans returning from both wars had been diagnosed with severe depression or PTSD.
Jasinski's case is representative of a growing number of soldiers returning from the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan who are going AWOL when they are unable to get proper mental health care treatment from the military for their PTSD.
Jaskinski's experience with the military has inspired him to offer advice for other soldiers who need PTSD treatment but are not receiving it.
When asked what he feels the military needs to do in order to rectify this problem, he said, "A total overhaul of the mental health sector in the military is needed... we had nine psychiatrists at our center, and that's simply not enough staff, they are going to get burned out after seeing 50 soldiers each in one day. We need an overhaul of the entire system, and more good psychiatrists, not those just coming for a job, but good, experienced mental health professionals need to be involved."
Chuck Luther, who served 12 years in the military, is a veteran of two deployments to Iraq, where he was a reconnaissance scout in the 1st Cavalry Division. The former sergeant was based at Fort Hood, Texas, where he lives today. Luther told Truthout in November that the military tried to discharge him without assisting him with his PTSD, instead diagnosing him with "personality disorder."
In response, Luther went on to found and direct "The Soldier's Advocacy Group of Disposable Warriors."
"The way things are set up right now in the military is that if a soldier gets a chance to go to mental health, which is something military commanders tend to try to prevent from happening in the first place, but if soldiers go, psychologists and psychiatrists address and diagnose their PTSD and write it up, but this does not mean that they will get treatment," Luther explained to Truthout.
At the time, he described a situation very similar to that of Jasinski's.
"The doctors then send it to command, but that doesn't mean the soldiers will get treatment," said Luther. "The soldier can push it up to the commander, but the commander can deny it and that's as high as it gets. Soldiers are listed as not being able to serve by a military doctor, but they are nonetheless medicated and sent out into combat anyway."
"The military is trying to get everybody these 'other-than-honorable discharges' or diagnosing them with 'personality disorder' so they don't have to take care of them after they discharge," Aaron Hughes, an Iraq war vet, told Truthout.
Hughes, a national organizer for the group Iraq Veteran's Against the War, said that Jasinski was already involved in the paperwork process required by the military for him to receive a medical discharge.
"This was underway when he went to jail," Hughes added, "He would do his time for going AWOL, then get a medical discharge. Instead, they are switching this mid-stream and giving him an 'other-than-honorable' discharge, which means he gets no benefits. My main concern is that he did his time and did everything he was supposed to do, and they are still not living up to their side of the bargain."
Kernan Manion is a board-certified psychiatrist who treated Marines returning from war who suffer from PTSD and other acute mental problems born from their deployments, at Camp Lejeune - the largest Marine base on the East Coast. While he was engaged in this work, Manion warned his superiors of the extent and complexity of the systemic problems, and he was deeply worried about the possibility of these leading to violence on the base and within surrounding communities.
"If not more Fort Hoods, Camp Liberties, soldier fratricide, spousal homicide, we'll see it individually in suicides, alcohol abuse, domestic violence, family dysfunction, in formerly fine young men coming back and saying, as I've heard so many times, 'I'm not cut out for society. I can't stand people. I can't tolerate commotion. I need to live in the woods,'" Manion explained to Truthout. "That's what we're going to have. Broken, not contributing, not functional members of society. It infuriates me - what they are doing to these guys, because it's so ineptly run by a system that values rank and power more than anything else - so we're stuck throwing money into a fragmented system of inept clinics and the crisis goes on."
"It's not just that we're going to have an immensity of people coming back, but the system itself is thwarting their effective treatment," said Manion.
Jasinski told Truthout that his previous commander, who he referred to as Captain Floer, told his mother that Jasinski was "faking my PTSD symptoms," since "the job he held {in Iraq] was behind a computer."
While in jail, Jasinski was denied access to his regular therapy sessions. He was taken periodically to other sessions, but he told Truthout, "The mental health center on Fort Hood told me I had to wait for more help."
At a later session at the same center, Jasinski said,"I was told upon my follow-up visit that my suicidal ideations were all in my head and was sent on my way."
"Again the military is casting its soldiers aside, and shows no mercy for soldiers or their families," Jasinski told Truthout, "I do not want their money, but I want them to at least acknowledge and act upon the problems in order to repair the broken system. I want them to take action instead of worrying about public relations."
A Soldier's Nightmare and a Family's Love
Combat Veteran Pat Lamoureux
Pat survived really awful circumstances while serving in Iraq. He's haunted by the memory of a girl in her early teens who blew herself up near his heavy equipment transport truck. He said she, "came out of nowhere."
He talked about a firefight near the airport in Baghdad. Staff Sergeant Robert J. Brown, Lamoureux's convoy commander on the majority of his missions, talked about how the convoys were shot at "day and night." "If you stopped, you got shot. We were sitting ducks outside of that wall, wire, perimeter or sand berm."
Brown said, "When Pat says what happened at the airport, that happened." Any of us can only imagine. I don't know very much about Iraq, but I have been to that airport and it isn't in an extremely secure part of the city. I can only imagine how horrific the circumstances were that this Nevada soldier survived[1].
Pat also talked about an old man with a donkey, who would not stop when soldiers ordered him to and was shot. Sue told a reporter that, "To this day Pat believes the old man may have been deaf, and the image of him haunts Pat."
Pat Lamoureux serving in Iraq
These stories leave behind many important, unanswered questions. These soldiers were put through things that no human being can easily withstand. Pat was eventually evacuated for a respiratory disorder. Just after that, one of his friends and fellow soldiers from Las Vegas was killed when his truck was struck, as he was changing a tire on his military vehicle in Kuwait.
Staff Sgt. Cameron Sarno was in the same Army Reserve group, the Las Vegas-based 257th "Rolling Thunder" Transportation Company.
Sue Lamoureux told the Las Vegas Review Journal, "That night before things spiraled out of control, Pat was screaming, 'Sarno' at me. I told him there wasn't anything about that situation that was his fault."
She added that he screamed again. "Sarno, you don't know.... I could have kept him from dying."
This is what he was talking about before things spun out of control that night at Terrible's Lakeside RV Park and Casino in Pahrump[2]..
Sue knows why Pat couldn't hold it together. We have written many times about the 'legal' prescription drugs that are so often prescribed to veterans with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. According to reports from the Nye County, Nevada Sheriff's Office, Pat Lamoureux was prescribed no less than 14 such drugs, possibly more[3].
Pat Lamoureux was out of control to the point that his wife Sue had to leave. That is when things really began to spin out of control. Pat fired several rounds at Sue's laptop computer and this brought the instant response from Local Nye County deputies.
When they pulled up, a gunbattle quickly ensued, and both Pat Lamoureux and a deputy named Eric Murphy were wounded, with non-life threatening gunshot injuries.
The Las Vegas Review Journal reports that Lamoureux was interviewed several hours after the shooting, after he had been transported to the Nye County Detention Center.
When Officer James Chandler asked, "You know why I am here." Lamoureux is said to have replied, "No, I don't even know what my charges are."
When Chandler began naming the charges, including attempted murder and battery on a police officer, "Lamoureux slumped forward and asked if the officer he shot was OK."
This former U.S. Army soldier has a huge family that supports him without question
Chandler wrote. "I told him the officer will be OK."
Lamoureux then inquired about his wife, and asked again if the officer would survive.
"I told him both were OK. Lamoureux still slumped forward was crying and said nothing," Chandler stated in a narrative filed two months after the shooting[4].
The former Army Reserve sergeant pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity when he was arraigned on the charges. Salem-News.com's Dr. Phil Leveque, a WWII Combat Veteran, PTSD patient and doctor to hundreds of PTSD patients from multiple wars, said that is not hard to believe at all.
More of Pat's family, Mica & Heather, grandson Kain
"These guys have been through Hell and back, few people can understand their experience unless they have been through it themselves. Take the PTSD and add a bunch of prescription drugs to the mix, and you are setting a person up for real trouble," Leveque said.
Sue Lamoureux said of her husband, "This is a great man who had NEVER been in trouble IN HIS LIFE. What makes someone reach the age of 46 years old - and then they SUDDENLY decide that getting into a gunbattle with 4 law enforcement officers is a great idea?"
"He wasn't a "bad guy" - and there was no "battle plan", there was no malice or hatred of law enforcement in Pat Lamoureux's mind. There were VAST amounts of psychotropic drugs all prescribed by the VA, but there was no intention on Pat Lamoureux's part to purposely facilitate the events of September 19, 2008."
Indeed, records indicate that Pat Lamoureux had a clean record prior to September 19, 2008.
His wife says Combat Veterans deserve a second chance if they become involved in the criminal justice system. As Americans in a modern society, incarcerating Veterans instead of offering in-patient jail diversion programs is barbaric in her opinion and that of many others.
"These brave soldiers were willing to sacrifice their lives in combat - not sacrifice their lives sitting in a jail cell. As Americans, we owe our Veterans more than we are giving them."
Pat Lamoureux - 100% disabled Iraq Veteran
She says she is tired of the perception that our law enforcement officers are on a higher level than anyone else.
"Especially, that they are on a higher level than our combat veterans. A large number of them will retire never having pulled the trigger on their weapon except when they had to qualify on the shooting range."
She says what is also devastating is that the "local justice system" sees it fit to send a man away for what will be the rest of his life - when that man had never been in trouble in his life. We can offer jail diversion programs to drug addicts - but we can't offer jail diversion programs to Veterans who are first time offenders."
She says the VA has shown support lately, and for that she is grateful.
"Our country has failed Pat Lamoureux; Nye County, Nevada is trying to crucify Pat Lamoureux. By the time Pat Lamoureux even gets a trial, he will have been sitting in a county jail for 22 MONTHS - 22 months of his life wasted, he could have been getting in-patient treatment instead of being incarcerated."
She says the idea of endlessly incarcerating an Iraq War Veteran is bad enough, but that it gets even worse.
"Of course, there is also the issue of the ACLU's investigation of the detention facility that Pat is being housed in - and that it falls below Federal standards and should be deemed uninhabitable. There is the issue of the bullet that was left in his leg on September 19, 2008 - that burst open and started oozing in August 2009 - and the bullet is still in his leg... This is how Americans say, 'Thank you for your service', but oh my God - Pat Lamoureux was involved in an incident with Law Enforcement - and NOBODY wants to talk about this Veteran's heartbreaking story."
Well Sue, for what it is worth, I greatly respect your courage through all of this. I don't know how much more of a challenge you could be faced with, but I do know that law enforcement in the backwaters of Nevada can be shabby. We learned this sadly, when my friend and fellow war photojournalist Caleb Schaber supposedly killed himself, but we'll never really know, since the deputies there conducted a botched investigation[1].
I hope people reading this story will take the time to learn more about Pat Lamoureux, and all of the other Combat Veterans who are in his shoes. Links below will take you to vital information about his case, and there is a lot of information on Pat that goes beyond what I have stated here. It isn't a theory that he put his life completely on the line for the rest of us in this country, Iraq is a Hellish place to have your psyche splattered with the blood and guts of other human beings. The little girl, the old man with the donkey, the firefight at the Baghdad Airport, it is just unimaginable. Then to be placed on so many 'legal' drugs by doctors, it is such a shame.
If you want to do something that won't cost anything, open these Websites and contact Nevada's political leaders, and ask them what they are doing to help Pat Lamoureux in light of these unusual circumstances, his previously clean record, honorable military service, and the fact that he was out of his mind on legal prescription drugs that he was told to take.
Pat survived really awful circumstances while serving in Iraq. He's haunted by the memory of a girl in her early teens who blew herself up near his heavy equipment transport truck. He said she, "came out of nowhere."
He talked about a firefight near the airport in Baghdad. Staff Sergeant Robert J. Brown, Lamoureux's convoy commander on the majority of his missions, talked about how the convoys were shot at "day and night." "If you stopped, you got shot. We were sitting ducks outside of that wall, wire, perimeter or sand berm."
Brown said, "When Pat says what happened at the airport, that happened." Any of us can only imagine. I don't know very much about Iraq, but I have been to that airport and it isn't in an extremely secure part of the city. I can only imagine how horrific the circumstances were that this Nevada soldier survived[1].
Pat also talked about an old man with a donkey, who would not stop when soldiers ordered him to and was shot. Sue told a reporter that, "To this day Pat believes the old man may have been deaf, and the image of him haunts Pat."
Pat Lamoureux serving in Iraq
These stories leave behind many important, unanswered questions. These soldiers were put through things that no human being can easily withstand. Pat was eventually evacuated for a respiratory disorder. Just after that, one of his friends and fellow soldiers from Las Vegas was killed when his truck was struck, as he was changing a tire on his military vehicle in Kuwait.
Staff Sgt. Cameron Sarno was in the same Army Reserve group, the Las Vegas-based 257th "Rolling Thunder" Transportation Company.
Sue Lamoureux told the Las Vegas Review Journal, "That night before things spiraled out of control, Pat was screaming, 'Sarno' at me. I told him there wasn't anything about that situation that was his fault."
She added that he screamed again. "Sarno, you don't know.... I could have kept him from dying."
This is what he was talking about before things spun out of control that night at Terrible's Lakeside RV Park and Casino in Pahrump[2]..
Sue knows why Pat couldn't hold it together. We have written many times about the 'legal' prescription drugs that are so often prescribed to veterans with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. According to reports from the Nye County, Nevada Sheriff's Office, Pat Lamoureux was prescribed no less than 14 such drugs, possibly more[3].
Pat Lamoureux was out of control to the point that his wife Sue had to leave. That is when things really began to spin out of control. Pat fired several rounds at Sue's laptop computer and this brought the instant response from Local Nye County deputies.
When they pulled up, a gunbattle quickly ensued, and both Pat Lamoureux and a deputy named Eric Murphy were wounded, with non-life threatening gunshot injuries.
The Las Vegas Review Journal reports that Lamoureux was interviewed several hours after the shooting, after he had been transported to the Nye County Detention Center.
When Officer James Chandler asked, "You know why I am here." Lamoureux is said to have replied, "No, I don't even know what my charges are."
When Chandler began naming the charges, including attempted murder and battery on a police officer, "Lamoureux slumped forward and asked if the officer he shot was OK."
This former U.S. Army soldier has a huge family that supports him without question
Chandler wrote. "I told him the officer will be OK."
Lamoureux then inquired about his wife, and asked again if the officer would survive.
"I told him both were OK. Lamoureux still slumped forward was crying and said nothing," Chandler stated in a narrative filed two months after the shooting[4].
The former Army Reserve sergeant pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity when he was arraigned on the charges. Salem-News.com's Dr. Phil Leveque, a WWII Combat Veteran, PTSD patient and doctor to hundreds of PTSD patients from multiple wars, said that is not hard to believe at all.
More of Pat's family, Mica & Heather, grandson Kain
"These guys have been through Hell and back, few people can understand their experience unless they have been through it themselves. Take the PTSD and add a bunch of prescription drugs to the mix, and you are setting a person up for real trouble," Leveque said.
Sue Lamoureux said of her husband, "This is a great man who had NEVER been in trouble IN HIS LIFE. What makes someone reach the age of 46 years old - and then they SUDDENLY decide that getting into a gunbattle with 4 law enforcement officers is a great idea?"
"He wasn't a "bad guy" - and there was no "battle plan", there was no malice or hatred of law enforcement in Pat Lamoureux's mind. There were VAST amounts of psychotropic drugs all prescribed by the VA, but there was no intention on Pat Lamoureux's part to purposely facilitate the events of September 19, 2008."
Indeed, records indicate that Pat Lamoureux had a clean record prior to September 19, 2008.
His wife says Combat Veterans deserve a second chance if they become involved in the criminal justice system. As Americans in a modern society, incarcerating Veterans instead of offering in-patient jail diversion programs is barbaric in her opinion and that of many others.
"These brave soldiers were willing to sacrifice their lives in combat - not sacrifice their lives sitting in a jail cell. As Americans, we owe our Veterans more than we are giving them."
Pat Lamoureux - 100% disabled Iraq Veteran
She says she is tired of the perception that our law enforcement officers are on a higher level than anyone else.
"Especially, that they are on a higher level than our combat veterans. A large number of them will retire never having pulled the trigger on their weapon except when they had to qualify on the shooting range."
She says what is also devastating is that the "local justice system" sees it fit to send a man away for what will be the rest of his life - when that man had never been in trouble in his life. We can offer jail diversion programs to drug addicts - but we can't offer jail diversion programs to Veterans who are first time offenders."
She says the VA has shown support lately, and for that she is grateful.
"Our country has failed Pat Lamoureux; Nye County, Nevada is trying to crucify Pat Lamoureux. By the time Pat Lamoureux even gets a trial, he will have been sitting in a county jail for 22 MONTHS - 22 months of his life wasted, he could have been getting in-patient treatment instead of being incarcerated."
She says the idea of endlessly incarcerating an Iraq War Veteran is bad enough, but that it gets even worse.
"Of course, there is also the issue of the ACLU's investigation of the detention facility that Pat is being housed in - and that it falls below Federal standards and should be deemed uninhabitable. There is the issue of the bullet that was left in his leg on September 19, 2008 - that burst open and started oozing in August 2009 - and the bullet is still in his leg... This is how Americans say, 'Thank you for your service', but oh my God - Pat Lamoureux was involved in an incident with Law Enforcement - and NOBODY wants to talk about this Veteran's heartbreaking story."
Well Sue, for what it is worth, I greatly respect your courage through all of this. I don't know how much more of a challenge you could be faced with, but I do know that law enforcement in the backwaters of Nevada can be shabby. We learned this sadly, when my friend and fellow war photojournalist Caleb Schaber supposedly killed himself, but we'll never really know, since the deputies there conducted a botched investigation[1].
I hope people reading this story will take the time to learn more about Pat Lamoureux, and all of the other Combat Veterans who are in his shoes. Links below will take you to vital information about his case, and there is a lot of information on Pat that goes beyond what I have stated here. It isn't a theory that he put his life completely on the line for the rest of us in this country, Iraq is a Hellish place to have your psyche splattered with the blood and guts of other human beings. The little girl, the old man with the donkey, the firefight at the Baghdad Airport, it is just unimaginable. Then to be placed on so many 'legal' drugs by doctors, it is such a shame.
If you want to do something that won't cost anything, open these Websites and contact Nevada's political leaders, and ask them what they are doing to help Pat Lamoureux in light of these unusual circumstances, his previously clean record, honorable military service, and the fact that he was out of his mind on legal prescription drugs that he was told to take.
Bama Haters; Read This
.
First of all, Alabama has done nothing wrong in the Marcell Dareus situation and has zero, and I repeat zero chance of anything ever happening to the school because of it.
Why?
They self reported themselves, and turned the matter over to the NCAA to come and see for themselves the facts of the case.
Since Marcell hasn't played a down since "Partygate" that has involved so many players, and since he won't until cleared by the NCAA, there is once again zero chance of any penalties to the team.
Now, let's turn to Marcell.
Marcell Dareus would only be in trouble if he took anything of value from an agent, booster or some other person the NCAA deems a problem. In this case, that would be transportation to from or at the site, lodging while there, food, drinks, money or any other item or service that has value.
Let's deal with them one by one.
Transportation: The ticket he flew down on was allegedly purchased by his friend Marvin Austin, a senior defensive lineman from North Carolina who is also being investigated.
The two met when Marcell made his official visit to North Carolina, and Austin served as his host. Though Marcell chose Alabama, the two remained good friends.
Austin thought a nice weekend in South Florida would be both payback for a personal promise of a nice trip should Alabama win the the championship that Austin promised Dareus, but also to take his mind of his mother for a few days.
Marcell did not want even the hint of this ticket being anything wrong, so when his buddy met him in South Florida, Dareus repaid him and all but demanded a receipt. He has one,and it was shown to the NCAA.
Marcell is not only drilled by the Alabama coaching staff and fellow players to always watch yourself and do the right thing, but also by his legal guardian Lester Reasor.
Reasor certainly works hard to keep Marcell on the straight and narrow. Lester, and his wonderful wife Juanita are like guardian angels.
Lester Reasor was a fine military man and helped spearhead the purchase of of the new home of the American Legion, post 347 in Fairfield, Alabama. It was the first building ever owned by the post.
Despite what most people think, Marcell has not lived with his mother for a while now. Mr. Reasor has guardianship of Dareus and his other siblings except for the oldest. He is a retired Huffman High School's ROTC program and he has instilled that kind of military thinking into Dareus—Duty, Honor, instead of country and school.
Marcell had been being looked after by Huffman High School assistant coach Scott Livingston until he was killed in a car crash, and in stepped Reasor. He could not see Dareus, and his siblings fall by the wayside.
Just like he took care of men in the military and, helped shape young people's lives by steering them into the ROTC and giving them a better chance at life, he did it for the Dareus family.
Part of the deal with moving in the Reasor's a few years back was that he would attend church with them every Sunday , and when Dareus came to Alabama without a car, Mr. Reasor drove from Birmingham every Sunday to pick him up to make sure he kept his word.
Dareus' life could be another great movie along the lines of "Blindside", and the details are both personal and emotional, but they need to be told at this point so everyone knows the mindset and ties to South Florida that make his story more believable.
His father was a Haitian immigrant who died when he was young. His mother remarried, but her new husband developed congestive heart failure, and then she became ill as well.
During his early life, he lived in South Florida for a great portion of his life, and has relatives in the Miami area especially around the "Little Hatti" area.
This part of the story is important later.
Now the lodging:
Marcell was supposed to stay with his friend Marvin Austin, but upon learning that the party was hosted by an agent, Marcell decided to play it safe, and simply stay with family in the area instead.
With family in that area, that would have been a logical thing to do. That is what he's told Alabama and the NCAA, and though I personally do not have proof that's what happened, I'm sure it could be verified.
The matters left that I haven't uncovered is any transportation at Miami, any food or other gifts, but in the eyes of the NCAA, such things are minor.
In every case where such things have taken place of minor things, the NCAA has re-instated their right to play once they have made repayment of any of those costs.
In other words, Dareus would not be suspended from any play this fall, f reparations were made for any thing or service he did receive.
The good news: Is that Dareus is already suspended by the NCAA.
Why is that good news?
First you are reported, then they investigate, and once they have sufficient material they suspend the player until a final ruling is made. The first suspended is the first unsuspended.
Everyone who is investigated, even if they are 100% innocent of any wrongdoing is suspended until cleared. To not be suspended is even worse. This means they are still in the gathering stage, and not ready to rule.
Some of the other players who attended, and received "benefits" have not been officially suspended yet by the NCAA. This means the school must do it themselves, because if they actually play and are found guilty later, then not only the player, but the school could face penalties.
So some players are wishing that they too were ready to be suspended so that the NCAA could make a determination soon. After all, we are getting really close to the first of the season, and the first game will be upon us shortly.
Every player on every team has a story, but few have the twists and turns that Marcell Dareus' does. Because of the adversity that Marcell has faced, and the strong men who came to aid him in those struggles, I find it hard to believe that such a man would let himself, his team and the people who had faith in him down.
So before you call this man, this school, and these men who help him cheaters—you should have all the facts first.
Now you do.
First of all, Alabama has done nothing wrong in the Marcell Dareus situation and has zero, and I repeat zero chance of anything ever happening to the school because of it.
Why?
They self reported themselves, and turned the matter over to the NCAA to come and see for themselves the facts of the case.
Since Marcell hasn't played a down since "Partygate" that has involved so many players, and since he won't until cleared by the NCAA, there is once again zero chance of any penalties to the team.
Now, let's turn to Marcell.
Marcell Dareus would only be in trouble if he took anything of value from an agent, booster or some other person the NCAA deems a problem. In this case, that would be transportation to from or at the site, lodging while there, food, drinks, money or any other item or service that has value.
Let's deal with them one by one.
Transportation: The ticket he flew down on was allegedly purchased by his friend Marvin Austin, a senior defensive lineman from North Carolina who is also being investigated.
The two met when Marcell made his official visit to North Carolina, and Austin served as his host. Though Marcell chose Alabama, the two remained good friends.
Austin thought a nice weekend in South Florida would be both payback for a personal promise of a nice trip should Alabama win the the championship that Austin promised Dareus, but also to take his mind of his mother for a few days.
Marcell did not want even the hint of this ticket being anything wrong, so when his buddy met him in South Florida, Dareus repaid him and all but demanded a receipt. He has one,and it was shown to the NCAA.
Marcell is not only drilled by the Alabama coaching staff and fellow players to always watch yourself and do the right thing, but also by his legal guardian Lester Reasor.
Reasor certainly works hard to keep Marcell on the straight and narrow. Lester, and his wonderful wife Juanita are like guardian angels.
Lester Reasor was a fine military man and helped spearhead the purchase of of the new home of the American Legion, post 347 in Fairfield, Alabama. It was the first building ever owned by the post.
Despite what most people think, Marcell has not lived with his mother for a while now. Mr. Reasor has guardianship of Dareus and his other siblings except for the oldest. He is a retired Huffman High School's ROTC program and he has instilled that kind of military thinking into Dareus—Duty, Honor, instead of country and school.
Marcell had been being looked after by Huffman High School assistant coach Scott Livingston until he was killed in a car crash, and in stepped Reasor. He could not see Dareus, and his siblings fall by the wayside.
Just like he took care of men in the military and, helped shape young people's lives by steering them into the ROTC and giving them a better chance at life, he did it for the Dareus family.
Part of the deal with moving in the Reasor's a few years back was that he would attend church with them every Sunday , and when Dareus came to Alabama without a car, Mr. Reasor drove from Birmingham every Sunday to pick him up to make sure he kept his word.
Dareus' life could be another great movie along the lines of "Blindside", and the details are both personal and emotional, but they need to be told at this point so everyone knows the mindset and ties to South Florida that make his story more believable.
His father was a Haitian immigrant who died when he was young. His mother remarried, but her new husband developed congestive heart failure, and then she became ill as well.
During his early life, he lived in South Florida for a great portion of his life, and has relatives in the Miami area especially around the "Little Hatti" area.
This part of the story is important later.
Now the lodging:
Marcell was supposed to stay with his friend Marvin Austin, but upon learning that the party was hosted by an agent, Marcell decided to play it safe, and simply stay with family in the area instead.
With family in that area, that would have been a logical thing to do. That is what he's told Alabama and the NCAA, and though I personally do not have proof that's what happened, I'm sure it could be verified.
The matters left that I haven't uncovered is any transportation at Miami, any food or other gifts, but in the eyes of the NCAA, such things are minor.
In every case where such things have taken place of minor things, the NCAA has re-instated their right to play once they have made repayment of any of those costs.
In other words, Dareus would not be suspended from any play this fall, f reparations were made for any thing or service he did receive.
The good news: Is that Dareus is already suspended by the NCAA.
Why is that good news?
First you are reported, then they investigate, and once they have sufficient material they suspend the player until a final ruling is made. The first suspended is the first unsuspended.
Everyone who is investigated, even if they are 100% innocent of any wrongdoing is suspended until cleared. To not be suspended is even worse. This means they are still in the gathering stage, and not ready to rule.
Some of the other players who attended, and received "benefits" have not been officially suspended yet by the NCAA. This means the school must do it themselves, because if they actually play and are found guilty later, then not only the player, but the school could face penalties.
So some players are wishing that they too were ready to be suspended so that the NCAA could make a determination soon. After all, we are getting really close to the first of the season, and the first game will be upon us shortly.
Every player on every team has a story, but few have the twists and turns that Marcell Dareus' does. Because of the adversity that Marcell has faced, and the strong men who came to aid him in those struggles, I find it hard to believe that such a man would let himself, his team and the people who had faith in him down.
So before you call this man, this school, and these men who help him cheaters—you should have all the facts first.
Now you do.
Who is the enemy?
From my perspective I am not sure who that enemy really is. In combat, the enemy is clear. Well, almost. You sweep a village and turn to look at 10 year olds holding assault rifles. Are they the enemy? You search a dusty home and find weapon caches' stashed amongst the bedding. Are they the enemy? On patrol, you pass some kids playing soccer and as soon as you leave those same kids are with a bunch of turbin heads drawing ambushes in the sand. Are they the enemy? The ROE will not permit our soldiers to do their jobs. Listen to this:
The bureaucratic nightmare. A true story to save money
POGANY: When the soldier signs on the dotted line and commits to service to this country, that commitment comes with the understanding that if something happens to us that we will be taken care of.
HINOJOSA: After examining Luther's records, Pogany is convinced he doesn't have a pre-existing personality disorder. He says -just look at the standard definition.... A mental illness that begins in quote "adolescence or early adulthood." On top of that, Luther says he was given a mental health screening 8 times during his 12 years of service, and each time, given a clean bill of health.
We asked the army's top psychiatrist, Col. Elspeth Ritchie for some answers. How is it that the Army can have these soldiers that the Army has already screened, and then, after 12 years of service, is suddenly —diagnosed with a personality disorder?
COL. ELSPETH RITCHIE: The case that you are discussing sounds highly unusual to me.
HINOJOSA: Col. Ritchie would not comment on any specific case, but she said, that sometimes, soldiers slip through the screening process.
COL. ELSPETH RITCHIE: Sometimes we don't know everything about a soldier. Sometimes the soldier doesn't tell us everything. And the problems may not become apparent until after they've been in for six months or a year.
HINOJOSA: But 12 years? Col. Ritchie admits discrepancies occur.
COL. ELSPETH RITCHIE: I can't say that everything happened right every time. But I will say that if there was a mistake that was made. There are mechanisms by which soldiers can go back and have their cases reviewed.
HINOJOSA: Luther says -those "mechanisms" are not easy to figure out. Misinformed about the process, he missed a crucial window of time to appeal his case. Out of frustration—Luther contacted a reporter. Joshua Kors had written a groundbreaking story for The Nation magazine about the thousands of personality disorder discharges in the military.
KORS: Soldiers who were wounded and denied care through these fraudulent discharges, they started contacting me and in February. That's what happened with Chuck he wrote me a letter.
HINOJOSA: Kors helped Chuck Luther get in touch with advocates to work on his case.
KORS: The fact that these guys are coming to me is bizarre, it's sad, but I think a lot of these guys just don't know where to go.
HINOJOSA: Kors investigation also revealed that these discharges save the military a lot of money...remember, the army doesn't have to pay disability for personality disorder discharges. Kors wrote that across the entire armed forces, they could be saving upwards of $8 billion dollars.
Reporting from Kors and others triggered a bi-partisan effort led by Democratic senator Barack Obama and Republican Kit Bond—demanding that the Department of Defense to investigate these discharges. The report, released just this week, recommends new policies that include corroborating the personality disorder diagnosis and addressing PTSD before discharging soldiers.
At the same time, advocates point to another brewing scandal—the alarming number of soldiers suffering from PTSD but getting kicked out for misconduct.
Soldiers like 23 year old—Jonathan Norrell. As a combat medic, he experienced the human toll of war everyday.
NORRELL: I wore—blood soaked boots for I don't know how many weeks. And—it wasn't until later on that it—it really started to get to me.
HINOJOSA: In Iraq, Norrell volunteered to go out on missions, and that meant, getting into harm's way.
HINOJOSA: When you got hit by the i.e.d.'s. What happened?
NORRELL: I would have a headache and ringing in my ears for at least three days afterwards.
HINOJOSA: Concussion?
NORRELL: I had a couple of minor concussions. Just had my bell rung a few times to where—just was really out of it. Kind of-
HINOJOSA: What does that mean, have your bell rung?
NORRELL: It'd be like getting hit in the head with a brick.
HINOJOSA: He says his unit was hit by at least 6 i.e.d's. These multiple concussions can lead to traumatic brain injury. But it wasn't just the i.e.d.'s that affected him... it was also the brutal reality of death in a war zone.
NORRELL: One of the most—traumatic experiences for me, in Iraq, was when a man was shot in the head. And his wife and his daughter begged me to help them. And were crying and upset. And there was absolutely nothing I could do for him. He'd been shot in the face seven or eight times. And I had to hold the back of his head together to keep his brains from falling out all over the ground while we put him in the bag. You know, I didn't want that to happen in front of his wife and kids.
HINOJOSA: Like Chuck Luther, Norrell learned to deal with those traumatic experiences while he was—by not thinking about them. After 9 and a half months in Iraq, he was sent back to Texas...given 6 days leave to visit family... and that's when the war suddenly caught up with him.
NORRELL: I was driving back to my grandma's house. And the lights, I don't know what it was—I just—I forgot where I was. I couldn't see the road anymore. I completely lost it. Crying. I couldn't breathe. I was scared. I didn't know what, you know, I didn't know what to think.
HINOJOSA: That first panic attack was just the beginning of a downward spiral. Even though he was now back at Fort Hood, Norrell was plagued by disturbing memories of war. He didn't know who to turn to for help. He started to self destruct by self medicating...
NORRELL: I—I started, you know, I started drinking all the time. It got to where I couldn't even sleep anymore at night—without waking up sweating. Without, you know, slamming a bottle of Jack Daniels, you know, before going to bed.
HINOJOSA: A whole bottle?
NORRELL: No. Not a whole bottle. But—throughout maybe in—in a day, a whole bottle, yeah.
HINOJOSA: Norrell finally went to see a doctor who diagnosed him with PTSD. The doctor recommended to Norrell's commanders that he be medically discharged immediately and sent home. But that never happened.
NORRELL: It just turned into lies and field time after that.
HINOJOSA: Lies?
NORRELL: I don't know how many times I was told that it would only be—a few weeks. And I'd—would be clearing, and on my way home. And that was the only thing that kept me goin'.
HINOJOSA: Norrell began to deteriorate, drinking, smoking pot. For a second time, the doctor recommended him for an immediate medical discharge. Instead, his commanders ordered Norrell to go to California for heavy combat training.
NORRELL: I felt like it was the worst idea in the history of bad ideas.
HINOJOSA: In despair, Norrell disobeyed orders and missed the flight.
Do you feel like they punished you?
NORRELL: Oh. I'll tell you, they punished me severely for that. I was real scared. I knew I was gonna be in trouble. But it wasn't enough to stop me from doin' it
HINOJOSA: By then, Norrell had racked up a long list of misconduct charges. He says, he just wanted out. So when his commanders told him they were going to discharge him for misconduct—and that as a result, he would lose all his benefits, Norrell signed the papers anyway.
NORRELL: Definitely signed it, because I wanted to go home. I don't care about money. I don't care about anything anymore, except goin' home.
HINOJOSA: Norrell's mom had put out a call for help, and Carissa Picard was already working on his case. She sent his files to Andrew Pogany and other advocates to see if they could help overturn Norrell's misconduct discharge.
There are members of the Army who say, "Look, this soldier was taking part in misconduct. He needs to be discharged, take responsibility for what he did."
POGANY: I agree with that, except we gotta ask the question, "What came first, the PTSD, or the misconduct?" If you haven't asked that question, then you have no business discharging people.
HINOJOSA: He says, in Norrell's case it's clear—the PTSD was causing his misconduct. With the help advocates like Pogany, Carissa Picard flooded the army with letters and phone calls. The evidence was so convincing that within in two weeks, Jonathan Norrell's discharge was overturned.
NORRELL: In a sense, I think she saved my life because she came in, and within 12 hours, I was gettin' help.
HINOJOSA: When you see Jonathan, 23 years old, what goes on for you?
PICARD: I don't know that people realize how young our soldiers are. Like I live on post, and there's thousands of Jonathan Norrells. But I don't see them. Nobody does. They're all in their uniforms. And when I saw Jonathan, I—I realized, my God. They're just so young.
HINOJOSA: Why does a soldier like Jonathan Norrell fall through the cracks? How does that happen?
PICARD: Well, I don't know that it's falling through the cracks. This is— a huge hole. It's a flaw in the system
HINOJOSA: Picard say—these wrongful discharges won't stop until the army regulations are changed. She says, if we don't care for our soldiers now, they will return to society more at risk for homelessness, criminal behavior, reliant on social services.
PICARD: And who pays for that? We all do. So, if—if you don't care on any kind of humanitarian level about these people who have sacrificed so much on your behalf, then care on a—purely practical level. Because you're going to be paying higher taxes.
HINOJOSA: Just last month, the army issued a new directive. It now requires soldiers who are getting administrative discharges, to be screened for both PTSD and traumatic brain injury.
COL. ELSPETH RITCHIE: I know we're not perfect. We're—we're busy, we're working hard. Again, we've been at war for a long time, so there may have been mistakes made. And if there are mistakes made, we have a responsibility to make those mistakes right
HINOJOSA: But for Chuck Luther and his family, those mistakes have been devastating.
NICKI LUTHER: I realize they have a war to fight. I realize they're very busy. You know, but somebody had to take of my husband.
HINOJOSA: Chuck Luther is now home with is wife Niki and their kids- Christian, Alexa and Taylor. But the man Nicki married 16 years ago is not the same person—and they've been struggling to be a family again.
NICKI LUTHER: He blames himself. But, it wasn't his fault. He thinks he should have been able to dust off and go on. And he just couldn't.
ALEXA LUTHER: He was, like, the greatest dad ever. I mean, it's—it's simple. He—he wasn't like that before he left.
HINOJOSA: Without treatment—Chuck Luther got worse. His violent outbursts became more frequent... breaking things, punching holes in the walls. It's got so bad—the police had to come to their house.
ALEXA LUTHER: We both had to—had to like physically hold my dad back from hitting my mom at times. And it was just like he was a completely different person.
HINOJOSA: After months of being home, Chuck Luther went to the VA for help. He was finally diagnosed with PTSD. More evidence to help Luther overturn his discharge. Now in treatment, he's getting better, learning how to leave the war behind him.
CHUCK LUTHER: You know, I fought for my life over there and I survived. And I plan on fighting for my life here and surviving.
HINOJOSA: Seeing their dad go through this battle, has been tough on the kids too. His daughter Alexa used to wear his dog tags.
ALEXA LUTHER: I wore 'em like almost every day when he was gone. And then once he started doin' that stuff, I didn't hate him. But I just stopped wearing them. And now that he's finally getting better, I'll wear 'em again.
HINOJOSA: They're beginning to heal. And there's a new member of the Luther family... Marlee Grace was born 4 weeks ago, and she's bringing them even closer.
As for Jonathan Norrell—he will now be medically discharged.
But because of the backlog ... he's still living on base surrounded by the memories of the war and the army he once proudly served.
NORRELL: Now—now, I just—I—I can't wait to take these boots off. I have to get out of this uniform I have to step away from this, or I won't make it
HINOJOSA: After examining Luther's records, Pogany is convinced he doesn't have a pre-existing personality disorder. He says -just look at the standard definition.... A mental illness that begins in quote "adolescence or early adulthood." On top of that, Luther says he was given a mental health screening 8 times during his 12 years of service, and each time, given a clean bill of health.
We asked the army's top psychiatrist, Col. Elspeth Ritchie for some answers. How is it that the Army can have these soldiers that the Army has already screened, and then, after 12 years of service, is suddenly —diagnosed with a personality disorder?
COL. ELSPETH RITCHIE: The case that you are discussing sounds highly unusual to me.
HINOJOSA: Col. Ritchie would not comment on any specific case, but she said, that sometimes, soldiers slip through the screening process.
COL. ELSPETH RITCHIE: Sometimes we don't know everything about a soldier. Sometimes the soldier doesn't tell us everything. And the problems may not become apparent until after they've been in for six months or a year.
HINOJOSA: But 12 years? Col. Ritchie admits discrepancies occur.
COL. ELSPETH RITCHIE: I can't say that everything happened right every time. But I will say that if there was a mistake that was made. There are mechanisms by which soldiers can go back and have their cases reviewed.
HINOJOSA: Luther says -those "mechanisms" are not easy to figure out. Misinformed about the process, he missed a crucial window of time to appeal his case. Out of frustration—Luther contacted a reporter. Joshua Kors had written a groundbreaking story for The Nation magazine about the thousands of personality disorder discharges in the military.
KORS: Soldiers who were wounded and denied care through these fraudulent discharges, they started contacting me and in February. That's what happened with Chuck he wrote me a letter.
HINOJOSA: Kors helped Chuck Luther get in touch with advocates to work on his case.
KORS: The fact that these guys are coming to me is bizarre, it's sad, but I think a lot of these guys just don't know where to go.
HINOJOSA: Kors investigation also revealed that these discharges save the military a lot of money...remember, the army doesn't have to pay disability for personality disorder discharges. Kors wrote that across the entire armed forces, they could be saving upwards of $8 billion dollars.
Reporting from Kors and others triggered a bi-partisan effort led by Democratic senator Barack Obama and Republican Kit Bond—demanding that the Department of Defense to investigate these discharges. The report, released just this week, recommends new policies that include corroborating the personality disorder diagnosis and addressing PTSD before discharging soldiers.
At the same time, advocates point to another brewing scandal—the alarming number of soldiers suffering from PTSD but getting kicked out for misconduct.
Soldiers like 23 year old—Jonathan Norrell. As a combat medic, he experienced the human toll of war everyday.
NORRELL: I wore—blood soaked boots for I don't know how many weeks. And—it wasn't until later on that it—it really started to get to me.
HINOJOSA: In Iraq, Norrell volunteered to go out on missions, and that meant, getting into harm's way.
HINOJOSA: When you got hit by the i.e.d.'s. What happened?
NORRELL: I would have a headache and ringing in my ears for at least three days afterwards.
HINOJOSA: Concussion?
NORRELL: I had a couple of minor concussions. Just had my bell rung a few times to where—just was really out of it. Kind of-
HINOJOSA: What does that mean, have your bell rung?
NORRELL: It'd be like getting hit in the head with a brick.
HINOJOSA: He says his unit was hit by at least 6 i.e.d's. These multiple concussions can lead to traumatic brain injury. But it wasn't just the i.e.d.'s that affected him... it was also the brutal reality of death in a war zone.
NORRELL: One of the most—traumatic experiences for me, in Iraq, was when a man was shot in the head. And his wife and his daughter begged me to help them. And were crying and upset. And there was absolutely nothing I could do for him. He'd been shot in the face seven or eight times. And I had to hold the back of his head together to keep his brains from falling out all over the ground while we put him in the bag. You know, I didn't want that to happen in front of his wife and kids.
HINOJOSA: Like Chuck Luther, Norrell learned to deal with those traumatic experiences while he was—by not thinking about them. After 9 and a half months in Iraq, he was sent back to Texas...given 6 days leave to visit family... and that's when the war suddenly caught up with him.
NORRELL: I was driving back to my grandma's house. And the lights, I don't know what it was—I just—I forgot where I was. I couldn't see the road anymore. I completely lost it. Crying. I couldn't breathe. I was scared. I didn't know what, you know, I didn't know what to think.
HINOJOSA: That first panic attack was just the beginning of a downward spiral. Even though he was now back at Fort Hood, Norrell was plagued by disturbing memories of war. He didn't know who to turn to for help. He started to self destruct by self medicating...
NORRELL: I—I started, you know, I started drinking all the time. It got to where I couldn't even sleep anymore at night—without waking up sweating. Without, you know, slamming a bottle of Jack Daniels, you know, before going to bed.
HINOJOSA: A whole bottle?
NORRELL: No. Not a whole bottle. But—throughout maybe in—in a day, a whole bottle, yeah.
HINOJOSA: Norrell finally went to see a doctor who diagnosed him with PTSD. The doctor recommended to Norrell's commanders that he be medically discharged immediately and sent home. But that never happened.
NORRELL: It just turned into lies and field time after that.
HINOJOSA: Lies?
NORRELL: I don't know how many times I was told that it would only be—a few weeks. And I'd—would be clearing, and on my way home. And that was the only thing that kept me goin'.
HINOJOSA: Norrell began to deteriorate, drinking, smoking pot. For a second time, the doctor recommended him for an immediate medical discharge. Instead, his commanders ordered Norrell to go to California for heavy combat training.
NORRELL: I felt like it was the worst idea in the history of bad ideas.
HINOJOSA: In despair, Norrell disobeyed orders and missed the flight.
Do you feel like they punished you?
NORRELL: Oh. I'll tell you, they punished me severely for that. I was real scared. I knew I was gonna be in trouble. But it wasn't enough to stop me from doin' it
HINOJOSA: By then, Norrell had racked up a long list of misconduct charges. He says, he just wanted out. So when his commanders told him they were going to discharge him for misconduct—and that as a result, he would lose all his benefits, Norrell signed the papers anyway.
NORRELL: Definitely signed it, because I wanted to go home. I don't care about money. I don't care about anything anymore, except goin' home.
HINOJOSA: Norrell's mom had put out a call for help, and Carissa Picard was already working on his case. She sent his files to Andrew Pogany and other advocates to see if they could help overturn Norrell's misconduct discharge.
There are members of the Army who say, "Look, this soldier was taking part in misconduct. He needs to be discharged, take responsibility for what he did."
POGANY: I agree with that, except we gotta ask the question, "What came first, the PTSD, or the misconduct?" If you haven't asked that question, then you have no business discharging people.
HINOJOSA: He says, in Norrell's case it's clear—the PTSD was causing his misconduct. With the help advocates like Pogany, Carissa Picard flooded the army with letters and phone calls. The evidence was so convincing that within in two weeks, Jonathan Norrell's discharge was overturned.
NORRELL: In a sense, I think she saved my life because she came in, and within 12 hours, I was gettin' help.
HINOJOSA: When you see Jonathan, 23 years old, what goes on for you?
PICARD: I don't know that people realize how young our soldiers are. Like I live on post, and there's thousands of Jonathan Norrells. But I don't see them. Nobody does. They're all in their uniforms. And when I saw Jonathan, I—I realized, my God. They're just so young.
HINOJOSA: Why does a soldier like Jonathan Norrell fall through the cracks? How does that happen?
PICARD: Well, I don't know that it's falling through the cracks. This is— a huge hole. It's a flaw in the system
HINOJOSA: Picard say—these wrongful discharges won't stop until the army regulations are changed. She says, if we don't care for our soldiers now, they will return to society more at risk for homelessness, criminal behavior, reliant on social services.
PICARD: And who pays for that? We all do. So, if—if you don't care on any kind of humanitarian level about these people who have sacrificed so much on your behalf, then care on a—purely practical level. Because you're going to be paying higher taxes.
HINOJOSA: Just last month, the army issued a new directive. It now requires soldiers who are getting administrative discharges, to be screened for both PTSD and traumatic brain injury.
COL. ELSPETH RITCHIE: I know we're not perfect. We're—we're busy, we're working hard. Again, we've been at war for a long time, so there may have been mistakes made. And if there are mistakes made, we have a responsibility to make those mistakes right
HINOJOSA: But for Chuck Luther and his family, those mistakes have been devastating.
NICKI LUTHER: I realize they have a war to fight. I realize they're very busy. You know, but somebody had to take of my husband.
HINOJOSA: Chuck Luther is now home with is wife Niki and their kids- Christian, Alexa and Taylor. But the man Nicki married 16 years ago is not the same person—and they've been struggling to be a family again.
NICKI LUTHER: He blames himself. But, it wasn't his fault. He thinks he should have been able to dust off and go on. And he just couldn't.
ALEXA LUTHER: He was, like, the greatest dad ever. I mean, it's—it's simple. He—he wasn't like that before he left.
HINOJOSA: Without treatment—Chuck Luther got worse. His violent outbursts became more frequent... breaking things, punching holes in the walls. It's got so bad—the police had to come to their house.
ALEXA LUTHER: We both had to—had to like physically hold my dad back from hitting my mom at times. And it was just like he was a completely different person.
HINOJOSA: After months of being home, Chuck Luther went to the VA for help. He was finally diagnosed with PTSD. More evidence to help Luther overturn his discharge. Now in treatment, he's getting better, learning how to leave the war behind him.
CHUCK LUTHER: You know, I fought for my life over there and I survived. And I plan on fighting for my life here and surviving.
HINOJOSA: Seeing their dad go through this battle, has been tough on the kids too. His daughter Alexa used to wear his dog tags.
ALEXA LUTHER: I wore 'em like almost every day when he was gone. And then once he started doin' that stuff, I didn't hate him. But I just stopped wearing them. And now that he's finally getting better, I'll wear 'em again.
HINOJOSA: They're beginning to heal. And there's a new member of the Luther family... Marlee Grace was born 4 weeks ago, and she's bringing them even closer.
As for Jonathan Norrell—he will now be medically discharged.
But because of the backlog ... he's still living on base surrounded by the memories of the war and the army he once proudly served.
NORRELL: Now—now, I just—I—I can't wait to take these boots off. I have to get out of this uniform I have to step away from this, or I won't make it
PTSD: A soldier's story
Army Spc. Brandon Garrison looks fine. He pulls his wife, Lily, close. He gives her a quick kiss on the cheek and wraps his hand over her stomach, carrying their first child.
Inside, Garrison fights a rage that consumes most of his days sin ce returning from 17 months of combat in Afghanistan. It's a demon that shows no mercy and interrupts even simple routines like eating and sleeping. At any moment, halfway through a football game or in the middle of the night, he can lose himself to this evil.
This is his war now. A war that started on a battlefield a half a world away and has now embedded itself in his mind. Through nightmares, flashbacks, anxiety and fear, he battles this beast each day.
Garrison is among thousands of troops experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, as they return from Afghanistan or Iraq. The 21-year-old from northeastern Kansas is also part of a growing number of servicemembers whose well-being has been compromised in a system that's supposed to take care of them.
The most troubling challenges facing these troops include:
Psychological trauma and mental health care not always receiving the same priority as physical injuries.
Army claims of pre-existing personality disorders, which in many cases slash disability benefits and long-term mental health care for otherwise eligible combat veterans.
The enemy Garrison encountered daily in combat still haunts him. He sees the faces of his fallen brothers. He smells the dirty air, amid the blood. Screams of panic broken with hums of moaning pain lingers and the dust ensues yet another storm inside him.
That is until he finds his way back to Lily, and back to the life he knew before war.
"Without her, I seriously wouldn't be alive right now," Garrison said.
Garrison's platoon from the Army's 10th Mountain Division based in Fort Drum, N.Y., specializes in fighting in harsh conditions. In northeast Afghanistan they were stationed in Pech Valley Korengal Outpost, one the country's deadliest valleys.
Now that Garrison is home, he belongs to one of the Army's Warrior Transition Units, which provides command and control, primary care and case management for servicemembers receiving treatment for wounds suffered while fighting in the war on terror. The unit works to "promote their timely return to the force or transition to civilian life."
Here is his story.
Shortly after Garrison returned from Afghanistan last June, he headed home on a 30-day leave to Leavenworth, Kansas.
"That's when my nightmares began," he said. "I remember waking up in the middle of the night. I'd sit straight up in bed and it was just hard to breathe and I was panicking and I remember my wife Lily asking me if I was OK and I remember crying in her arms several times because of horrific visions that I had, and the memories and the mass casualties that we suffered."
Nothing in particular triggered the attacks. He would hear a song or a report about the war and before he knew it, he was reliving it.
Garrison started drinking almost daily. It was the only way he knew to escape.
In August, he left to regroup with his unit in Fort Drum. Lily stayed with his folks because Garrison was going to be reassigned to a new base, so it didn't make sense for her to go right then.
Garrison was OK when he was working. But the second he was alone, the flashbacks returned. It was terrifying and always zoomed back to one event. On this day in Afghanistan, Garrison was watching soldiers patrol a valley below him. It was almost time for them to return when the enemy launched rocket-propelled grenades and gunfire into their path.
Garrison and other soldiers helped the injured until medics arrived.
Blood was everywhere.
Garrison went to his friend, 24-year-old Spc. Christopher Wilson, and held a pressure dressing tightly against his stomach, but his young life was slipping away.
Wilson, whose greatest fear in this war was not coming home to his little girl, died a short while later.
"He was a very good soldier ... a good friend," Garrison said. "He was very brave through it all."
Garrison needed help. He and Lily fought to where they didn't know how much their marriage could take.
He was never much of a drinker before war. Lily wanted to understand, but she couldn't.
"To know I had pushed a woman so close to me that far away just because of the trauma I was experiencing … that really just made it worse," Garrison explained.
He started to hate himself.
"At the time I had been denying God and spirituality was always a big part of my life and I was actually cursing God himself and that's when I knew that my life was taking a big downfall," he said.
In September, Garrison went to the behavioral health clinic on base and met with a psychiatrist who diagnosed him with post-traumatic stress disorder.
He agreed to meet with Garrison every week or two and prescribed Trazodone and Ambien to help him sleep.
"I was calling out for help … but I was afraid to say 'suicide,'" Garrison recalled. "I was afraid to tell them what I was truly feeling because that puts a label on you and they patronize you."
He kept it far from his command.
But by mid-September, Garrison couldn't take it. He returned to doctors on base and told them he was feeling suicidal. They told him he had to see a regular doctor because they were booked.
The next day he found a doctor off base who prescribed Valium, which helped desensitize his reality. He heard a couple guys who committed suicide from their unit overdosed on Valium.
He was afraid to take it, but he was desperate.
It was football season. Garrison thought it would be good to get out, so he started going to the local bar to watch the games.
For weeks he did this. He was now mixing prescription drugs and alcohol. It seemed to help.
But on September 29 it all caught up.
That morning, he woke with the horrors of Afghanistan. He swallowed four Valium.
Later on he went to the bar. He took two more Valium and started drinking beer.
As he watched the game, he started getting excited. His adrenaline was pumping. Then he saw blood. Dirty air seeped in his senses and screams of horror quickly replaced the cheers.
It felt like iron weight settled in his chest. It was hard to breathe. His hands and feet throbbed. His heart was beating faster and faster and faster, like a hamster spinning a wheel.
Garrison rushed outside to his truck and blasted the air conditioning.
He could barely hold his cell phone as he struggled to dial 911. He blanked out off and on as the operator on the other end told him to keep breathing.
Within minutes ambulances and military police arrived. Paramedics strapped a plastic oxygen mask over his face and rushed him to the closest hospital in Watertown, N.Y.
He woke up several hours later with a man from the hospital's intensive mental health unit next to him. He asked Garrison if he was suicidal.
"I broke down and cried right there," Garrison said. "I told him I didn't want to live anymore."
The man said he served in Vietnam, and there was no shame in crying.
"I have a wife and a child on the way," Garrison said through sobs. "I love them very much. I don't want to be like this anymore, but I don't want to live when I have these attacks, when I blank out, when I have these flashbacks."
"I'm trying to be a good soldier. Please don't tell my chain of command," he pleaded.
Garrison was admitted into the psychiatric ward.
"That was the most traumatic part, but at the same time it was a relief because here I was in a place now where it was nothing but civilians," Garrison explained. "I was away from the uniforms."
Inside, Garrison fights a rage that consumes most of his days sin ce returning from 17 months of combat in Afghanistan. It's a demon that shows no mercy and interrupts even simple routines like eating and sleeping. At any moment, halfway through a football game or in the middle of the night, he can lose himself to this evil.
This is his war now. A war that started on a battlefield a half a world away and has now embedded itself in his mind. Through nightmares, flashbacks, anxiety and fear, he battles this beast each day.
Garrison is among thousands of troops experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, as they return from Afghanistan or Iraq. The 21-year-old from northeastern Kansas is also part of a growing number of servicemembers whose well-being has been compromised in a system that's supposed to take care of them.
The most troubling challenges facing these troops include:
Psychological trauma and mental health care not always receiving the same priority as physical injuries.
Army claims of pre-existing personality disorders, which in many cases slash disability benefits and long-term mental health care for otherwise eligible combat veterans.
The enemy Garrison encountered daily in combat still haunts him. He sees the faces of his fallen brothers. He smells the dirty air, amid the blood. Screams of panic broken with hums of moaning pain lingers and the dust ensues yet another storm inside him.
That is until he finds his way back to Lily, and back to the life he knew before war.
"Without her, I seriously wouldn't be alive right now," Garrison said.
Garrison's platoon from the Army's 10th Mountain Division based in Fort Drum, N.Y., specializes in fighting in harsh conditions. In northeast Afghanistan they were stationed in Pech Valley Korengal Outpost, one the country's deadliest valleys.
Now that Garrison is home, he belongs to one of the Army's Warrior Transition Units, which provides command and control, primary care and case management for servicemembers receiving treatment for wounds suffered while fighting in the war on terror. The unit works to "promote their timely return to the force or transition to civilian life."
Here is his story.
Shortly after Garrison returned from Afghanistan last June, he headed home on a 30-day leave to Leavenworth, Kansas.
"That's when my nightmares began," he said. "I remember waking up in the middle of the night. I'd sit straight up in bed and it was just hard to breathe and I was panicking and I remember my wife Lily asking me if I was OK and I remember crying in her arms several times because of horrific visions that I had, and the memories and the mass casualties that we suffered."
Nothing in particular triggered the attacks. He would hear a song or a report about the war and before he knew it, he was reliving it.
Garrison started drinking almost daily. It was the only way he knew to escape.
In August, he left to regroup with his unit in Fort Drum. Lily stayed with his folks because Garrison was going to be reassigned to a new base, so it didn't make sense for her to go right then.
Garrison was OK when he was working. But the second he was alone, the flashbacks returned. It was terrifying and always zoomed back to one event. On this day in Afghanistan, Garrison was watching soldiers patrol a valley below him. It was almost time for them to return when the enemy launched rocket-propelled grenades and gunfire into their path.
Garrison and other soldiers helped the injured until medics arrived.
Blood was everywhere.
Garrison went to his friend, 24-year-old Spc. Christopher Wilson, and held a pressure dressing tightly against his stomach, but his young life was slipping away.
Wilson, whose greatest fear in this war was not coming home to his little girl, died a short while later.
"He was a very good soldier ... a good friend," Garrison said. "He was very brave through it all."
Garrison needed help. He and Lily fought to where they didn't know how much their marriage could take.
He was never much of a drinker before war. Lily wanted to understand, but she couldn't.
"To know I had pushed a woman so close to me that far away just because of the trauma I was experiencing … that really just made it worse," Garrison explained.
He started to hate himself.
"At the time I had been denying God and spirituality was always a big part of my life and I was actually cursing God himself and that's when I knew that my life was taking a big downfall," he said.
In September, Garrison went to the behavioral health clinic on base and met with a psychiatrist who diagnosed him with post-traumatic stress disorder.
He agreed to meet with Garrison every week or two and prescribed Trazodone and Ambien to help him sleep.
"I was calling out for help … but I was afraid to say 'suicide,'" Garrison recalled. "I was afraid to tell them what I was truly feeling because that puts a label on you and they patronize you."
He kept it far from his command.
But by mid-September, Garrison couldn't take it. He returned to doctors on base and told them he was feeling suicidal. They told him he had to see a regular doctor because they were booked.
The next day he found a doctor off base who prescribed Valium, which helped desensitize his reality. He heard a couple guys who committed suicide from their unit overdosed on Valium.
He was afraid to take it, but he was desperate.
It was football season. Garrison thought it would be good to get out, so he started going to the local bar to watch the games.
For weeks he did this. He was now mixing prescription drugs and alcohol. It seemed to help.
But on September 29 it all caught up.
That morning, he woke with the horrors of Afghanistan. He swallowed four Valium.
Later on he went to the bar. He took two more Valium and started drinking beer.
As he watched the game, he started getting excited. His adrenaline was pumping. Then he saw blood. Dirty air seeped in his senses and screams of horror quickly replaced the cheers.
It felt like iron weight settled in his chest. It was hard to breathe. His hands and feet throbbed. His heart was beating faster and faster and faster, like a hamster spinning a wheel.
Garrison rushed outside to his truck and blasted the air conditioning.
He could barely hold his cell phone as he struggled to dial 911. He blanked out off and on as the operator on the other end told him to keep breathing.
Within minutes ambulances and military police arrived. Paramedics strapped a plastic oxygen mask over his face and rushed him to the closest hospital in Watertown, N.Y.
He woke up several hours later with a man from the hospital's intensive mental health unit next to him. He asked Garrison if he was suicidal.
"I broke down and cried right there," Garrison said. "I told him I didn't want to live anymore."
The man said he served in Vietnam, and there was no shame in crying.
"I have a wife and a child on the way," Garrison said through sobs. "I love them very much. I don't want to be like this anymore, but I don't want to live when I have these attacks, when I blank out, when I have these flashbacks."
"I'm trying to be a good soldier. Please don't tell my chain of command," he pleaded.
Garrison was admitted into the psychiatric ward.
"That was the most traumatic part, but at the same time it was a relief because here I was in a place now where it was nothing but civilians," Garrison explained. "I was away from the uniforms."
Can Gen. Petraeus change the war?
President Obama's decision to call upon General David Petraeus to take the helm as the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan looks like a political and strategic stroke of brilliance.
It is history in the making.
But it is also history that will ultimately be the judge of this dramatic and surprising decision to sack General Stanley McChrystal and once again offer the reins and responsibility of commanding troops at a pivotal moment in a war that is faltering to General Petraeus.
Politically, it allows Obama to show leadership and strength in stripping McChrystal of command for his poor conduct in the comments he made to Rolling Stone magazine in its cover story titled "The Runaway General."
Strategically, it gives the administration the ability to show a stable command as the Kandahar campaign against the Taliban gets underway.
But perhaps most importantly, this decision will be applauded by troops in the field who see Petraeus as a genuine American hero. It will defy the cynical military axiom of "different spanks, for different ranks."
This time, a big general got "spanked" just like any other grunt or staff sergeant who showed conduct that eroded the trust of the military.
And that will go over big with the service men and women who are risking their lives in a war that has dragged on for nine years and that has called upon them to make extraordinary sacrifices.
As Obama put it, "War is bigger than any one man or woman. … Conduct represented in the recent article does not meet the standard of a commanding general. … It erodes the trust that is necessary for our team to work together to achieve our objectives in Afghanistan."
For sure the decision is getting positive reviews, at least in these early hours. And Petraeus is likely to be quickly confirmed by the U.S. Senate and soon be on his way back to Afghanistan and back into the field as top U.S. commander as he was in Iraq, where he led the effort through the crucial — and by most accounts successful — moment of the Baghdad surge.
But what this decision also offers is a dramatic difference in personality and style of leadership between Petraeus and McChrystal. That difference was starkly illustrated in the uproar over the Rolling Stone article.
The comments that McChrystal, a former head of special forces and a maverick field commander, and his aids made to the magazine were reckless. And that is always the flip side of a maverick's coin even one with as distinguished a career as McChrystal has had.
If McChrystal is reckless, Petraeus is measured. If McChrystal is a maverick known for being both brilliant and blunt, Petraeus quietly asserts leadership and affects change from within. McChrystal is known for mixing sprints in with a strict running regime which is followed up without a meal so he "stays hungry," as the legend goes. Petraeus is a marathoner who understands the need for small intake of nutrition throughout the day if he's going to go the distance. If McChrystal reads Rolling Stone, Petraeus prefers Thucydides.
So what might this difference in leadership style mean in the direction the war in Afghanistan? That is the looming question now.
What Petraeus brings to this war is discipline and an understanding of history. Both of these are needed right now in a moment where the U.S. effort is failing.
The Rolling Stone article highlights not just some off-the-cuff remarks by McChrystal that got him in trouble, it reveals a dangerous fault line between the U.S. State Department and the Pentagon over the direction and goals of the war. That division between civilian and military strategy is real and it is important and how Petraeus will bridge the divide remains to be seen.
I first met Petraeus in the spring of 2003 when he was commanding the 101st Airborne Division just after he had executed a massive and successful air assault on northern Iraq. It put him on the map, and soon he would obtain a kind of rock star status, eventually landing on the cover of Newsweek. The rest, as they say, is history.
When Petraeus briefly fainted at hearings in Washington earlier this month it was a scary and out-of-character moment for those who have gotten to know him. He has incredible stamina and the episode may indeed have occurred because, as he claimed, he was simply dehydrated. But Petraeus is also a survivor of prostate cancer and his health and his ability to take on the grueling task of running the war in Afghanistan is indeed an "extraordinary sacrifice," as President Obama noted, for the man and his family. Still his health and ability to carry out this task will no doubt be raised in the hearings.
But the more important matter will be what changes, if any, Petraeus will want to bring to the table in Afghanistan.
Even if Petraeus is known for quiet diplomacy, it should be remembered that Petraeus also had profound disagreements with the George W. Bush White House and with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in particular. The disagreements were never visible to reporters when they happened, but they have since come to the surface, according to insiders who were there.
In a nutshell, Petraeus believed Rumsfeld was wrong about troop levels in Iraq and asserted that they were insufficient and he also quietly criticized the wisdom — or lack of it, as he saw it — of the so-called "de-Baathification" of the Iraqi military. In the chaotic aftermath of the collapse of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party regime, "de-Baathification" was the process of going after and jailing the Iraqi military leadership rather than seeking to bring them into the process of building a future Iraq.
That policy and the delay in calling for a troop surge are both viewed as significant and costly mistakes in the U.S.-led war in Iraq. Petraeus never voiced them publicly, instead he quietly retreated to a command at Fort Leavenworth and took to gathering the military's best minds on counter-insurgency (COIN) and started writing a new COIN field manual for the troops.
That document became the blueprint for what is now looked back on by most military analysts as a successful surge. That strategy created the stability that allowed Iraq to hold elections and move forward in taking control of its own destiny, a process that's still unfolding.
As the 30,000-U.S. troop surge takes place in Afghanistan and the U.S. braces for a stepped up military campaign in Kandahar this summer, Petraeus might try to redirect that campaign. There are many elements of the design of the counter-insurgency in Kandahar that seem to defy the very COIN manual that Petraeus authored.
What is clear is that Petraeus has a chance to once again write history in the parched, dusty, windblown plains of yet another conflict that is faltering badly as he enters the helm.
It is history in the making.
But it is also history that will ultimately be the judge of this dramatic and surprising decision to sack General Stanley McChrystal and once again offer the reins and responsibility of commanding troops at a pivotal moment in a war that is faltering to General Petraeus.
Politically, it allows Obama to show leadership and strength in stripping McChrystal of command for his poor conduct in the comments he made to Rolling Stone magazine in its cover story titled "The Runaway General."
Strategically, it gives the administration the ability to show a stable command as the Kandahar campaign against the Taliban gets underway.
But perhaps most importantly, this decision will be applauded by troops in the field who see Petraeus as a genuine American hero. It will defy the cynical military axiom of "different spanks, for different ranks."
This time, a big general got "spanked" just like any other grunt or staff sergeant who showed conduct that eroded the trust of the military.
And that will go over big with the service men and women who are risking their lives in a war that has dragged on for nine years and that has called upon them to make extraordinary sacrifices.
As Obama put it, "War is bigger than any one man or woman. … Conduct represented in the recent article does not meet the standard of a commanding general. … It erodes the trust that is necessary for our team to work together to achieve our objectives in Afghanistan."
For sure the decision is getting positive reviews, at least in these early hours. And Petraeus is likely to be quickly confirmed by the U.S. Senate and soon be on his way back to Afghanistan and back into the field as top U.S. commander as he was in Iraq, where he led the effort through the crucial — and by most accounts successful — moment of the Baghdad surge.
But what this decision also offers is a dramatic difference in personality and style of leadership between Petraeus and McChrystal. That difference was starkly illustrated in the uproar over the Rolling Stone article.
The comments that McChrystal, a former head of special forces and a maverick field commander, and his aids made to the magazine were reckless. And that is always the flip side of a maverick's coin even one with as distinguished a career as McChrystal has had.
If McChrystal is reckless, Petraeus is measured. If McChrystal is a maverick known for being both brilliant and blunt, Petraeus quietly asserts leadership and affects change from within. McChrystal is known for mixing sprints in with a strict running regime which is followed up without a meal so he "stays hungry," as the legend goes. Petraeus is a marathoner who understands the need for small intake of nutrition throughout the day if he's going to go the distance. If McChrystal reads Rolling Stone, Petraeus prefers Thucydides.
So what might this difference in leadership style mean in the direction the war in Afghanistan? That is the looming question now.
What Petraeus brings to this war is discipline and an understanding of history. Both of these are needed right now in a moment where the U.S. effort is failing.
The Rolling Stone article highlights not just some off-the-cuff remarks by McChrystal that got him in trouble, it reveals a dangerous fault line between the U.S. State Department and the Pentagon over the direction and goals of the war. That division between civilian and military strategy is real and it is important and how Petraeus will bridge the divide remains to be seen.
I first met Petraeus in the spring of 2003 when he was commanding the 101st Airborne Division just after he had executed a massive and successful air assault on northern Iraq. It put him on the map, and soon he would obtain a kind of rock star status, eventually landing on the cover of Newsweek. The rest, as they say, is history.
When Petraeus briefly fainted at hearings in Washington earlier this month it was a scary and out-of-character moment for those who have gotten to know him. He has incredible stamina and the episode may indeed have occurred because, as he claimed, he was simply dehydrated. But Petraeus is also a survivor of prostate cancer and his health and his ability to take on the grueling task of running the war in Afghanistan is indeed an "extraordinary sacrifice," as President Obama noted, for the man and his family. Still his health and ability to carry out this task will no doubt be raised in the hearings.
But the more important matter will be what changes, if any, Petraeus will want to bring to the table in Afghanistan.
Even if Petraeus is known for quiet diplomacy, it should be remembered that Petraeus also had profound disagreements with the George W. Bush White House and with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in particular. The disagreements were never visible to reporters when they happened, but they have since come to the surface, according to insiders who were there.
In a nutshell, Petraeus believed Rumsfeld was wrong about troop levels in Iraq and asserted that they were insufficient and he also quietly criticized the wisdom — or lack of it, as he saw it — of the so-called "de-Baathification" of the Iraqi military. In the chaotic aftermath of the collapse of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party regime, "de-Baathification" was the process of going after and jailing the Iraqi military leadership rather than seeking to bring them into the process of building a future Iraq.
That policy and the delay in calling for a troop surge are both viewed as significant and costly mistakes in the U.S.-led war in Iraq. Petraeus never voiced them publicly, instead he quietly retreated to a command at Fort Leavenworth and took to gathering the military's best minds on counter-insurgency (COIN) and started writing a new COIN field manual for the troops.
That document became the blueprint for what is now looked back on by most military analysts as a successful surge. That strategy created the stability that allowed Iraq to hold elections and move forward in taking control of its own destiny, a process that's still unfolding.
As the 30,000-U.S. troop surge takes place in Afghanistan and the U.S. braces for a stepped up military campaign in Kandahar this summer, Petraeus might try to redirect that campaign. There are many elements of the design of the counter-insurgency in Kandahar that seem to defy the very COIN manual that Petraeus authored.
What is clear is that Petraeus has a chance to once again write history in the parched, dusty, windblown plains of yet another conflict that is faltering badly as he enters the helm.
Special Ops
AFGHANISTAN: British troops shelter from the controlled explosion of a Taliban device
Monday August 2,2010
By Cyril Dixon Have your say(2)
A crack squad of British special forces is hunting down more than 2,000 key Taliban commanders listed on a “wanted – dead or alive” list.
The elite Special Boat Service commandos are trawling southern Afghanistan with orders to capture the “Tier 1” insurgents, or kill them on sight.
Details of the secret mission emerged among tens of thousands of coalition forces’ documents published by the controversial WikiLeaks website.
The papers include accounts of how specials, including a unit known as Task Force 42, tracked down rebels to hideouts in the wilderness of Helmand province.
One, known as Janan, was then gunned down with two henchmen by an Apache AH-64 helicopter summoned to the scene by the ground troops. It also emerged yesterday that the British mother of the American military analyst who allegedly leaked the documents had been interrogated at her home in Wales by the FBI.
Susan Manning, 56, was left “severely distressed” after agents attached to the US Embassy in London paid a visit to her home in Haverfordwest, Dyfed. Her 22-year-old son Bradley, a US Army analyst who is half-American, has been charged with leaking defence documents through WikiLeaks.
Yesterday, her sister Sharon Staples told how Susan phoned her to hear her scream in panic down the phone: “They’re here, they’re here.” She said the FBI also visited her own home in nearby Milford Haven, adding: “As soon as I spoke to them and asked them not to stress her out, they backed down.”
The leaked papers give an extraordinary insight into Allied operations in Afghanistan but have infuriated military chiefs. Even before the November 2008 assassination of Janan – No 210 on the list – at a farmhouse in Nad-e-Ali, Task Force 42 had a run of successful strikes.
In the 10 days previously, the task force had killed No 1,473 – real name Mullah Ziauddin, code name Beethoven – near Lashkar Gah. Beethoven had orchestrated roadside bombings across the region and was also linked to the kidnap of 160 Afghan workers in a single month.
SEARCH UK NEWS for:
It also emerged yesterday that the special forces operation has been able to call on the world’s biggest flying artillery gun, the Hercules AC-130.
Dubbed the Angel of Death, because of the shape its anti-missile flares make when fired, it too is being deployed against the top-level Taliban.
One special forces officer said: “The AC-130 really is the ultimate weapon. It is very accurate and simply vaporises the target and sends a powerful psychological message to the enemy.”
US Defence Secretary Robert Gates accused WikiLeaks of undermining coalition forces, in an interview with ABC News. He said: “There are two areas of culpability. One is legal culpability. And that’s up to the Justice Department and others – that’s not my arena.
“But there’s also a moral culpability. And that’s where I think the verdict is ‘guilty’ on WikiLeaks. They have put this out without any regard whatsoever for the consequences.”
Meanwhile yesterday, the latest offensive against the Taliban, Operation Black Prince, was said to be progressing “very well”. Troops from the 1st Battalion, the Duke of Lancaster’s Regiment swarmed into the town of Saidabad under cover of darkness on Friday.
They then cleared compounds and established patrol bases in the area, and on Saturday seized large quantities of roadside bombs and bomb-making equipment.
An MoD spokesman said there had been limited contact with the insurgents, and no British casualties.
Monday August 2,2010
By Cyril Dixon Have your say(2)
A crack squad of British special forces is hunting down more than 2,000 key Taliban commanders listed on a “wanted – dead or alive” list.
The elite Special Boat Service commandos are trawling southern Afghanistan with orders to capture the “Tier 1” insurgents, or kill them on sight.
Details of the secret mission emerged among tens of thousands of coalition forces’ documents published by the controversial WikiLeaks website.
The papers include accounts of how specials, including a unit known as Task Force 42, tracked down rebels to hideouts in the wilderness of Helmand province.
One, known as Janan, was then gunned down with two henchmen by an Apache AH-64 helicopter summoned to the scene by the ground troops. It also emerged yesterday that the British mother of the American military analyst who allegedly leaked the documents had been interrogated at her home in Wales by the FBI.
Susan Manning, 56, was left “severely distressed” after agents attached to the US Embassy in London paid a visit to her home in Haverfordwest, Dyfed. Her 22-year-old son Bradley, a US Army analyst who is half-American, has been charged with leaking defence documents through WikiLeaks.
Yesterday, her sister Sharon Staples told how Susan phoned her to hear her scream in panic down the phone: “They’re here, they’re here.” She said the FBI also visited her own home in nearby Milford Haven, adding: “As soon as I spoke to them and asked them not to stress her out, they backed down.”
The leaked papers give an extraordinary insight into Allied operations in Afghanistan but have infuriated military chiefs. Even before the November 2008 assassination of Janan – No 210 on the list – at a farmhouse in Nad-e-Ali, Task Force 42 had a run of successful strikes.
In the 10 days previously, the task force had killed No 1,473 – real name Mullah Ziauddin, code name Beethoven – near Lashkar Gah. Beethoven had orchestrated roadside bombings across the region and was also linked to the kidnap of 160 Afghan workers in a single month.
SEARCH UK NEWS for:
It also emerged yesterday that the special forces operation has been able to call on the world’s biggest flying artillery gun, the Hercules AC-130.
Dubbed the Angel of Death, because of the shape its anti-missile flares make when fired, it too is being deployed against the top-level Taliban.
One special forces officer said: “The AC-130 really is the ultimate weapon. It is very accurate and simply vaporises the target and sends a powerful psychological message to the enemy.”
US Defence Secretary Robert Gates accused WikiLeaks of undermining coalition forces, in an interview with ABC News. He said: “There are two areas of culpability. One is legal culpability. And that’s up to the Justice Department and others – that’s not my arena.
“But there’s also a moral culpability. And that’s where I think the verdict is ‘guilty’ on WikiLeaks. They have put this out without any regard whatsoever for the consequences.”
Meanwhile yesterday, the latest offensive against the Taliban, Operation Black Prince, was said to be progressing “very well”. Troops from the 1st Battalion, the Duke of Lancaster’s Regiment swarmed into the town of Saidabad under cover of darkness on Friday.
They then cleared compounds and established patrol bases in the area, and on Saturday seized large quantities of roadside bombs and bomb-making equipment.
An MoD spokesman said there had been limited contact with the insurgents, and no British casualties.
War Stories
Junior Member Join Date:Feb 2010
Posts:4 "In war there are no unwounded soldiers."
The heat, dust, loneliness and frustration, worry, lack of sleep and fear all play over and over in my mind like a maddening commercial looped for eternity. The endless nights on guard just watching, waiting for the stillness to be shattered by the sounds of gunfire and explosions can be maddening. You start wanting it to happen, willing it to happen and when it doesn’t your left empty and drained. The constant vigilance feels like slow bleeding…you wonder how far you can go and survive. How much more can I take and still be the man who left America and my family just months ago. Has it been that long? I feel so old and tired. It’s as though the very act of touching the soil draws the life slowly out of you with each step.
With the end of my tour in the Stan nearing what once seemed so intangible and far away may now becomes a reality. That day, that moment that will bring so many lonely hearts together in one place seems almost unimaginable. I have thought about that day in so many different ways it can be, at times, a source of maddening distraction.
Now the realization is that this last flight will be over and you won’t be going back to the places that caused so much pain and longing can be hard to fathom. I have watched my children grow in pictures and heard my daughter say her first words over a static filled satellite phone from eight thousand miles away. My son speaks in complete sentences now, always asking me how my soldiers are and if the there are any bad guys near. I wonder what I will tell him of this war when he grows older. What I can tell him about the things his Father has done to survive.
Will they understand? Will they be able to see the man who left a year ago is still here inside?
How will I react to those who are so blissfully ignorant to the war and all its obscenities of violence? Will I resent them for their apathy or will I understand that I am the one who’s changed and react accordingly? The nature of this conflict with its landmines and lightning attacks has kept us in a perpetual state of vigilance with explosive moments of adrenalin and despair. The Army gave me the Purple Heart award for injuries in battle but what do you get for wounds of the soul?
Being my second time deployed to war zone did not make it any easier to adapt at surviving on the home front. My wife has had to work and raise our children without a Dad for a year and a half and during those dark moments alone after the children have gone to sleep she wonders if I’m safe.
How has this war changed her?
I remember one of my first firefights where I was so fuckin mad at them for slinging rounds at me for months, waiting for the floor to explode under my feet and not being able to return fire because of civilians in the area or we were unable to positively identify a target that the act of squeezing that trigger and hearing those rounds hammering the enemy and seeing them fall was more exciting and more rewarding than your first porn film.
War, by its very nature, sometimes allows too much time in between the missions for deep thinking. If you dive too deeply into the pool of your own emotion you may never reach the surface again and find yourself descending into the darkness. And it is madness you see. This wafer thin veneer of societal normalcy we carry like a child’s cardboard shield will not ward off the ugliness and savagery of those to wish to destroy you.
In some ways I guess I was kinda lucky. My initiation into the suffering and death of others was gradual enough to give me some time to build up mental defenses but there never is enough time is there?
I know this; I will not allow this experience to shade the rest of my life with bitter angst. Being older this time I hope I have gained the wisdom to accept the path that has led me to the door I must now open and know I will be stronger for it. I have taken all the men under my command and returned them safely to their loved ones and I have prayed for the fallen.
God bless this rag-tag bunch of misfits I call my soldiers and God bless America the one true beacon of hope in this world.
This story is a recollection of my time and duty serving in Afghanistan. I have tried to be as honest and true to the events as they happened using my notes and columns I had written but as usual my minds eye sees things differently than others. All the quotes used are from my memory and therefore may be remembered differently from another’s perspective.
Posts:4 "In war there are no unwounded soldiers."
The heat, dust, loneliness and frustration, worry, lack of sleep and fear all play over and over in my mind like a maddening commercial looped for eternity. The endless nights on guard just watching, waiting for the stillness to be shattered by the sounds of gunfire and explosions can be maddening. You start wanting it to happen, willing it to happen and when it doesn’t your left empty and drained. The constant vigilance feels like slow bleeding…you wonder how far you can go and survive. How much more can I take and still be the man who left America and my family just months ago. Has it been that long? I feel so old and tired. It’s as though the very act of touching the soil draws the life slowly out of you with each step.
With the end of my tour in the Stan nearing what once seemed so intangible and far away may now becomes a reality. That day, that moment that will bring so many lonely hearts together in one place seems almost unimaginable. I have thought about that day in so many different ways it can be, at times, a source of maddening distraction.
Now the realization is that this last flight will be over and you won’t be going back to the places that caused so much pain and longing can be hard to fathom. I have watched my children grow in pictures and heard my daughter say her first words over a static filled satellite phone from eight thousand miles away. My son speaks in complete sentences now, always asking me how my soldiers are and if the there are any bad guys near. I wonder what I will tell him of this war when he grows older. What I can tell him about the things his Father has done to survive.
Will they understand? Will they be able to see the man who left a year ago is still here inside?
How will I react to those who are so blissfully ignorant to the war and all its obscenities of violence? Will I resent them for their apathy or will I understand that I am the one who’s changed and react accordingly? The nature of this conflict with its landmines and lightning attacks has kept us in a perpetual state of vigilance with explosive moments of adrenalin and despair. The Army gave me the Purple Heart award for injuries in battle but what do you get for wounds of the soul?
Being my second time deployed to war zone did not make it any easier to adapt at surviving on the home front. My wife has had to work and raise our children without a Dad for a year and a half and during those dark moments alone after the children have gone to sleep she wonders if I’m safe.
How has this war changed her?
I remember one of my first firefights where I was so fuckin mad at them for slinging rounds at me for months, waiting for the floor to explode under my feet and not being able to return fire because of civilians in the area or we were unable to positively identify a target that the act of squeezing that trigger and hearing those rounds hammering the enemy and seeing them fall was more exciting and more rewarding than your first porn film.
War, by its very nature, sometimes allows too much time in between the missions for deep thinking. If you dive too deeply into the pool of your own emotion you may never reach the surface again and find yourself descending into the darkness. And it is madness you see. This wafer thin veneer of societal normalcy we carry like a child’s cardboard shield will not ward off the ugliness and savagery of those to wish to destroy you.
In some ways I guess I was kinda lucky. My initiation into the suffering and death of others was gradual enough to give me some time to build up mental defenses but there never is enough time is there?
I know this; I will not allow this experience to shade the rest of my life with bitter angst. Being older this time I hope I have gained the wisdom to accept the path that has led me to the door I must now open and know I will be stronger for it. I have taken all the men under my command and returned them safely to their loved ones and I have prayed for the fallen.
God bless this rag-tag bunch of misfits I call my soldiers and God bless America the one true beacon of hope in this world.
This story is a recollection of my time and duty serving in Afghanistan. I have tried to be as honest and true to the events as they happened using my notes and columns I had written but as usual my minds eye sees things differently than others. All the quotes used are from my memory and therefore may be remembered differently from another’s perspective.
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