I barely heard my wife tell me that she was going with my daughter to take our grandson to the E.R. I had taken my meds, so, I was pretty well out of it. Later, I don't know how long, I heard the sound of the front door opening. I was not completely
awake, trying to listen for my wife come to bed. I heard nothing since the sound of the front door opening. I raised up in bed and turned on my bedside light and found no one in bed with me. Hesitantly, I got up out of bed to see where my wife was. Her car keys were on her computer table, her shoes where she takes them off. She had not left the house. Where was she? I checked each room, one by one, and she was no where to be found. I was walking toward our bedroom and the door was closed. I had not closed the door. I could see light coming from under the door. Bright light. Where the hell was that coming from? I did not have a light that bright in my bedroom. As I was reaching toward the door handle I heard a voice from behind me. "I would not do that if I were you." I recognized the raspy voice of the Col. I turned to confront him and he was not there. I was frozen in place. I told myself that I was having another nightmare. I did not think this was a dream. It was as real as I am sitting here writing about it. I called out to the Col. "Show yourself, you bastard." No response. "What's wrong, are you suddenly a coward?" I must have been screaming because my throat was hoarse. I was about to yell something else when I felt a hand on my shoulder and my wife's voice asking me if I was alright. I could not speak for several minutes. When I finally was able to talk I told my wife everything. Then I began weeping. She helped me to bed and I stayed with her until she fell asleep. How I envy her sleep. theblogmeister
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Monday, October 11, 2010
My Dream That Turned Into a Nightmare
Every since I was a small boy my dream of becoming a doctor was real. That is the only thing I wanted. To be able to heal the sick. To improve the quality of life for others. To save lives. After graduating high school the dreams of my youth never faded, they only became stronger. I entered the U.S. Air Force to begin the long hard road of becoming a doctor. After medical training I was assigned to a 250 bed hospital at Eglin A.F.B. in Ft. Walton Beach, Fl. My on the job training started on an orthopaedic surgery floor. I was like a sponge. I learned something new every day. I had some friends that were doctors that would let me scrub in on some of their cases. There was nothing that was standing in my way. I became the best tech on our floor. I knew how to set up any type of traction equipment and when doctors orders were written for a type of traction equipment to be set up they asked for me to do it. The doctors and nursing staff knew that I could be counted on to get the job done.
The day was September 18, 1978. It was the day that I threw my medical career out the window. I had done the one thing that ruined my chance of ever fulfilling the dreams that I carried with me throughout my life. Had it not been for Colonel Renold DeBarge, I know, without a doubt in my mind, that I would be practicing medicine as we speak. Think about it for a moment. One action changed the course of my life and has caused me so much psychological and physical pain beyond comprehension. Because of that lapse in judgement I have become an emotional and physical wreck. I am not asking or expecting sympathy from anyone. I made the mistake and am paying for that mistake every day of my life. It is easy to say that I should have known better. That I got what I deserved. Bullshit. I was a 19 year old kid that was manipulated by a very smart retired Full Bird Colonel that wanted to end his life but knew by doing so, he would ruin his wife's chance at receiving his retirement and pension, probably his life insurance, too. I blame my commander of our hospital unit by seeing I was getting too attached to the Col. and instead of reassigning me, she granted the Col.'s request that I be totally in charge of his care. She warned me that I was getting too close but what did she do? She made damn sure that I stayed close. Am I pissed? You damn right I am! I see his face constantly. Terrorizing my psyche. My life was worth nothing to the Col., or, my C.O., for that matter. I am in the process of filing for service-connected disability for PTSD. Even that will not be enough. theblogmeister
The day was September 18, 1978. It was the day that I threw my medical career out the window. I had done the one thing that ruined my chance of ever fulfilling the dreams that I carried with me throughout my life. Had it not been for Colonel Renold DeBarge, I know, without a doubt in my mind, that I would be practicing medicine as we speak. Think about it for a moment. One action changed the course of my life and has caused me so much psychological and physical pain beyond comprehension. Because of that lapse in judgement I have become an emotional and physical wreck. I am not asking or expecting sympathy from anyone. I made the mistake and am paying for that mistake every day of my life. It is easy to say that I should have known better. That I got what I deserved. Bullshit. I was a 19 year old kid that was manipulated by a very smart retired Full Bird Colonel that wanted to end his life but knew by doing so, he would ruin his wife's chance at receiving his retirement and pension, probably his life insurance, too. I blame my commander of our hospital unit by seeing I was getting too attached to the Col. and instead of reassigning me, she granted the Col.'s request that I be totally in charge of his care. She warned me that I was getting too close but what did she do? She made damn sure that I stayed close. Am I pissed? You damn right I am! I see his face constantly. Terrorizing my psyche. My life was worth nothing to the Col., or, my C.O., for that matter. I am in the process of filing for service-connected disability for PTSD. Even that will not be enough. theblogmeister
Thursday, October 7, 2010
I Need a Valium
I am making a joke out of what happened to me last night. Every word of it is true. That is one of my tamer nightmares. I have had them so bad that my wife wakes me up and convinces me that what had happened was indeed a dream. I have never had such vivid dreams filled with pure fear. Sometimes the Col. is trying to kill me. He chases me, runs me down, tortures me, and it has been going on since 1978. It got so bad back in 2003 I was admitted into the VA hospital in Tuscaloosa, Al. I was told, then, that I suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I had never heard of PTSD. When it was explained to me by other patients, veterans with the diagnosis of PTSD, I did not think that it applied to me. I was never in combat, never been to war. All the guys that I was in group therapy with, they all were in combat. Some were in the Vietnam War while others were in the gulf war. I was told by my therapist not to discuss my case in group until he talked with the higher-ups because mine involved a crime. Albeit, over thirty years ago. After about two weeks my therapist came to me and told me that I had the OK to tell my story. An investigation was not opened after the Col.'s death. He had no children and his wife had passed away long ago. I felt like I did not deserve to be in the same group with these guys. To me, they were heroes. I got up the nerve to tell my story and you could have heard a pin drop after I finished. They came up to me and hugged my neck and told me that I was a part of them, that I had PTSD and they would do anything for me to help me get through it. I wish they were here, now. theblogmeister
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Who's There?
The noise was so loud it woke me from a deep sleep. I sat up in bed as still as I could be. My wife's breathing was the only sound that I could hear. I then noticed the tic-tic of the clock at our bedside. The iridescent glow told me that it was 1:08 am. My heart beat soon drowned out the sound of her breathing followed by the sound of the clock. All I could hear, now, was the double bass beat of my atrium and ventricle. My brain was sending signals to my ears in order to figure out what woke me in the first place, hoping for a repeat to find the culprit. My eyes were no use to me because of the darkness. That made my auditory senses much sharper. I sat there for a few minutes trying to decide what to do next when I heard it, again. My pupils had dilated to allow more light and I could see my wife lying on her side, facing away from me. I had not noticed how dark our bedroom was at this time of the morning. It was dark. I had to rely on my hearing which was becoming very acute. The noise sounded like it was coming from the front room. Our bedroom is at the back of the house and I could still hear that something was not right. I live in a house that was built sometime in the forties and it has the sounds most old houses have. This was not an ordinary sound. It was loud enough to wake me up from a dead sleep. I sat there frozen, not wanting to wake my wife. We have a poodle that sleeps at the foot of the bed on his dog blanket. He is 14 years old with cataracts in both eyes but that don't affect his hearing. There is nothing wrong with his hearing. It's fine. Then why does he not hear the noise in the front room? Shit! I cannot lay back down until I figure out what the hell is going on."Pooh," I whispered. That is the dog's name. Blind and deaf. Just my luck.
I quietly turned and put my feet on the floor trying to locate my house shoes. Damn, the floor is cold. My night vision has found its groove and I can see, a little. What I couldn't see was my house shoes. I tip-toed towards my dresser to get a pair of socks. There it was, again! Someone or something was definitely in my house. My foot brushed up against something. My house shoes. I slipped them on and made my way to the bedroom door. My night vision is not good enough, I have to get some help. In the top drawer of my dresser is a pen light. I need that light. I, with great care, slide open my dresser drawer about six inches, just enough to get my hand inside. Something is not right. I keep a box in the right-hand corner of the drawer filled with tie clips, cuff links, my class ring, and assorted items. The box is not there. I stand very still and think about what I've done. I got out of bed on the left but I sleep on the right. I can barely see the room but I can see enough to know the arrangement is all wrong. There is very little light coming through the window. There looks to be some sort of heating and air-conditioning unit running the length and below the window. A television is mounted about six feet off the floor. A curtain is mounted in the middle of the room pulled past the foot of the bed. My breathing is going to give me away, it is that loud. I close my eyes tight and try to concentrate on slowing my breathing when I hear the noise, again. It sounds like it is just outside my door. I am wondering if it is my door, my room. Hell, is this my house? Thoughts are racing through my brain at warp speed. I must be dreaming. That has to be what is happening. It would explain everything. A crooked smile has me starting to relax. I am not used to mellow dreams. They are usually horror flicks. Relief.
I grope for the switch on the wall and flip it up. What the hell! I find myself bathed in bright florescent light. I am standing in the middle of a hospital room with two beds, the curtain separating the two. One bed is empty and fully made. No one has been lying in that bed. This has got to be the weirdest dream I have ever experienced. I could not see if anyone was using the other bed. I was closer to the door when I hear a noise coming from the other side of the curtain. It sounded like someone gargling Listerine. Where the hell did my wife go? I know I was just lying beside her moments ago. I thought I was, at least. Please, God, wake me up. I do not like this, at all. I reach for the door and slowly open it. The light from the room was shining on my refrigerator. Now I am totally confused. I just want to wake up. I opened the door completely and could see my kitchen. I felt a little better, so, I walked over to the sink, turned the cold water on, cupped my hands and splashed water on my face. Shit, that's cold! I turn and look at my bedroom door and it is closed. I could see it by the light over the oven we use for a night light. Yes! Finally. It has been a while since I did any sleep walking. I almost laughed out loud. You don't know what a relief I felt. I was tired all of a sudden and decided to go back to that warm bed. I opened the door and all the air left my body. I stood dead still. I could not move. It was the Col. sitting up in his hospital bed staring into my wide eyes. Why? Why? I slammed the door and ran. I ran as fast as I could go with a back that has been fused. I stopped when I realized that He would not follow. He will be waiting for me in my dreams, with open arms.
I quietly turned and put my feet on the floor trying to locate my house shoes. Damn, the floor is cold. My night vision has found its groove and I can see, a little. What I couldn't see was my house shoes. I tip-toed towards my dresser to get a pair of socks. There it was, again! Someone or something was definitely in my house. My foot brushed up against something. My house shoes. I slipped them on and made my way to the bedroom door. My night vision is not good enough, I have to get some help. In the top drawer of my dresser is a pen light. I need that light. I, with great care, slide open my dresser drawer about six inches, just enough to get my hand inside. Something is not right. I keep a box in the right-hand corner of the drawer filled with tie clips, cuff links, my class ring, and assorted items. The box is not there. I stand very still and think about what I've done. I got out of bed on the left but I sleep on the right. I can barely see the room but I can see enough to know the arrangement is all wrong. There is very little light coming through the window. There looks to be some sort of heating and air-conditioning unit running the length and below the window. A television is mounted about six feet off the floor. A curtain is mounted in the middle of the room pulled past the foot of the bed. My breathing is going to give me away, it is that loud. I close my eyes tight and try to concentrate on slowing my breathing when I hear the noise, again. It sounds like it is just outside my door. I am wondering if it is my door, my room. Hell, is this my house? Thoughts are racing through my brain at warp speed. I must be dreaming. That has to be what is happening. It would explain everything. A crooked smile has me starting to relax. I am not used to mellow dreams. They are usually horror flicks. Relief.
I grope for the switch on the wall and flip it up. What the hell! I find myself bathed in bright florescent light. I am standing in the middle of a hospital room with two beds, the curtain separating the two. One bed is empty and fully made. No one has been lying in that bed. This has got to be the weirdest dream I have ever experienced. I could not see if anyone was using the other bed. I was closer to the door when I hear a noise coming from the other side of the curtain. It sounded like someone gargling Listerine. Where the hell did my wife go? I know I was just lying beside her moments ago. I thought I was, at least. Please, God, wake me up. I do not like this, at all. I reach for the door and slowly open it. The light from the room was shining on my refrigerator. Now I am totally confused. I just want to wake up. I opened the door completely and could see my kitchen. I felt a little better, so, I walked over to the sink, turned the cold water on, cupped my hands and splashed water on my face. Shit, that's cold! I turn and look at my bedroom door and it is closed. I could see it by the light over the oven we use for a night light. Yes! Finally. It has been a while since I did any sleep walking. I almost laughed out loud. You don't know what a relief I felt. I was tired all of a sudden and decided to go back to that warm bed. I opened the door and all the air left my body. I stood dead still. I could not move. It was the Col. sitting up in his hospital bed staring into my wide eyes. Why? Why? I slammed the door and ran. I ran as fast as I could go with a back that has been fused. I stopped when I realized that He would not follow. He will be waiting for me in my dreams, with open arms.
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
What Have I done?
For all of my readers I have relived the traumatic event that ruined my life. Now, I am not blaming you, at all. I made the choice to go back and give all my readers the story that happened so long ago and the consequences of reliving that day. The problem with reliving a traumatic event is that it brings out the very thing that has caused havoc in my life. PTSD is a very cunning disease. It can last for years and sometimes get worse with age. It is not like a bottle of fine wine, on the contrary, as soon as you open that bottle it is almost like Satan himself is released. All of the pain, in my case, exploded to the forefront. My nightmares have returned with a vengeance. I am afraid to go to sleep.
There is a big difference between the conscious mind (Being awake and aware of your surroundings) and the sub-conscious mind (having absolutely no control of your surroundings.) I have even consulted with a hypnotherapist to try to change my sub-conscious thoughts. I have even considered acupuncture. Do I sound desperate? The terror filled nights that I have experience has begun to question my sanity. I think about our men in the military and what horrors they have witnessed. I pray for them and I hope you will add them in your prayers whether you agree with the United States' foreign policy. It sickens me to see Americans that hold rallies invoving dead soldiers funerals and yell that they got what they deserve. I'm sure you know about the church in Kansas that pickets those military burials spouting cruel and inhumane voices at the grieving families. I believe in freedom of speech but let those crazies exercise their right in Kansas, not all over the country at our fallen heroes funerals.
Because of my charge nurse that supervised me on the surgical floor I worked while in the military, I was ordered to care for a dying patient that manipulated me into taking his life. Medicine was my life. Because of her not wanting to displease a dying patient I was ordered to care for him, exclusively. Had my commanding officer on our floor explained to the Col. that I could not care for him any longer my life would be fulfilled with a dream since childhood. I would have become a doctor. Saving countless lives instead of ruining my own
There is a big difference between the conscious mind (Being awake and aware of your surroundings) and the sub-conscious mind (having absolutely no control of your surroundings.) I have even consulted with a hypnotherapist to try to change my sub-conscious thoughts. I have even considered acupuncture. Do I sound desperate? The terror filled nights that I have experience has begun to question my sanity. I think about our men in the military and what horrors they have witnessed. I pray for them and I hope you will add them in your prayers whether you agree with the United States' foreign policy. It sickens me to see Americans that hold rallies invoving dead soldiers funerals and yell that they got what they deserve. I'm sure you know about the church in Kansas that pickets those military burials spouting cruel and inhumane voices at the grieving families. I believe in freedom of speech but let those crazies exercise their right in Kansas, not all over the country at our fallen heroes funerals.
Because of my charge nurse that supervised me on the surgical floor I worked while in the military, I was ordered to care for a dying patient that manipulated me into taking his life. Medicine was my life. Because of her not wanting to displease a dying patient I was ordered to care for him, exclusively. Had my commanding officer on our floor explained to the Col. that I could not care for him any longer my life would be fulfilled with a dream since childhood. I would have become a doctor. Saving countless lives instead of ruining my own
Monday, October 4, 2010
He's Back
The sound woke me up with a jolt.It had to be coming from inside the house. I checked on my wife, she was sound asleep. I slowly got up out of my bed, not to disturb Lorri. The sound was distinct, close. I could not believe Lorri did not hear it. I slowly got out of bead making sure to be very quiet. It sounded like it was coming from the front bedroom. I sneaked through the house not to disturb, I did not want to whomever it was that he had been heard. I slowly walked toward the front of the house. I could hear the faint drumming of medical equipment. I slowly made my way towards the front bedroom. There was a light emanating from around the door. I could not see into the bedroom, so, I had to make another plan. I decided to go outside at the window air-conditioner to see if I could hear anything that was coming from that room. My Dad usually used that room when he stayed with me but I could tell for sure this was not my Dad's doings. First of all, Dad's car was not parked in my driveway. Who could it be? I went back to check on my wife and she was sound asleep. I went back to the A/C outside to see if I could hear anything out of the room. I heard what sounded like a patient in ICU. The ventilator, forcing air into someones lungs. What is happening? I am in my own home and these sounds are immpossible. I walked back inside and made my walk to the front bedroom. The door had about an inch gap between the floor and the bottom of the door. I laid out and looked under the door. I could see several hospital booties moving around a central figure. I barely made out the words. " Doctor, Mr. Riley's vitals are falling." came a voice that sounded female. "Give him another amp of lidocaine." The female voice aided.. I went to the bathroom and found a mirror to slide under the door in the hopes that I could see more. I slid it under the door and the first person I recognized was Col. DeBarge. I immediately started screaming at the top of my lungs. The Col. immediately recognized my voice. "Get him, " he yelled. I stood up and began to run as fast as I could. I did not recognize where I was, at first. The more I ran the environment came to me. I was at Eglin AFB, Florida. My mind was confused. This has never happened. I ran as fast as I could until I collapsed. When I came to there was the Col. standing above me with the most wicked smile I have ever seen. I was caught. This will be the end. I closed my eyes closed and I prayed. "God can't help you, now."
I awoke with a jerk. My wife said, 'What is wrong? The Col." I just held her in my arms and cried.
"When will this stop? Will it ever stop?" The horror continues. The Col. will not give me peace. I don't know how much more I can handle before I lose my mind. theblogmeister
I awoke with a jerk. My wife said, 'What is wrong? The Col." I just held her in my arms and cried.
"When will this stop? Will it ever stop?" The horror continues. The Col. will not give me peace. I don't know how much more I can handle before I lose my mind. theblogmeister
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Recall
This is the first time I have sat at my computer since my last post. Reliving what happened so long ago almost derailed my sanity. The pain of that day has crept into my dreams. The Col., once again, dominates my mind. I was reluctant to tell the story that changed my life for that reason. When I sleep my night has become a time to fear. I am reliving the pain. I am dreading the dark because I am afraid to sleep. Terror is a word that has life for me. I have given myself to my sub-conscious. The Col. is very much alive in my dreams. He is angry. He is seeking revenge for what I did to him. Night after night I am fighting sleep because I know what awaits. In the darkness He has strength. I try to get control of my sub-conscious while I am awake so I can defeat Him when I sleep. Slumber is His domain. I have no power over Him. Fear is trying to creep into my conscious mind. It is a struggle that I am not winning. I only win while I am awake. I cannot stay awake forever. The longer I am sleep deprived the deeper I sleep when it overtakes me. That is His power, His domain, and my weakness. Sleep has given Him life, again. It is hard. My strength has become weaker. I will not give in to Him. I will fight. theblogmeister
Saturday, September 18, 2010
The Colonel Became The Demon
This was, indeed, a traumatic event. I left Florida but brought Col. DeBarge with me. I started having terrible nightmares. If you look back into some of my oldest posts you will find a diary of those nightmares. Those nightmares began to affect me after I awoke from my sleep. This is when I found something to get rid of those nightmares. It was not therapy, well, I guess it was therapy, not the traditional kind, though. It was self medication. Alcohol only intensified the nightmares but some narcotics erased them. It started, ironically, just before I was discharged from the Air Force. I hurt my back while in the Air Force and used the VA hospital in Birmingham, AL. for treatment after I was discharged. I was prescribed percocet 5mg for the pain. It stopped my physical pain but what was most important was that those perc's stopped my emotional pain. I could deal with the nightmares and the re-living the murdering of a patient when I was high. Let's be real, here. It can be called many different things but when all is said and done you still have to call it murder. Those percocets became my salvation. I was not a murderer. They worked so good that I went to Gadsden State Community College and got a job with the local ambulance service trying to resurrect a passion for medicine. It lasted until the first call I got involving a child being thrown from a vehicle. I quit the next day. I knew that I was developing a drug habit and had to give up medicine, permenantly. I have heard that something like 20% of all medical doctors have used narcotics for themself. What was the saying, " A doctor that treats himself has a fool for a client?" Whoever made that up was a genius. It works as well if you are a divorce attorney.
Back to my story..... later tonight. Thanks, theblogmeister
Back to my story..... later tonight. Thanks, theblogmeister
Friday, September 17, 2010
The Beginning of the End
I thought long and hard about what I was about to do. I know so much, now, after months and months of therapy, than I knew then. I was an impressionable young kid when I became involved with the Col. I thought that I could handle it. I did not think it would bother me. I knew about euthanasia so I made myself believe that what I was about to do was the right thing. He was wasting away to a disease that was eating away his body. Not his mind, though. He knew what he was doing. It did not matter what it would do to me. He could not commit suicide and risk losing his retirement and pension and leaving his wife, Bunny, in a dire situation. I loved them, both. They were great people and did not deserve what was happening to them. It was time. I gave the Col. a large amount of morphine sulphate in his IV. I then gave him about 30cc of potassium chloride.I walked out of his room without looking back. I immediately took a right into the stairwell and walked down, exited the hospital, got into my car and drove home. Within an hour the phone rang, it was the hospital. I was told that Bunny needed me. That is all the nurses said. They did not tell me the Col. was dead, of course, I already knew. They thought that I would be in no shape to drive if I knew he was dead. I drove back to the hospital and poked floor number 2. I walked out of the elevator and there was an erie calm. Everyone was watching me as I walked toward the Col.'s room. Bunny met me at the door and we just held each other and cried. They had no children of their own but on many occasions they told me that they were going to adopt me. She held onto me and led me in his room. What I saw lying in that bed would haunt me for the next 31 years. I was devastated at what I had done. All of my emotions escaped me at once. I collapsed and had to be treated by my fellow employees. I saw the pain that I caused in Bunny's eyes. This was all my fault. Bunny had told me that she wanted me to come by her house that the Col. had some things he wanted me to have. After Bunny left the hospital I went home and was in a trance-like state. I was in shock. The doctors wanted to admit me for observation but I said no. The next day I went to my first seargent and asked to be transferred off the floor to another job in the hospital. I spoke to noone about what happened. It was a complete surprise to my friends that I worked with. I was transferred in about 2 weeks and was discharged from the military within 3 months. My company commander of the medical squadron was from the same hometown I was from and he got me an honorable discharge from the Air Force. I gave up on everything I wanted and loved. I never saw Bunny, again. What began were nightmares of unspeakable terror. I had created a monster and he would not let me have peace. His name was Colonel Renold L. DeBarge. theblogmeister
My Story
It's 1 am and I can't stop thinking about the story that changed my life. His name was Colonel Renold L. DeBarge. A patient of mine that cursed my life. I had been working on the Ortho floor for about a year. I was the best tech on that unit. I had enrolled in Okaloosa-Walton Jr. College to get my pre-med classes started. I was working days when the Col. was admitted on our floor. We had one isolation room on our floor and that was the room the Col. was admitted into. Room 225. He and I hit it off immediately. He was a retired Full Bird Colonel and a fighter pilot. The most intriguing man I had ever met. Smart, witty, full of great stories. I spent most all my spare time with him. He was also dying. He had terminal cancer with less than 6 months to live. My commanding officer told me that I was getting too emotionally connected to the Col. That I should start pulling back. So, I did. The Col. kept asking for me. He met with my commanding officer and requested me full time. Instead of telling him that was not possible, she told me that I was assigned to the Col. and no other patient. That was fine with me. Until, about two weeks later, the Col. asked me if I would do him a favor. Of course, I told him. Anything. He asked me to end this all for him. It did not register, at first. I made him clarify his request. What he was asking me to do was kill him. After he worked me for a couple weeks I agreed to do it. To go against everything I was made of, inside. I was going to be a doctor. I shall do no harm. A part of the Hippocratic Oath. I had to think about this. Think I did. theblogmeister
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Non-Combat Related PTSD
Post traumatic stress disorder is a disease that can be caused by a number of factors. First, one has to experience an event so traumatic that it disrupts daily life. It is a disabling anxiety disorder that people might develop following exposure to one or more traumatic events. A trauma is an event that causes intense fear during which the individual may feel like they (or someone very close to them) are about to die or experience serious harm. PTSD is a severe anxiety disorder that can develop after exposure to any event which results in psychological trauma.
PTSD has become a disease that has garnered interest the last few years mainly because of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Soldiers are being diagnosed with PTSD because of these wars.
I was diagnosed with PTSD in 2002 by a doctor in the Veterans Hospital in Tuscaloosa, AL. I did not agree with the diagnosis until 2008. My traumatic event happened in 1978 and my life began to spiral out of control very shortly after.
This is my story.
When I was growing up the only thing that I wanted to do with my life was to become a doctor. I came from a middle-class family and the only way I was to attend college was through the military. I joined the Air Force shortly after graduating high school and entered the medical field with the plan of attending college with the help of the military's GI Bill. I was stationed at Eglin. A.F.B. in Florida after attending medical training in Texas. My job was attending to orthopaedic surgery patients. I started IV's, put down NG tubes, foley caths, and a lot of patient care. I really loved my job. It was the spring of 1978 when I met the man that would soon come to rule my sleep. I will explain in detail the traumatic event that almost took my life. later, theblogmeister
PTSD has become a disease that has garnered interest the last few years mainly because of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Soldiers are being diagnosed with PTSD because of these wars.
I was diagnosed with PTSD in 2002 by a doctor in the Veterans Hospital in Tuscaloosa, AL. I did not agree with the diagnosis until 2008. My traumatic event happened in 1978 and my life began to spiral out of control very shortly after.
This is my story.
When I was growing up the only thing that I wanted to do with my life was to become a doctor. I came from a middle-class family and the only way I was to attend college was through the military. I joined the Air Force shortly after graduating high school and entered the medical field with the plan of attending college with the help of the military's GI Bill. I was stationed at Eglin. A.F.B. in Florida after attending medical training in Texas. My job was attending to orthopaedic surgery patients. I started IV's, put down NG tubes, foley caths, and a lot of patient care. I really loved my job. It was the spring of 1978 when I met the man that would soon come to rule my sleep. I will explain in detail the traumatic event that almost took my life. later, theblogmeister
Monday, September 13, 2010
It Is Time For Change
The core readers of my blog are military veterans, some who have been diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, as I. To continue to talk about military operations, war stories, and the like, is becoming to be a little unfair to the veterans that I serve. You understand the reason of the title of this post. I will say to any veteran, or civilian for that matter, that may have an interest in reading about my problems can do so by clicking on archived posts and finding an article that may be beneficial to you. I want to help as best I can, especially the veteran, understand what works and doesn't work when it comes to dealing with PTSD. I will also encourage comments, that I will publish, from anyone with something positive to say. Knowledge is power.
I am going to deviate a little from my previous posts. I feel that living in the past pains of PTSD is probably not such a good idea. I lived in the throngs for over 30 years. Only when I was able to break away from my past is when I could let it stay in my past.
I am anxious about this new direction and hope it serves you, well. You will hear from me, soon. theblogmeister
I am going to deviate a little from my previous posts. I feel that living in the past pains of PTSD is probably not such a good idea. I lived in the throngs for over 30 years. Only when I was able to break away from my past is when I could let it stay in my past.
I am anxious about this new direction and hope it serves you, well. You will hear from me, soon. theblogmeister
Friday, September 10, 2010
To Live Or To Die
Several months ago my cousin found out she had cervical cancer. She is in her mid forties and was uninsured. The University of Alabama at Birmingham Medical Center found a way for her to get medicaid to pay for the treatments. They consisted of about six weeks of direct radiation by inserting an irradiated rod into her uterus to kill the cancer cells. It was tough on her but she seemed to recover and was told by the doctors at UAB that she was cancer free. The medicaid payed for her stay and all drugs the oncologist used. Life was good.
Then about three weeks ago she noticed her right leg begin to swell. Medicaid continued to pay for her blood thinner medicines, along with pain medication. Her leg kept growing much larger, day by day. She developed very large blood blisters on her leg and began having numbness in the affected leg. My wife called her an ambulance and she was transported to Gadsden Regional Medical Center to be seen by a vascular surgeon. After getting her history and physical the doctor was afraid that the cancer had returned and ordered a CAT scan and MRI. His fears were true. The test showed many tumors growing in her cervix and lymphatic system. A large tumor had pressed against the large leg vein not allowing the blood that was pumped via an artery to her leg and the blood could not go back to the heart/lungs for re oxygenation, therefore, her leg became one huge blood blister. She had been placed on blood thinners and would have to wait before she could have surgery for her blood to thicken. Here is where things started changing rapidly. One minute she was to have surgery and two days later they tell her that she was awarded social security disability, therefore, made too much money to be eligible for medicaid.. She would have a two year wait for medicare, the federally funded insurance. She was discharged with orders to take a certain medication that would keep her alive. The only problem; the medication was $4,000 dollars. She cleaned out her bank account and with $600 dollars bought less than a weeks worth of medicine. This is America, not a third world nation. She should have some way to get the medication to stay alive. Do you agree? I am going to send this letter to President Obama. I want to start up a fund for her to get the treatment that she needs. Her name is Patricia Wisinger Spaulding and she is family and needs our help. Please send donations in her name to Regions Bank in Glencoe, AL. 35905 You may also find her and talk with her on facebook.com/patriciaspaulding Please talk with her and share your story and if you are in government, please do not let her die. Thank you, theblogmeister
Then about three weeks ago she noticed her right leg begin to swell. Medicaid continued to pay for her blood thinner medicines, along with pain medication. Her leg kept growing much larger, day by day. She developed very large blood blisters on her leg and began having numbness in the affected leg. My wife called her an ambulance and she was transported to Gadsden Regional Medical Center to be seen by a vascular surgeon. After getting her history and physical the doctor was afraid that the cancer had returned and ordered a CAT scan and MRI. His fears were true. The test showed many tumors growing in her cervix and lymphatic system. A large tumor had pressed against the large leg vein not allowing the blood that was pumped via an artery to her leg and the blood could not go back to the heart/lungs for re oxygenation, therefore, her leg became one huge blood blister. She had been placed on blood thinners and would have to wait before she could have surgery for her blood to thicken. Here is where things started changing rapidly. One minute she was to have surgery and two days later they tell her that she was awarded social security disability, therefore, made too much money to be eligible for medicaid.. She would have a two year wait for medicare, the federally funded insurance. She was discharged with orders to take a certain medication that would keep her alive. The only problem; the medication was $4,000 dollars. She cleaned out her bank account and with $600 dollars bought less than a weeks worth of medicine. This is America, not a third world nation. She should have some way to get the medication to stay alive. Do you agree? I am going to send this letter to President Obama. I want to start up a fund for her to get the treatment that she needs. Her name is Patricia Wisinger Spaulding and she is family and needs our help. Please send donations in her name to Regions Bank in Glencoe, AL. 35905 You may also find her and talk with her on facebook.com/patriciaspaulding Please talk with her and share your story and if you are in government, please do not let her die. Thank you, theblogmeister
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
'Draft Status'
I was informed that one of my postings did not meet the standards set forth by blogger.com. My post was taken off my site and placed on 'draft status'. I received an email from blogger.com explaining the reason for the 'draft status'. They did not tell me if someone complained about an article or a staff member initiated the 'draft status'. I did receive a comment from a reader blasting me for outright plagiarism. I should be ashamed of myself, he said. Apparently, this reader has not went back and read some of my earlier posts. He would then realize that shame is , or was, part of my psyche for over 30 years. He would also notice that it is a miracle I am sitting at this computer, today. I wish he would have been adult about what he thought of my plagiarism and opened up a dialogue with me instead of hurling insults. I calmly told this person that I will type, theblogmeister, after anything I write. Sometimes I will come across an article that I find interesting and will copy/paste in my blog. I generally will give the author his credit by naming him. At the end of everyone of my postings in the border of the website will be the date and posted by theblogmeister. That is not saying everything in that post was written by myself. I explained this and told the person that I would be more careful in the future so there will be no mistaking who wrote what.theblogmeister
Monday, September 6, 2010
Heroes Among Us
It is clear that the war in Afghanistan, nearly 9 years old, is becoming increasingly costly. 55 soldiers have been killed in the month of August, alone. Among the increasingly violent firefights we are hearing stories of amazing heroism.
Some soldiers recently received public recognition for their actions in Afghanistan. A Silver Star ceremony was held at Ft. Bragg, N.C. on Monday August 16, 2010.
The third highest award for valor in the Army was awarded to Sgt. 1st Class Antonio Gonzalez and Sgt. 1st Class Mark Roland, both part of Special Operational Detachment 732.
On June 11, 2010, their unit was sent to help an Afghan unit that was pinned down by Taliban fighters.As soon as they arrived they found themselves in the same predicament. Roland climbed out of the safety of his armored vehicle and engaged the enemy in a dry creek bed. They killed 2 Taliban and swept the rest of the dry creek bed. That action protected their rear flank. Gonzalez saw 4 Taliban pinned down, jumped from his vehicle, and ran through enemy fire.
The Army account read, "Without regard for his life over the course of three trips through enemy fire he rescued all 4 soldiers and brought them back to the safety of the armored vehicle." All this while under fire.
After clearing the creek bed and getting back into his vehicle he saw 8 Afghan soldiers pinned down by machine gun fire. Roland got 4 of the Afghans to his vehicle and directed the other 4 to another vehicle.
He and his fellow soldiers defeated an ambush that consisted of 60 Taliban including 2 Taliban Commanders.
Staff Sgts. Mario Pinella and Daniel Gould also had recieved a bronze star.Gould also received the Silver Star for past heroism.
Some soldiers recently received public recognition for their actions in Afghanistan. A Silver Star ceremony was held at Ft. Bragg, N.C. on Monday August 16, 2010.
The third highest award for valor in the Army was awarded to Sgt. 1st Class Antonio Gonzalez and Sgt. 1st Class Mark Roland, both part of Special Operational Detachment 732.
On June 11, 2010, their unit was sent to help an Afghan unit that was pinned down by Taliban fighters.As soon as they arrived they found themselves in the same predicament. Roland climbed out of the safety of his armored vehicle and engaged the enemy in a dry creek bed. They killed 2 Taliban and swept the rest of the dry creek bed. That action protected their rear flank. Gonzalez saw 4 Taliban pinned down, jumped from his vehicle, and ran through enemy fire.
The Army account read, "Without regard for his life over the course of three trips through enemy fire he rescued all 4 soldiers and brought them back to the safety of the armored vehicle." All this while under fire.
After clearing the creek bed and getting back into his vehicle he saw 8 Afghan soldiers pinned down by machine gun fire. Roland got 4 of the Afghans to his vehicle and directed the other 4 to another vehicle.
He and his fellow soldiers defeated an ambush that consisted of 60 Taliban including 2 Taliban Commanders.
Staff Sgts. Mario Pinella and Daniel Gould also had recieved a bronze star.Gould also received the Silver Star for past heroism.
Sunday, September 5, 2010
A Saga in the Making
Today,September 5,2010 we hear of another tragedy. Of another young man, who had hopes, plans, dreams, not unlike a lot of us. Senior Aircraftman Luke Southgate was diving a LandRover when hit by an I.E.D. That acronym has become synonymous with death. Death of an American or our allies. I never even heard of an IED. The one's that introduced me to IED's were one of the tribal members of an Iraqi-an religion that is absolutely ridiculous. I wonder how many news anchors would love to say those very words to a world-wide audience . Hey, Diane Sawyer: How would you like telling millions of people that their belief in ALLAH, or whoever, is like being a member to a violent street gang of Chicago. Talk about Racism! WHEW!
I am sitting in this free world saying what I want to say because of people like Aircraftman Southgate. Mr. Southgate was a member of an Airfield Protection Wing conducting patrols to help protect the Kandahar Air field and all those who operated within it. All it took was one IED, to rip and hearts that can never ever be mended are destroyed. I am writing down here from Alabama. I've never been to Afghanistan however, I am a veteran. I feel some kinship, there. Like a fraternaty, almost.
Mr. Southgate was planning to stay for another 2 years then join the elite, the Special Forces.
Here is just a few of what his friends said:
He was passionate about machine guns and loved being part of Direct Weapons Fire Unit.
He showed great potential, was a superb soldier, and a loyal comrade.He was rightly, quietly, confident in his abilities.He was proud of what he had achieved and held high hopes for the future.
In closing.I ask myself is this all worth it? If it keeps al-queda form striking the US I am all for it. But, what if it does nothing to keep America safe. That is an answer that I simply do not have the answer to. It is up to each of us. Surely, our children did not die for nothing.For those who have lost a loved one, well, I'm here to say that you're family member did not die for nothing, they died protecting for the right I have to sit here and say what ever I want to say, To All of you say, God Bless America and the United Kingdom!
I am sitting in this free world saying what I want to say because of people like Aircraftman Southgate. Mr. Southgate was a member of an Airfield Protection Wing conducting patrols to help protect the Kandahar Air field and all those who operated within it. All it took was one IED, to rip and hearts that can never ever be mended are destroyed. I am writing down here from Alabama. I've never been to Afghanistan however, I am a veteran. I feel some kinship, there. Like a fraternaty, almost.
Mr. Southgate was planning to stay for another 2 years then join the elite, the Special Forces.
Here is just a few of what his friends said:
He was passionate about machine guns and loved being part of Direct Weapons Fire Unit.
He showed great potential, was a superb soldier, and a loyal comrade.He was rightly, quietly, confident in his abilities.He was proud of what he had achieved and held high hopes for the future.
In closing.I ask myself is this all worth it? If it keeps al-queda form striking the US I am all for it. But, what if it does nothing to keep America safe. That is an answer that I simply do not have the answer to. It is up to each of us. Surely, our children did not die for nothing.For those who have lost a loved one, well, I'm here to say that you're family member did not die for nothing, they died protecting for the right I have to sit here and say what ever I want to say, To All of you say, God Bless America and the United Kingdom!
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
The War in Afghanistan
It is time, in my opinion, to get out of Afghanistan. The country is too poorly developed and has too many crooked politicians for America to spend billions and loss of life. The war is sending home those that survive physical wounds with severe emotional ones. We cannot be in the business of nation building. We have enough problems at home where the cost of the war could be used to help alleviate the problems here.
I keep hearing that we should fight terrorism where ever it is. What about Somalia? The Sudan? Yemen? Where we send troops the jihadist will follow. Let's secure our border and let our battle weary soldiers come home. They have fought honorably and deserve it to be over. theblogmeister
)
By Saeed Shah | McClatchy Newspapers
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — U.S. forces lost 22 soldiers in Afghanistan, mostly to roadside bombs, since Friday, marking a bloody step-up in the insurgency as a major U.S.-led offensive seeks to capture the spiritual homeland of the Taliban movement in Kandahar.
The U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan said it's gaining ground against the insurgents, but violence is rising across the country, including in areas that were considered relatively safe.
Five more U.S. soldiers were killed Tuesday, while three Afghan workers for the British charity Oxfam were killed by a roadside bomb in Badakhshan, which had been one of the safer places in the country.
The coalition says that casualties are rising as they push against the strongholds of the Taliban in the south and the allied Haqqani network in the east. The majority of casualties — some 60 percent — this year and in 2009 came from improvised explosive devices planted on roads and paths.
U.S. and Afghan forces are expected to begin shortly an offensive in Zhari and Panjwai, southwest of Kandahar city, the last part of operation "Hamkari," to secure and stabilize Kandahar province. Mullah Omar started the Taliban movement in this area in 1994, and it conquered much of the country in the two years that followed.
Of the 22 American losses since Friday, 17 were the result of IEDs, according to figures provided by the ISAF. In that period, only one non-American coalition soldier was killed.
"It has all been in the south and the east, where most of the kinetic activity is at the moment," said Katie Kendrick, a spokeswoman for the ISAF in Kabul, referring to the fatalities.
The U.S. accounted for 55 of the 76 coalition deaths in August, which topped a painful summer for coalition forces, with 102 foreign soldiers killed in Afghanistan in June and a further 88 in July, according to the website iCasualties, which tracks losses in Afghanistan.
Kandahar is the spiritual home of the Taliban, from where Mullah Omar had ruled until Afghan and U.S. forces toppled him from power in 2001. The province is considered to be the primary goal of the Taliban, but until this year, analysts think that coalition forces didn't commit sufficient troops to the area.
While the other major operation in the south of Afghanistan this year — targeting the town of Marjah in Helmand province — had a defined and spectacular start, the Kandahar "mission" is more dispersed and less defined.
The coalition and Afghan forces say they've improved security in Kandahar city, though it remains a dangerous place, and gained control over most of the Arghandab valley to the north of the city. The next goal of the push, expected to start within days, in the south are the Taliban-controlled districts of Zhari and Panjwai, where there is little Afghan government presence.
"Zhari and Panjwai are the last pieces of this problem set," said a senior ISAF officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak on the record. "Today we own about 10 percent of those areas."
The coalition is under pressure to demonstrate progress in Afghanistan ahead of President Barack Obama's deadline of July 2011 to begin the withdrawal of U.S. soldiers from Afghanistan. Obama in a Tuesday evening address is to declare an end to the seven-year combat mission in Iraq
I keep hearing that we should fight terrorism where ever it is. What about Somalia? The Sudan? Yemen? Where we send troops the jihadist will follow. Let's secure our border and let our battle weary soldiers come home. They have fought honorably and deserve it to be over. theblogmeister
)
By Saeed Shah | McClatchy Newspapers
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — U.S. forces lost 22 soldiers in Afghanistan, mostly to roadside bombs, since Friday, marking a bloody step-up in the insurgency as a major U.S.-led offensive seeks to capture the spiritual homeland of the Taliban movement in Kandahar.
The U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan said it's gaining ground against the insurgents, but violence is rising across the country, including in areas that were considered relatively safe.
Five more U.S. soldiers were killed Tuesday, while three Afghan workers for the British charity Oxfam were killed by a roadside bomb in Badakhshan, which had been one of the safer places in the country.
The coalition says that casualties are rising as they push against the strongholds of the Taliban in the south and the allied Haqqani network in the east. The majority of casualties — some 60 percent — this year and in 2009 came from improvised explosive devices planted on roads and paths.
U.S. and Afghan forces are expected to begin shortly an offensive in Zhari and Panjwai, southwest of Kandahar city, the last part of operation "Hamkari," to secure and stabilize Kandahar province. Mullah Omar started the Taliban movement in this area in 1994, and it conquered much of the country in the two years that followed.
Of the 22 American losses since Friday, 17 were the result of IEDs, according to figures provided by the ISAF. In that period, only one non-American coalition soldier was killed.
"It has all been in the south and the east, where most of the kinetic activity is at the moment," said Katie Kendrick, a spokeswoman for the ISAF in Kabul, referring to the fatalities.
The U.S. accounted for 55 of the 76 coalition deaths in August, which topped a painful summer for coalition forces, with 102 foreign soldiers killed in Afghanistan in June and a further 88 in July, according to the website iCasualties, which tracks losses in Afghanistan.
Kandahar is the spiritual home of the Taliban, from where Mullah Omar had ruled until Afghan and U.S. forces toppled him from power in 2001. The province is considered to be the primary goal of the Taliban, but until this year, analysts think that coalition forces didn't commit sufficient troops to the area.
While the other major operation in the south of Afghanistan this year — targeting the town of Marjah in Helmand province — had a defined and spectacular start, the Kandahar "mission" is more dispersed and less defined.
The coalition and Afghan forces say they've improved security in Kandahar city, though it remains a dangerous place, and gained control over most of the Arghandab valley to the north of the city. The next goal of the push, expected to start within days, in the south are the Taliban-controlled districts of Zhari and Panjwai, where there is little Afghan government presence.
"Zhari and Panjwai are the last pieces of this problem set," said a senior ISAF officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak on the record. "Today we own about 10 percent of those areas."
The coalition is under pressure to demonstrate progress in Afghanistan ahead of President Barack Obama's deadline of July 2011 to begin the withdrawal of U.S. soldiers from Afghanistan. Obama in a Tuesday evening address is to declare an end to the seven-year combat mission in Iraq
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Returning Home by William Welch for USA Today
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Jeremy Harrison sees the warning signs in the Iraq war veterans who walk through his office door every day — flashbacks, inability to relax or relate, restless nights and more.
He recognizes them as symptoms of combat stress because he's trained to, as a counselor at the small storefront Vet Center here run by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. He recognizes them as well because he, too, has faced readjustment in the year since he returned from Iraq, where he served as a sergeant in an engineering company that helped capture Baghdad in 2003.
"Sometimes these sessions are helpful to me," Harrison says, taking a break from counseling some of the nation's newest combat veterans. "Because I deal with a lot of the same problems."
As the United States nears the two-year mark in its military presence in Iraq still fighting a violent insurgency, it is also coming to grips with one of the products of war at home: a new generation of veterans, some of them scarred in ways seen and unseen. While military hospitals mend the physical wounds, the VA is attempting to focus its massive health and benefits bureaucracy on the long-term needs of combat veterans after they leave military service. Some suffer from wounds of flesh and bone, others of emotions and psyche.
These injured and disabled men and women represent the most grievously wounded group of returning combat veterans since the Vietnam War, which officially ended in 1975. Of more than 5 million veterans treated at VA facilities last year, from counseling centers like this one to big hospitals, 48,733 were from the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Many of the most common wounds aren't seen until soldiers return home. Post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, is an often-debilitating mental condition that can produce a range of unwanted emotional responses to the trauma of combat. It can emerge weeks, months or years later. If left untreated, it can severely affect the lives not only of veterans, but their families as well.
Of the 244,054 veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan already discharged from service, 12,422 have been in VA counseling centers for readjustment problems and symptoms associated with PTSD. Comparisons to past wars are difficult because emotional problems were often ignored or written off as "combat fatigue" or "shell shock." PTSD wasn't even an official diagnosis, accepted by the medical profession, until after Vietnam.
There is greater recognition of the mental-health consequences of combat now, and much research has been done in the past 25 years. The VA has a program that attempts to address them and supports extensive research. Harrison is one of 50 veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars hired by the VA as counselors for their fellow veterans.
'It takes you back there'
Post-traumatic stress was defined in 1980, partly based on the experiences of soldiers and victims of war. It produces a wide range of symptoms in men and women who have experienced a traumatic event that provoked intense fear, helplessness or horror.
The events are sometimes re-experienced later through intrusive memories, nightmares, hallucinations or flashbacks, usually triggered by anything that symbolizes or resembles the trauma. Troubled sleep, irritability, anger, poor concentration, hypervigilance and exaggerated responses are often symptoms.
Individuals may feel depression, detachment or estrangement, guilt, intense anxiety and panic, and other negative emotions. They often feel they have little in common with civilian peers; issues that concern friends and family seem trivial after combat.
Harrison says they may even hit their partners during nightmares and never know it.
Many Iraq veterans have returned home to find the aftermath of combat presents them with new challenges:
• Jesus Bocanegra was an Army infantry scout for units that pursued Saddam Hussein in his hometown of Tikrit. After he returned home to McAllen, Texas, it took him six months to find a job.
He was diagnosed with PTSD and is waiting for the VA to process his disability claim. He goes to the local Vet Center but is unable to relate to the Vietnam-era counselors.
"I had real bad flashbacks. I couldn't control them," Bocanegra, 23, says. "I saw the murder of children, women. It was just horrible for anyone to experience."
Bocanegra recalls calling in Apache helicopter strikes on a house by the Tigris River where he had seen crates of enemy ammunition carried in. When the gunfire ended, there was silence.
But then children's cries and screams drifted from the destroyed home, he says. "I didn't know there were kids there," he says. "Those screams are the most horrible thing you can hear."
At home in the Rio Grande Valley, on the Mexico border, he says young people have no concept of what he's experienced. His readjustment has been difficult: His friends threw a homecoming party for him, and he got arrested for drunken driving on the way home.
"The Army is the gateway to get away from poverty here," Bocanegra says. "You go to the Army and expect to be better off, but the best job you can get (back home) is flipping burgers. ... What am I supposed to do now? How are you going to live?"
• Lt. Julian Goodrum, an Army reservist from Knoxville, Tenn., is being treated for PTSD with therapy and anti-anxiety drugs at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington. He checked himself into a civilian psychiatric hospital after he was turned away from a military clinic, where he had sought attention for his mental problems at Fort Knox, Ky. He's facing a court-martial for being AWOL while in the civilian facility.
Goodrum, 34, was a transportation platoon leader in Iraq, running convoys of supplies from Kuwait into Iraq during the invasion. He returned to the USA in the summer of 2003 and experienced isolation, depression, an inability to sleep and racing thoughts.
"It just accumulated until it overwhelmed me. I was having a breakdown and trying to get assistance," he says. "The smell of diesel would trigger things for me. Loud noises, crowds, heavy traffic give me a hard time now. I have a lot of panic. ... You feel like you're choking."
• Sean Huze, a Marine corporal awaiting discharge at Camp Lejeune, N.C., doesn't have PTSD but says everyone who saw combat suffers from at least some combat stress. He says the unrelenting insurgent threat in Iraq gives no opportunity to relax, and combat numbs the senses and emotions.
"There is no 'front,' " Huze says. "You go back to the rear, at the Army base in Mosul, and you go in to get your chow, and the chow hall blows up."
Huze, 30, says the horror often isn't felt until later. "I saw a dead child, probably 3 or 4 years old, lying on the road in Nasiriyah," he says. "It moved me less than if I saw a dead dog at the time. I didn't care. Then you come back, if you are fortunate enough, and hold your own child, and you think of the dead child you didn't care about. ... You think about how little you cared at the time, and that hurts."
Smells bring back the horror. "A barbecue pit — throw a steak on the grill, and it smells a lot like searing flesh," he says. "You go to get your car worked on, and if anyone is welding, the smell of the burning metal is no different than burning caused by rounds fired at it. It takes you back there instantly."
• Allen Walsh, an Army reservist, came back to Tucson 45 pounds lighter and with an injured wrist. He was unable to get his old job back teaching at a truck-driving school. He started his own business instead, a mobile barbecue service. He's been waiting nearly a year on a disability claim with the VA.
Walsh, 36, spent much of the war in Kuwait, attached to a Marine unit providing force protection and chemical decontamination. He says he has experienced PTSD, which he attributes to the constant threat of attack and demand for instant life-or-death decisions.
"It seemed like every day you were always pointing your weapon at somebody. It's something I have to live with," he says.
At home, he found he couldn't sleep more than three or four hours a night. When the nightmares began, he started smoking cigarettes. He'd find himself shaking and quick-tempered.
"Any little noise and I'd jump out of bed and run around the house with a gun," he says. "I'd wake up at night with cold sweats."
'A safe environment'
A recent Defense Department study of combat troops returning from Iraq found that soldiers and Marines who need counseling the most are least likely to seek it because of the stigma of mental health care in the military.
One in six troops questioned in the study admitted to symptoms of severe depression, PTSD or other problems. Of those, six in 10 felt their commanders would treat them differently and fellow troops would lose confidence if they acknowledged their problems.
A report this month by the Government Accountability Office said the VA "is a world leader in PTSD treatment." But it said the department "does not have sufficient capacity to meet the needs of new combat veterans while still providing for veterans of past wars." It said the department hasn't met its own goals for PTSD clinical care and education, even as it anticipates "greater numbers of veterans with PTSD seeking VA services."
Harrison, who was a school counselor and Army Reservist from Wheeling, W.Va., before being called to active duty in January 2003, thinks cases of PTSD may be even more common than the military's one-in-six estimate.
He is on the leading edge of the effort to help these veterans back home. Harrison and other counselors invite Iraq and Afghanistan veterans to stop in to talk. Often, that leads to counseling sessions and regular weekly group therapy. If appropriate, they refer the veterans to VA doctors for drug therapies such as antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications.
"First of all, I let them talk. I want to find out all their problems," he says. "Then I assure them they're not alone. It's OK."
Fifty counselors from the latest war is a small number, considering the VA operates 206 counseling centers across the country. Their strategy is to talk with veterans about readjustment before they have problems, or before small problems become big ones. The VA also has staff at 136 U.S. military bases now, including five people at Walter Reed, where many of the most grievously injured are sent.
The toughest part of helping veterans, Harrison says, is getting them to overcome fears of being stigmatized and to step into a Vet Center. "They think they can handle the situation themselves," he says.
Vet Centers provide help for broader issues of readjustment back to civilian life, including finding a job, alcohol and drug abuse counseling, sexual trauma counseling, spouse and family counseling, and mental or emotional problems that fall short of PTSD.
More than 80% of the staff are veterans, and 60% served in combat zones, says Al Batres, head of the VA's readjustment counseling service. "We're oriented toward peer counseling, and we provide a safe environment for soldiers who have been traumatized," he says.
"A Vietnam veteran myself, it would have been so great if we'd had this kind of outreach," says Johnny Bragg, director of the Vet Center where Harrison works. "If you can get with the guys who come back fresh ... and actually work with their trauma and issues, hopefully over the years you won't see the long-term PTSD."
In all cases, the veteran has to be the one who wants to talk before counselors can help. "Once they come through the door, they usually come back," Harrison says. "For them, this is the only chance to talk to somebody, because their families don't understand, their friends don't understand. That's the big thing. They can't talk to anyone. They can't relate to anyone."
He recognizes them as symptoms of combat stress because he's trained to, as a counselor at the small storefront Vet Center here run by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. He recognizes them as well because he, too, has faced readjustment in the year since he returned from Iraq, where he served as a sergeant in an engineering company that helped capture Baghdad in 2003.
"Sometimes these sessions are helpful to me," Harrison says, taking a break from counseling some of the nation's newest combat veterans. "Because I deal with a lot of the same problems."
As the United States nears the two-year mark in its military presence in Iraq still fighting a violent insurgency, it is also coming to grips with one of the products of war at home: a new generation of veterans, some of them scarred in ways seen and unseen. While military hospitals mend the physical wounds, the VA is attempting to focus its massive health and benefits bureaucracy on the long-term needs of combat veterans after they leave military service. Some suffer from wounds of flesh and bone, others of emotions and psyche.
These injured and disabled men and women represent the most grievously wounded group of returning combat veterans since the Vietnam War, which officially ended in 1975. Of more than 5 million veterans treated at VA facilities last year, from counseling centers like this one to big hospitals, 48,733 were from the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Many of the most common wounds aren't seen until soldiers return home. Post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, is an often-debilitating mental condition that can produce a range of unwanted emotional responses to the trauma of combat. It can emerge weeks, months or years later. If left untreated, it can severely affect the lives not only of veterans, but their families as well.
Of the 244,054 veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan already discharged from service, 12,422 have been in VA counseling centers for readjustment problems and symptoms associated with PTSD. Comparisons to past wars are difficult because emotional problems were often ignored or written off as "combat fatigue" or "shell shock." PTSD wasn't even an official diagnosis, accepted by the medical profession, until after Vietnam.
There is greater recognition of the mental-health consequences of combat now, and much research has been done in the past 25 years. The VA has a program that attempts to address them and supports extensive research. Harrison is one of 50 veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars hired by the VA as counselors for their fellow veterans.
'It takes you back there'
Post-traumatic stress was defined in 1980, partly based on the experiences of soldiers and victims of war. It produces a wide range of symptoms in men and women who have experienced a traumatic event that provoked intense fear, helplessness or horror.
The events are sometimes re-experienced later through intrusive memories, nightmares, hallucinations or flashbacks, usually triggered by anything that symbolizes or resembles the trauma. Troubled sleep, irritability, anger, poor concentration, hypervigilance and exaggerated responses are often symptoms.
Individuals may feel depression, detachment or estrangement, guilt, intense anxiety and panic, and other negative emotions. They often feel they have little in common with civilian peers; issues that concern friends and family seem trivial after combat.
Harrison says they may even hit their partners during nightmares and never know it.
Many Iraq veterans have returned home to find the aftermath of combat presents them with new challenges:
• Jesus Bocanegra was an Army infantry scout for units that pursued Saddam Hussein in his hometown of Tikrit. After he returned home to McAllen, Texas, it took him six months to find a job.
He was diagnosed with PTSD and is waiting for the VA to process his disability claim. He goes to the local Vet Center but is unable to relate to the Vietnam-era counselors.
"I had real bad flashbacks. I couldn't control them," Bocanegra, 23, says. "I saw the murder of children, women. It was just horrible for anyone to experience."
Bocanegra recalls calling in Apache helicopter strikes on a house by the Tigris River where he had seen crates of enemy ammunition carried in. When the gunfire ended, there was silence.
But then children's cries and screams drifted from the destroyed home, he says. "I didn't know there were kids there," he says. "Those screams are the most horrible thing you can hear."
At home in the Rio Grande Valley, on the Mexico border, he says young people have no concept of what he's experienced. His readjustment has been difficult: His friends threw a homecoming party for him, and he got arrested for drunken driving on the way home.
"The Army is the gateway to get away from poverty here," Bocanegra says. "You go to the Army and expect to be better off, but the best job you can get (back home) is flipping burgers. ... What am I supposed to do now? How are you going to live?"
• Lt. Julian Goodrum, an Army reservist from Knoxville, Tenn., is being treated for PTSD with therapy and anti-anxiety drugs at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington. He checked himself into a civilian psychiatric hospital after he was turned away from a military clinic, where he had sought attention for his mental problems at Fort Knox, Ky. He's facing a court-martial for being AWOL while in the civilian facility.
Goodrum, 34, was a transportation platoon leader in Iraq, running convoys of supplies from Kuwait into Iraq during the invasion. He returned to the USA in the summer of 2003 and experienced isolation, depression, an inability to sleep and racing thoughts.
"It just accumulated until it overwhelmed me. I was having a breakdown and trying to get assistance," he says. "The smell of diesel would trigger things for me. Loud noises, crowds, heavy traffic give me a hard time now. I have a lot of panic. ... You feel like you're choking."
• Sean Huze, a Marine corporal awaiting discharge at Camp Lejeune, N.C., doesn't have PTSD but says everyone who saw combat suffers from at least some combat stress. He says the unrelenting insurgent threat in Iraq gives no opportunity to relax, and combat numbs the senses and emotions.
"There is no 'front,' " Huze says. "You go back to the rear, at the Army base in Mosul, and you go in to get your chow, and the chow hall blows up."
Huze, 30, says the horror often isn't felt until later. "I saw a dead child, probably 3 or 4 years old, lying on the road in Nasiriyah," he says. "It moved me less than if I saw a dead dog at the time. I didn't care. Then you come back, if you are fortunate enough, and hold your own child, and you think of the dead child you didn't care about. ... You think about how little you cared at the time, and that hurts."
Smells bring back the horror. "A barbecue pit — throw a steak on the grill, and it smells a lot like searing flesh," he says. "You go to get your car worked on, and if anyone is welding, the smell of the burning metal is no different than burning caused by rounds fired at it. It takes you back there instantly."
• Allen Walsh, an Army reservist, came back to Tucson 45 pounds lighter and with an injured wrist. He was unable to get his old job back teaching at a truck-driving school. He started his own business instead, a mobile barbecue service. He's been waiting nearly a year on a disability claim with the VA.
Walsh, 36, spent much of the war in Kuwait, attached to a Marine unit providing force protection and chemical decontamination. He says he has experienced PTSD, which he attributes to the constant threat of attack and demand for instant life-or-death decisions.
"It seemed like every day you were always pointing your weapon at somebody. It's something I have to live with," he says.
At home, he found he couldn't sleep more than three or four hours a night. When the nightmares began, he started smoking cigarettes. He'd find himself shaking and quick-tempered.
"Any little noise and I'd jump out of bed and run around the house with a gun," he says. "I'd wake up at night with cold sweats."
'A safe environment'
A recent Defense Department study of combat troops returning from Iraq found that soldiers and Marines who need counseling the most are least likely to seek it because of the stigma of mental health care in the military.
One in six troops questioned in the study admitted to symptoms of severe depression, PTSD or other problems. Of those, six in 10 felt their commanders would treat them differently and fellow troops would lose confidence if they acknowledged their problems.
A report this month by the Government Accountability Office said the VA "is a world leader in PTSD treatment." But it said the department "does not have sufficient capacity to meet the needs of new combat veterans while still providing for veterans of past wars." It said the department hasn't met its own goals for PTSD clinical care and education, even as it anticipates "greater numbers of veterans with PTSD seeking VA services."
Harrison, who was a school counselor and Army Reservist from Wheeling, W.Va., before being called to active duty in January 2003, thinks cases of PTSD may be even more common than the military's one-in-six estimate.
He is on the leading edge of the effort to help these veterans back home. Harrison and other counselors invite Iraq and Afghanistan veterans to stop in to talk. Often, that leads to counseling sessions and regular weekly group therapy. If appropriate, they refer the veterans to VA doctors for drug therapies such as antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications.
"First of all, I let them talk. I want to find out all their problems," he says. "Then I assure them they're not alone. It's OK."
Fifty counselors from the latest war is a small number, considering the VA operates 206 counseling centers across the country. Their strategy is to talk with veterans about readjustment before they have problems, or before small problems become big ones. The VA also has staff at 136 U.S. military bases now, including five people at Walter Reed, where many of the most grievously injured are sent.
The toughest part of helping veterans, Harrison says, is getting them to overcome fears of being stigmatized and to step into a Vet Center. "They think they can handle the situation themselves," he says.
Vet Centers provide help for broader issues of readjustment back to civilian life, including finding a job, alcohol and drug abuse counseling, sexual trauma counseling, spouse and family counseling, and mental or emotional problems that fall short of PTSD.
More than 80% of the staff are veterans, and 60% served in combat zones, says Al Batres, head of the VA's readjustment counseling service. "We're oriented toward peer counseling, and we provide a safe environment for soldiers who have been traumatized," he says.
"A Vietnam veteran myself, it would have been so great if we'd had this kind of outreach," says Johnny Bragg, director of the Vet Center where Harrison works. "If you can get with the guys who come back fresh ... and actually work with their trauma and issues, hopefully over the years you won't see the long-term PTSD."
In all cases, the veteran has to be the one who wants to talk before counselors can help. "Once they come through the door, they usually come back," Harrison says. "For them, this is the only chance to talk to somebody, because their families don't understand, their friends don't understand. That's the big thing. They can't talk to anyone. They can't relate to anyone."
Monday, August 30, 2010
US Must Alter Strategy by David Nakamura and Joshua Partlow
Top Karzai aide says U.S. must alter its strategy
An Afghan soldier, right, and a security officer stand over the body of a Taliban fighter who was killed when U.S. and Afghan forces repelled attacks on two U.S. bases in eastern Afghanistan. Twenty-one insurgents, some disguised in U.S. uniforms, were killed, NATO officials said. Network NewsX Profile
KABUL - Afghan President Hamid Karzai's chief of staff said Saturday that he is not sure the government is "on a path to success" in securing the country against the Taliban and that it could fail altogether if the United States does not significantly alter its strategy in fighting the nine-year-old war.
In a rare extended interview, Mohammad Umer Daudzai, who usually plays a behind-the-scenes role at the presidential palace, said he was speaking out because media reports of worsening U.S.-Afghan relations are "taking up a lot of our time" and have had a damaging effect on the fight against a growing insurgency.
On Saturday morning, Taliban insurgents disguised as American soldiers attacked two U.S. bases in eastern Afghanistan and managed to breach the perimeter of one base before being repelled. The simultaneous assaults on Forward Operating Base Salerno and nearby Forward Operating Base Chapman in Khost province ended with 21 insurgents killed but no U.S. deaths, NATO officials said.
While stressing that the Karzai government is committed to a significant NATO troop presence, Daudzai called on the international forces to stop invasive night raids on residents' homes and to distance their soldiers from "the daily life of the people," a sharp divergence from Gen. David H. Petraeus's strategy of having soldiers embedded in communities. The coalition policies have undermined Karzai's authority and Afghan sovereignty, Daudzai said, and led to "blame games" between the two sides.
In a meeting with Petraeus last week, Daudzai said that he was blunt with the U.S. military commander.
"I said, 'General Petraeus, winning the hearts and minds of the Afghans is not the job of a soldier. That's the job of an Afghan,' " Daudzai said.
Daudzai described Karzai as "concerned" and committed to changing the U.S. approach to the war.
"He's putting those conditions there, that if we do not review, then we will be on the path toward losing," he said. "We need to review our strategy, our code of conduct, so that Afghans believe that this is a sovereign state and President Karzai is the ultimate decision maker in this country. We are in the last stage, the last chance of winning this war. So we cannot afford to spend a lot of time on accusations and counter-accusations."
Daudzai's statements come in the wake of media reports that many of Karzai's aides have long been secretly paid by the CIA. That revelation has raised questions about the duplicity of the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, where U.S. officials are pushing Karzai to crack down on corruption among his aides, some of whom may be collecting regular salaries from the CIA.
The Karzai administration pushed back strongly last week against growing U.S. pressure. On Monday, presidential spokesman Waheed Omer said that corruption in connection with international contracts for Afghan companies was a bigger problem than any wrongdoing within the government.
But U.S. officials have grown increasingly alarmed about Karzai's lack of progress in reforming his government, and many think official corruption has become the greatest obstacle to winning over Afghans from the Taliban. Last week, Fazel Ahmad Faqiryar, a deputy attorney general, was fired from his job, telling the New York Times that it was because he had refused to block corruption investigations of top Afghan officials.
Rangin Dadfar Spanta, Afghanistan's national security adviser, said that Faqiryar, at 72, was too old by law to hold his post. "His existence is illegal," Spanta said.
On Saturday, Daudzai disputed the allegations that Karzai aides were on the CIA payroll, stating flatly that none of the 500 palace employees is taking money from any foreign intelligence agency.
"I know nobody is paid here by the CIA," he said. "Of course, people are paid by the United States. The whole government is paid, one way or the other, by the United States. That's different. I'm saying none of the 500 are paid by CIA. None."
Such allegations directly imperil U.S. and Afghan forces in the field, Daudzai added, because the Taliban use the media reports to suggest that the Karzai administration is a "puppet" government that is not looking out for the public interest.
"This is what Taliban is preaching, in villages, to Afghan youth," he said. "They say, 'Who is President Karzai? He is a puppet of the United States, and everybody around him is paid by the CIA. So there is no government; it's an occupied country, and let's go and fight them.' "
Some Karzai aides have said privately that the president and his administration have begun to lose hope in NATO's ability to win the war and that Karzai thinks a drastic change in policy is necessary to regain momentum.
The aides, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk publicly, said Karzai is particularly angry with the international community's unwillingness to get tough on Pakistan. Karzai has begun talking directly with Pakistan about ways to potentially broker reconciliation with less hard-line elements of the Taliban because, one aide said, he is desperate to end the bloodshed.
Daudzai said that anonymous aides do not speak for the president and that Karzai is not calling for a drawing down of U.S. or international forces. To the contrary, Daudzai said, the president thinks that NATO forces should remain at current levels for at least two more years, beyond the July 2011 timeline President Obama has suggested that the drawing down could begin.
What Karzai wants, rather, is for Western forces to take a less-active role in engaging with residents, leaving such interaction to Afghan army, police and government officials.
"We want, as part of that review, for the international forces to gradually take distance from the daily life of people," Daudzai said. "Because people are getting tired with the way they are behaved with."
Daudzai described a recent evening when he headed home from the palace only to be caught in a time-consuming traffic check by international troops.
"That's not their job. . . . That's the Afghan police job," he said. "Or in the rush hour, going into the market with these heavy cars, not letting anybody overtake them. Or on the main highways, they go on the wrong day. Like, for instance, on New Year's Day, everybody goes out for a picnic, then you see a huge NATO convoy comes on that day and blocks the whole road.
"This is what we mean by taking distance from their lives."
An Afghan soldier, right, and a security officer stand over the body of a Taliban fighter who was killed when U.S. and Afghan forces repelled attacks on two U.S. bases in eastern Afghanistan. Twenty-one insurgents, some disguised in U.S. uniforms, were killed, NATO officials said. Network NewsX Profile
KABUL - Afghan President Hamid Karzai's chief of staff said Saturday that he is not sure the government is "on a path to success" in securing the country against the Taliban and that it could fail altogether if the United States does not significantly alter its strategy in fighting the nine-year-old war.
In a rare extended interview, Mohammad Umer Daudzai, who usually plays a behind-the-scenes role at the presidential palace, said he was speaking out because media reports of worsening U.S.-Afghan relations are "taking up a lot of our time" and have had a damaging effect on the fight against a growing insurgency.
On Saturday morning, Taliban insurgents disguised as American soldiers attacked two U.S. bases in eastern Afghanistan and managed to breach the perimeter of one base before being repelled. The simultaneous assaults on Forward Operating Base Salerno and nearby Forward Operating Base Chapman in Khost province ended with 21 insurgents killed but no U.S. deaths, NATO officials said.
While stressing that the Karzai government is committed to a significant NATO troop presence, Daudzai called on the international forces to stop invasive night raids on residents' homes and to distance their soldiers from "the daily life of the people," a sharp divergence from Gen. David H. Petraeus's strategy of having soldiers embedded in communities. The coalition policies have undermined Karzai's authority and Afghan sovereignty, Daudzai said, and led to "blame games" between the two sides.
In a meeting with Petraeus last week, Daudzai said that he was blunt with the U.S. military commander.
"I said, 'General Petraeus, winning the hearts and minds of the Afghans is not the job of a soldier. That's the job of an Afghan,' " Daudzai said.
Daudzai described Karzai as "concerned" and committed to changing the U.S. approach to the war.
"He's putting those conditions there, that if we do not review, then we will be on the path toward losing," he said. "We need to review our strategy, our code of conduct, so that Afghans believe that this is a sovereign state and President Karzai is the ultimate decision maker in this country. We are in the last stage, the last chance of winning this war. So we cannot afford to spend a lot of time on accusations and counter-accusations."
Daudzai's statements come in the wake of media reports that many of Karzai's aides have long been secretly paid by the CIA. That revelation has raised questions about the duplicity of the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, where U.S. officials are pushing Karzai to crack down on corruption among his aides, some of whom may be collecting regular salaries from the CIA.
The Karzai administration pushed back strongly last week against growing U.S. pressure. On Monday, presidential spokesman Waheed Omer said that corruption in connection with international contracts for Afghan companies was a bigger problem than any wrongdoing within the government.
But U.S. officials have grown increasingly alarmed about Karzai's lack of progress in reforming his government, and many think official corruption has become the greatest obstacle to winning over Afghans from the Taliban. Last week, Fazel Ahmad Faqiryar, a deputy attorney general, was fired from his job, telling the New York Times that it was because he had refused to block corruption investigations of top Afghan officials.
Rangin Dadfar Spanta, Afghanistan's national security adviser, said that Faqiryar, at 72, was too old by law to hold his post. "His existence is illegal," Spanta said.
On Saturday, Daudzai disputed the allegations that Karzai aides were on the CIA payroll, stating flatly that none of the 500 palace employees is taking money from any foreign intelligence agency.
"I know nobody is paid here by the CIA," he said. "Of course, people are paid by the United States. The whole government is paid, one way or the other, by the United States. That's different. I'm saying none of the 500 are paid by CIA. None."
Such allegations directly imperil U.S. and Afghan forces in the field, Daudzai added, because the Taliban use the media reports to suggest that the Karzai administration is a "puppet" government that is not looking out for the public interest.
"This is what Taliban is preaching, in villages, to Afghan youth," he said. "They say, 'Who is President Karzai? He is a puppet of the United States, and everybody around him is paid by the CIA. So there is no government; it's an occupied country, and let's go and fight them.' "
Some Karzai aides have said privately that the president and his administration have begun to lose hope in NATO's ability to win the war and that Karzai thinks a drastic change in policy is necessary to regain momentum.
The aides, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk publicly, said Karzai is particularly angry with the international community's unwillingness to get tough on Pakistan. Karzai has begun talking directly with Pakistan about ways to potentially broker reconciliation with less hard-line elements of the Taliban because, one aide said, he is desperate to end the bloodshed.
Daudzai said that anonymous aides do not speak for the president and that Karzai is not calling for a drawing down of U.S. or international forces. To the contrary, Daudzai said, the president thinks that NATO forces should remain at current levels for at least two more years, beyond the July 2011 timeline President Obama has suggested that the drawing down could begin.
What Karzai wants, rather, is for Western forces to take a less-active role in engaging with residents, leaving such interaction to Afghan army, police and government officials.
"We want, as part of that review, for the international forces to gradually take distance from the daily life of people," Daudzai said. "Because people are getting tired with the way they are behaved with."
Daudzai described a recent evening when he headed home from the palace only to be caught in a time-consuming traffic check by international troops.
"That's not their job. . . . That's the Afghan police job," he said. "Or in the rush hour, going into the market with these heavy cars, not letting anybody overtake them. Or on the main highways, they go on the wrong day. Like, for instance, on New Year's Day, everybody goes out for a picnic, then you see a huge NATO convoy comes on that day and blocks the whole road.
"This is what we mean by taking distance from their lives."
The Afghan War is About Pakistan and India: Fred Kaplan
U.S. soldiers in AfghanistanDexter Filkins' article from Pakistan in the Aug. 23 New York Times raises anew the question that has long haunted even many supporters of the U.S. war in Afghanistan: Have we gotten ourselves into something that's way over our heads?
There are reports that a much-celebrated triumph of U.S.-Pakistani cooperation in combating jihadist terrorism—the joint arrest, earlier this year, of a top Taliban leader in Karachi—was, in fact, a ruse.
It turns out that the arrested Taliban leader, Abdul Ghani Baradar, had been engaged in secret peace talks with Afghan President Hamid Karzai. The Pakistani security agents used the CIA to help them track down Baradar precisely because they wanted to shut down any peace initiative that didn't involve Pakistan.
In the weeks after Baradar's arrest, Filkins reports, the security forces detained as many as 22 other Taliban leaders, as a result of which the peace talks ended. Filkins quotes a Pakistani security official as saying, "We picked up Baradar and the others because they were trying to make a deal without us."
This official also told Filkins that they warned the detained Taliban leaders not to conduct any more talks with the Afghan government without Pakistan's permission. A "former Western diplomat with long experience in the region" confirmed to Filkins that the ISI—Pakistan's intelligence service—sent a warning to its Taliban protégés. "The message from the ISI," he said, "was: 'No flirting.' "
So here's the situation: All the top U.S. officials, from President Barack Obama and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on down, have said that winning this war will ultimately require making a deal with "reconcilable" members of the Taliban; yet our main ally in this war—whose assistance is necessary for victory by any definition—has been arresting any Taliban members who try their hand at reconciling.
Back when he was commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus once asked, "How does this thing end?" He must be asking the same question, with a considerably deeper furrow in his brow, now that he's the commander in Afghanistan.
And Iraq was the proverbial cakewalk compared with Afghanistan. The difference isn't merely that Iraqi insurgents could be co-opted because of the threat from foreign jihadists (whereas the Afghan Taliban are homegrown), or that Iraq's sectarian divisions are basically among Sunni, Shiite, and Kurd (whereas Afghanistan's schisms are multiple and tribal), or that Iraq is a fairly modern, literate nation (whereas much of Afghanistan is nearly medieval).
The main difference—and the difference that's at the core of the Pakistan problem—is that the Iraq war was mainly about Iraq, whereas the Afghanistan war is mainly about Pakistan, and Pakistan's worries are mainly about India.
Pakistani leaders, as is well known, have been reluctant to devote much effort to combating Taliban fighters on the western border with Afghanistan because, in their eyes, the main threat and mortal enemy is the country across their eastern border—India.
As Barnett Rubin, an expert on the region and a professor at New York University, put it in a Foreign Affairs article three years ago:
Pakistan's military establishment has always approached the various wars in and around Afghanistan as a function of its main institutional and national security interests: first and foremost, balancing India, a country with vastly more people and resources, whose elites, at least in Pakistani eyes, do not fully accept the legitimacy of Pakistan's existence
There are reports that a much-celebrated triumph of U.S.-Pakistani cooperation in combating jihadist terrorism—the joint arrest, earlier this year, of a top Taliban leader in Karachi—was, in fact, a ruse.
It turns out that the arrested Taliban leader, Abdul Ghani Baradar, had been engaged in secret peace talks with Afghan President Hamid Karzai. The Pakistani security agents used the CIA to help them track down Baradar precisely because they wanted to shut down any peace initiative that didn't involve Pakistan.
In the weeks after Baradar's arrest, Filkins reports, the security forces detained as many as 22 other Taliban leaders, as a result of which the peace talks ended. Filkins quotes a Pakistani security official as saying, "We picked up Baradar and the others because they were trying to make a deal without us."
This official also told Filkins that they warned the detained Taliban leaders not to conduct any more talks with the Afghan government without Pakistan's permission. A "former Western diplomat with long experience in the region" confirmed to Filkins that the ISI—Pakistan's intelligence service—sent a warning to its Taliban protégés. "The message from the ISI," he said, "was: 'No flirting.' "
So here's the situation: All the top U.S. officials, from President Barack Obama and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on down, have said that winning this war will ultimately require making a deal with "reconcilable" members of the Taliban; yet our main ally in this war—whose assistance is necessary for victory by any definition—has been arresting any Taliban members who try their hand at reconciling.
Back when he was commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus once asked, "How does this thing end?" He must be asking the same question, with a considerably deeper furrow in his brow, now that he's the commander in Afghanistan.
And Iraq was the proverbial cakewalk compared with Afghanistan. The difference isn't merely that Iraqi insurgents could be co-opted because of the threat from foreign jihadists (whereas the Afghan Taliban are homegrown), or that Iraq's sectarian divisions are basically among Sunni, Shiite, and Kurd (whereas Afghanistan's schisms are multiple and tribal), or that Iraq is a fairly modern, literate nation (whereas much of Afghanistan is nearly medieval).
The main difference—and the difference that's at the core of the Pakistan problem—is that the Iraq war was mainly about Iraq, whereas the Afghanistan war is mainly about Pakistan, and Pakistan's worries are mainly about India.
Pakistani leaders, as is well known, have been reluctant to devote much effort to combating Taliban fighters on the western border with Afghanistan because, in their eyes, the main threat and mortal enemy is the country across their eastern border—India.
As Barnett Rubin, an expert on the region and a professor at New York University, put it in a Foreign Affairs article three years ago:
Pakistan's military establishment has always approached the various wars in and around Afghanistan as a function of its main institutional and national security interests: first and foremost, balancing India, a country with vastly more people and resources, whose elites, at least in Pakistani eyes, do not fully accept the legitimacy of Pakistan's existence
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)