Off With Our Heads
posted: 8:12 AM, August 24, 2007 by Harkavy
http://www.villagevoice.com/blogs/bushbeat/archive/2007/08/off_with_our_he.php George W. Bush wasn't crazy Wednesday when he compared the Iraq Debacle to the Vietnam War to the cheers of a VFW crowd in Kansas City.
Thousands of shell-shocked U.S. soldiers wound up untreated, drifting the streets of America after the Vietnam War. The same thing is happening now with Iraq veterans — at least with those who haven't already committed suicide.
<<snip>>
The report said that the 99 confirmed suicides by active-duty soldiers compared with 87 in 2005 and that it was the highest raw number since 102 suicides were reported in 1991, the year of the Persian Gulf War.
My colleague Michael Feingold, a theater critic who knows a tragedy when he sees one, tipped me off to that wire story. Unfortunately, we'll never know the exact number of crazed veterans — and they'll probably go untreated — because the military is diagnosing many Iraq vets as suffering from a "personality disorder" instead of post-traumatic stress syndrome caused by the war. That way the government can discharge them, claiming that these soldiers were flawed to begin with, and wash its hands of the problem.
<<snip>>
With just weeks to go before U.S. ambassador Ryan Crocker and military commander General David Petraeus are to report to the U.S. Congress on progress in Iraq, intelligence agencies released a grim forecast of violence and stalemate. Wait, wait, wait. Once again the press fails to note that the White House will actually write the report. That's nuts, too.
<<snip>>
Not as crazy as the treatment of our own soldiers returning home shell-shocked. The Christian Science Monitor noted recently:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0820/p09s02-coop.html?page=2 In relabeling cases of PTSD as 'personality disorder,' the US military avoids paying for treatment.
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