2 Iraq Tours, A Tailspin, and A Tragic End

[tekisui]

Source: AP

Coleman Bean went to Iraq twice, but his father remembers a stark difference in his son's two parting messages.

Before his first tour, his father recalls, his son said if anything happened to him, he wanted to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

Before his second, four years later, he said he didn't want that any longer.

"He still was very patriotic, he believed in duty," Greg Bean says. "But he had sort of lost his commitment to what we were doing over there. His first tour ... had changed him."

Bean enlisted in the Army six days before the 9/11 attacks. He parachuted into Iraq in the first chaotic weeks of the war. When he returned a year later, he offered PG-rated, sanitized versions of his experiences.

"We got glimpses," the elder Bean says. "He didn't give us a lot of details."

Only later on, the elder Bean says, did he learn from Coleman's friends and Army buddies that his son was among those who'd witnessed a horrifying bus explosion across the street from a safe house in Iraq where he and other soldiers had holed up. Several Iraqis, including children, burned to death before their eyes.

There also was the shooting death of an Iraqi child riding in a car that inexplicably ran a roadblock. "Several shots were fired," the elder Bean says. "There was no way to know who killed the child."

Bean spent the remainder of his tour in Fort Polk, La., training soldiers about to deploy to Iraq. When his hitch ended in 2005, he came home to New Jersey.

He started displaying classic post-traumatic stress symptoms.

"He had trouble with his temper, he was drinking too much, he had trouble focusing, trouble sleeping," his father says. He worked as a bartender and a bouncer; he also considered college. Nothing clicked.

(snip)

On the first weekend of September 2008, Bean got drunk with friends, wrecked his Jeep Cherokee car and was arrested for driving under the influence. Bean was taken to a hospital, then rode home in a cab.

He had to break into his apartment because he didn't have his keys.

He also broke into his locked gun case.

Bean didn't call anyone or leave a note before he turned the gun on himself.

On Sept. 6, 2008 — seven years and one day after he enlisted — Sgt. Coleman Bean died. He was just 25.

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[barbtries]

1. we'll never know

the true toll of these GODDAMNED wars

[Goldstein1984]

2. The list of casualties is far larger than the list of the dead

The Few who benefit from this war will just protect themselves from the walking wounded by hiding behind security and inside gated communities. They'll leave the families of the poor to deal with the veterans who fought the war for the rich.

Old rich people sending young poor people to fight and die for them--Has it ever been otherwise?