I Had To View 30 Bodies In Vietnam To ID Our Own. Country Needs To See The Reality Of What Happened

[TheMastersNemesis]

The media is sanitizing the true horror of this brutal attack. Not seeing the reality of death and destruction blunts real debate about gun violence. It is not that you need to dwell on the gore. I saw the reality of war in Vietnam. What I saw in Vietnam 49 year ago is almost exactly what you would see on that scene. You would see dead and dying people in pain and misery even screaming for help. And it is ugly and needs to be seen And the public is being coddled in a way that is really wrong. Seeing the real horror would cause needed real debate.

All we seem to see is just distant pictures of the scene. There is no blood. There are no visible victims. No signs of the wounded. Nothing from the suffering. There are people who will carry bullets and fragments the rest of their lives. There are victims who will live with all kinds of disfiguring and disabling injuries. The dead and hurt are anonymous unseen and only just numbers. We will never understand until we see the true horror of what happened. For the most part we will not ever see the names of the killed and wounded. They will fall into obscurity. Only the gunman's name will be remembered.

Meanwhile the NRA, right wing, GOP, and other operatives who will make up false stories. Attack the critics and sensible people calling for action. There will even be death threats against the victims or families who speak our or demand action and change. And they will go an with their crap and be able to hide behind the true terrible reality.

Such sanitation allows the NRA and GOP to get away with its distortions, lies, and manipulation.

[LisaM]

1. I agree with you.

I think this is what allowed people to put Sandy Hook out of their minds. Of course, the families should have had some say over the images of their own children (especially when most probably had young siblings), but how else do we realize the horror?

I did see a couple of images of people lying in blood in Vegas, and seeing a young woman dressed to go out, her legs dripping with blood, lying lifeless on the pavement is a pretty sobering image.

[lapfog_1]

2. yes, my nephew served in the Gulf War

and his job was to pick up body parts (and be shot at by snipers)...

He had debilitating PTSD (can't be in crowds or confined spaces that aren't his home).

[Ms. Toad]

3. The gory pictures are not hard to find.

There's one of 3 bodies piled together, with visible on blood on the legs of the closest one. A video of someone doing CPR on a person while other bodies/people are being loaded into a volunteer's car.

Not that I disagree with your premise

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

7. That picture, which I saw last night, early this morning,

simply isn't that gory. You see legs. You see blood. You don't see anything else. I did not catch the video.

I agree that if actual pictures of what bullets do to human bodies were to be published, it would be a lot harder to gloss over the gun deaths.

[Kablooie]

30. All I have seen are people sitting and bodies lying on the ground like extras in a movie.

I've seen nothing that gives me a feeling of revulsion or horror which is what is needed if the incident is to goad someone to doing something about it.

[sharp_stick]

4. If all someone has

seen when it comes to the damage a high power rifle does to the human body is on TV they'll never understand reality.

[BigmanPigman]

17. Most people do have sympathy but not empathy since they never

personally experienced it themselves first hand. When that happens, everything changes. For instance, when Reagan was shot, Brady was too and that is when he became a crusader for gun control. The same applies to the economy (when people suffer financially they suddenly become concerned about the 1%, when someone has a child who comes out of the closet they become pro-gay marriage, when someone's mother can't afford a nursing home they become pro Universal Healthcare, when their house is ruined by an earthquake in OK they become "anti-fracking", when a person's home in a low lying area is flooded they become "stop Climate Change", etc.). It is normal in today's self obsessed society.

[sinkingfeeling]

5. Same thing as how we sanitize our wars in far away places. We just

bury our heads in the sand.

[democrank]

6. Thank you, TMN. Such an important issue.

Thank you for your service. I'm sorry for what you and others endured.

[TheMastersNemesis]

9. I Clearly Remember Waling Into That Tent W/30 Dead Soldiers In It. We Had Lost 3 KIA.

I was the company clerk at the time on LZ Stud near Khe Sahn.I was ordered to go do the ID's. The 1st Cav had air assaulted a number of battalions into the besieged Khe Sahn area to attack the NVA. Our battalion commander was shot down only his XO survived and was captured. My company B Company had 3 KIA and our captain was hit. Later died in the states at Walter Reed. He was a West Pointer certain to be a 4 star general someday. We were also shelled by the NVA that days taking several rounds in our area. So it was a very bad day.

B Company had 27 KIA that year. 1st Cavalry had 5440 KIA during its time in Vietnam. The carnage of the war is what brought the country to its senses. Now we sanitize it all. The massacres and the wars. So there is NO WAY to deal with these issues.

So we cannot have honest debate about the gun issue or issues of war. If we could then many things would change. The GOP, the right wing, the NRA et al could NOT hide from the reality. The SANITATION allows them to hide behind their lies.

[democrank]

12. My heart breaks for what you and others went through. I mean that.

In the years I went to VA hospitals with my beloved Vietnam Vet as he kept trying to not die from his exposure to Agent Orange, I made a point of talking with every Vietnam Vet I could find. I cried with many of them as they tried to deal with their memories, their nightmares, their PTSD, their physically injuries, their drug and alcohol addictions.

I never met any violence-loving chest-beaters at the VA, just men and women forever changed, in very profound ways.

~PEACE~

[TheMastersNemesis]

14. Fortunately I Have Never Been Troubled About What I Saw.

Having said that does not mean that I was not angry and sad. I was just lucky to get a mail clerk then company clerk job. So I was spared in so many ways even though I was in a combat unit. I can only speak for myself. I do know that it was really rough doing combat operations.

Yes it was really bad for too many guys.

[ban1941]

19. I'm another widow of a Vietnam vet

My husband died in July after years of struggling. with the mental and physical damage he sustained during his service. Thank you for your words. He felt the same way as the other vets you talked with in the VA hospital.

[Dustlawyer]

21. If the media would do a continuous count, adding the new numbers from each shooting to the totals

much like CBS and Walter Cronkite did at the end of each news cast during the Vietnam war it would help bring home how wrong it is. Especially if they contrasted it with a count of Australia's mass shooting count before and after guns. They got rid of theirs and the shootings stopped.

[leanforward]

29. My hat is off to you.

My time was spent with the 1st ID. Tonight, watching and listening to the news, I heard shots that were the same as test firing of weapons in preparation for an ambush patrol. Who wants to go there again. That sound surprised me, after all these years.

Something you said. The carnage is what finally brought us to our senses. My question is how much does it take. I've had enough. 578 people by one gunman. This has got to stop.

What has happened to that part of the 2nd Amendment, "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the . . . ."? We need some critical thinking with regard to the preamble and the 2nd amendment. Many people lost their "domestic Tranquility" and "promote the general Welfare,"

Your memory is vivid of what you have seen. It was not easy at the time, but you did it. You were lucky to have gotten out.

[babylonsister]

8. There are a lot of

ways to show gruesome. I found this to be and don't even know if she is alive or dead. But I understand; it's like showing coffins coming home from Iraq. We needed to see them.

[dem4decades]

34. I read that they got up and ran.

[raven mad]

10. My ex's mom took all his photos from there (66 - 68) and burned them.

She didn't believe them, thought they were "staged" and her bible-beating heart and church agreed.

[Vinca]

11. I agree completely. I thought they should have shown the Sandy Hook victims "as found."

This is just a sensational news story. A couple of weeks and it will be forgotten until the next one. Show the people what their "second amendment freedoms" really do and maybe things will change.

[dem4decades]

33. There was one mother that appeared to feel that America should see her child.

At the time I thought of Emmitt Tills mother.

[benld74]

13. 100% agree and then some

[Duppers]

15. March members of Congress passed those bodies.

You would think with one of them being shot that they would think about gun laws.

[mainer]

16. I'm a physician and I've seen more dead bodies than I care to remember

Many people have never seen a dead body. Death is hidden from us, sanitized and cosmeticized, corpses made "pretty" for the coffin. Reality is that human bodies are merely fragile shells that contain the souls of those we love.

Yes, I think it would be educational for people to see what really happens to bodies when a bullet explodes inside them. As horrible as it seems, the Sandy Hook deniers should have been forced to see the bodies of those dead children.

[gordianot]

22. Absolutely correct. Media sanitizes violence.

[LuckyLib]

31. First responders to Sandy Hook reported that many

of them were physically ill at the sights in those classrooms. Little bodies exploded from the power of bullets. We should have to see that - up close and personal.

[3catwoman3]

37. "...the Sandy Hook deniers should have been forced to see the bodies of those dead children."

And so should the GOP, and all the gun humpers.

[roamer65]

40. Yes, our physical bodies are merely "containers".

The souls of those killed last night have now ascended to a greater calling. God bless them all.

[leanforward]

18. I'm with this thread.

What has been said is right on. It has been sanitized.

[gopiscrap]

36. I am too...seeing the carnage

and the caskets is one of the things that helped put an end to the Vietnam War

[iluvtennis]

20. 100% agree with you. Until it is REAL to them, they cna deny that it doesn't exist.

[citizen blues]

23. They're not just getting away with distortions,...

Lies, and manipulation. They're getting away with murder. Every lawmaker that has kowtowed to the NRA; every one of them who has stood in the way of sensible laws like background checks has blood on their hands today.

[Historic NY]

24. Its all sanitized, the longer its thats way the more it will go on...

people need to know this isn't right wing false flag bullshit, they are actually bodies, and body parts blown off people and grievous wounds. Sorry if disturbs you lily white minds, the first responders,the Dr's.& nurses, cops and survivors have to deal with this shit, its the least you could do to see exactly what the effects are.

[Greywing]

25. I totally agree with you

The ugly needs to be shown. Once the ugly was shown on people's TV screens during the nightly national news, people began demanding an end to the Vietnam war.

The ugly needs to be shown - every shooting, every mass shooting, every war, dead bodies of victims, lying bleeding - all of it. Maybe then a majority in this country will demand the Congress gets off their ass.

[Kablooie]

26. You're right. It's all intellectual horror and feels like watching a movie.

All the shootings have been like that.
I've felt a distant shock but I've seen photos on the web of actual accidents and situations. It does something completely different to you when you feel you are down there with them.

[kimbutgar]

27. I always thought they should have put up a sign facing the NRA showing the dead children

In their classroom from Sandyhook. Park a truck with a large picture so that everytime they look out the window they are reminded. That is the one thing I wish Obama Dad done and release at least one picture. But as a parent himself I'm sure his sensibilities would not allow it.

[logosoco]

28. It is hard to agree with this, but I do.

Everything about it sounds so wrong, but if it is a fact of life (and mass shootings surely have been) people need to face it. Not facing it is a big reason why we can't do anything about it.

A nephew of mine (by marriage) killed a little girl. The worse shock of my life, and I have seen some crap (not military or that extreme, but not a G-rated life). After a while, I needed to hear the actual details. Oh, that was hard, but it helped me deal with the reality of that it did happen.

Harsh.

If we are going to have this many weapons in our country, we need to see the actual effects that they are having on the population. Not brushing it away with saying "thoughts and prayers".

[KY_EnviroGuy]

32. The only problem here is....

we have to protect our impressionable children from exposure to the gore. In this day and age, you can't "send the kids to the other room", with social media and 24/7 access everywhere.

Not sure it's wise or productive for people with certain mental illnesses to see this stuff either.

Just like the reality that we can't stuff "truth" and "reason" and "reality" or "common sense" down a right-wingers throat, I don't see a way to force people to see these things in a safe way.

A weird thought just hit me: Repugs in some states want to force a woman to witness ultrasounds and listen to heartbeats of an unborn child prior to abortion.

What if gun buyers had to view scenes of mass killings before buying a gun?

[Historic NY]

39. Every day around the globe children are exposed to the gore & violence of war

give them credit, things hushed up just leave more unanswered questions. Kids are killing people because of the indifference of their gun owning parents, friends or guardians. TV and the movies fill in the fake exposure.

[Turbineguy]

35. To many, this is about

lives, our general well being, and the soul of our society.

Republicans, in spite of what they say, don't give a shit about lives, the Country or anything else.

To republicans and the NRA, it's about money. Profits. We simply have to decide how much we are willing to pay the death cult NRA not to murder us.

Life and casualty insurance companies might come on board. They must be paying a packet for all this mayhem. I read elsewhere that gun violence costs the U.S. nearly $230 billion per year. Even if we gave the NRA a quarter trillion dollars per year we would at least save thousands of lives. But I think we could ransom America for less.

Even with ISIS you can pay tribute and they leave you alone. We should try it with the NRA.

Wayne LaPierre has now surpassed Hitler with the number of Americans whose death he is responsible for. What does it take to satisfy him?

[3catwoman3]

38. I have often speculated that LaPierre, for all his...

...tough gun humping talk, would probably pee his pants in a nano-second if he were ever in a real life shooting situation.

[misanthrope]

41. But they're getting all the tearful testimony they can find

That's where the real ratings and awards bonanzas await.