Reid Makes A Funny

Senator Majority leader Harry Reid was asked just now about whether
the ongoing nomination fight is hurting the party.

"It makes me bitter," he said.

Of course I would have rather he made a comment on "Team Torture".

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Real Soldiers Shouldn't Have PTSD

photo Associated Press

Arrested for PTSD

Ft. Campbell, Kentucky soldier 22 year-old Specialist Justin Faulkner was arrested at the VA Hospital in Lexington, Kentucky, where he was being treated for PTSD. He was officially AWOL from Ft. Campbell, but insists his unit knew where he was.

After being held in jail, Faulkner was sent back to Ft. Campbell to rejoin his unit, scheduled to be deployed to Iraq. This will be Faulkner's second tour in Iraq.

PTSD is medically interesting. It triggers in so many ways. In my experience, those who don't live in it or around it, don't get it. And now we have Traumatic Brain Injury, just to make life even more fun. (Here's how it all begins.)

I have a friend, a serious combat vet, whom you have to introduce changes to, very very carefully. He has his routine, how things work for him, and a good life. But don't fuck with that. New stuff gets rejected (unless he's in charge or comes up with it himself.) He always comes up with a good reason for rejecting x. But really all his rejection of everything new, is because it's a change in his routine, and changes in his routine trigger his threat reflexes.

Ask him to do something, it can take months, or enormous pressure, because he doesn't take to new stuff easily. That's his triggering. The hard part is, he either doesn't know it, or doesn't grant permission to others to point this out to him when it's happening, so everyone dances around the issue, and it makes him hard to work with.

I can't tolerate people coming up behind me. Touching me without my permission is a serious mistake. There are certain sights and sounds which will throw me right back into the middle of a paramedic run, people dying, cops and bangers with guns, cars whizzing by two feet from me, or a Huey's blades winding up right over my head, and I drop fully into command mode. Doesn't happen often. But it happens.

Would make me hard to work with, except everyone who works with me has my full permission to point out to me if they think I'm being triggered, and I always work from the assumption that if anyone I trust says I'm being triggered, I probably am. Makes me easy to work with. Because I'll get off a position quickly.

People who haven't had PTSD, who haven't been mentally ill in some way, who haven't had chronic pain, mostly don't grasp how real these are. How much "Command Value" they have over our biology and actions. How totally they take over, and when we are triggered to them, how little in control we are. Oh, people may mouth the words of believing. But their entire way of being is, "I could so muscle through that if it were me. You must be either lazy or faking."

I even believed that myself, about mental illness, even after having been a paramedic and having treated the mentally ill for over a decade. And having had my own struggles for well over a decade at that point, with the aftermath of having been a paramedic -- waking up night after night with nightmares, flashbacks, and worse.

In spite of all that, I too, thought it was all a bunch of bullshit, till I had a series of incidents in which I ended up a chronic pain patient, suicidal, and forced to deal with all the crap from having been a medic, more or less all at the same time. I was a fool. I was wrong. And so is the Army, in a major way.

The Army still treats PTSD as something to be ashamed of.

Again, the Army still treats PTSD as something to be ashamed of.

If you self-report, you damage your career prospects. No "real-man" or woman, no Soldier, would ever come down with combat fatigue. Only wusses, people who don't have "It", who aren't man enough or woman enough for the mission, want out. It means you're lacking something, some essential fire in your belly that people who don't get PTSD have.

And so we have fuck-up's like this recent one at Ft. Campbell, where Specialist Justin Faulkner went through whatever on-base help he did, and then in desperation, turned himself over to the VA Hospital, who started doing a workup.

That isn't AWOL. Being admitted to a hospital isn't ever AWOL -- it's being admitted to a hospital. Unless of course, you have a mental illness which is service connected, in which case you're just a coward and should be arrested.

PTSD triggers people in different ways. But one thing is for sure...

PTSD keeps triggering the Army the same way: Real soldiers shouldn't have it.

h/t Americablog

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Iceland Leaves Iraq

Iceland Pulls Their ONE Person From "The Coalition."

He was a press reporter.

The United States counted the one reporter from Iceland as "Iceland is a member of the Coalition supporting the War." *laughs*

But now, after two years Iceland has pulled their reporter out of Iraq, so the Coalition is down yet another Member-State.

Goodbye Iceland. We hardly knew you.

Have a safe trip home.

h/t Discourse.net

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Camp Followers and PTSD Fakers

So, apparently I am faking my PTSD. Apparently the twenty fucking years its taken me to stop figuring out whether the person who is walking past me is going to try and kill and how can I kill them is all fake because my mother breast fed me or something. The years of insomnia and flared tempers to the point of violence is all faked because I am not macho enough. I guess I didnt drink enough tequila, shoot enough people or screw enough prostitutes in central America to be called 'a man' in these keyboard cowards eyes.

Ya know, its not like its not hard enough admitting you have this PTSD shit. You basement dwelling fucks. We don't need you whiny assed momma's boys saying people are faking it. We don't need yet another generation of vets spending their days trying to erase the memories with whiskey or suicide. I am so sick of Malkin, this other military camp skank 'Raven', Limbaugh and all the other packs of flying monkey wingtards. I don't mind they have this fetish for the military that, frankly belongs in some seedy NY S&M club, but quit involving me and my brothers and sisters in your freak show. We're faking it??!?!? Fuck you. Like you have any idea what its like, sacrificing your own psyche, your own sanity, for your country.

The liberal mindset is what causes PTSD. Boys being raised to men without a strong male role model, and having a false sense of what life is about is causing our young men to go to war and come home freaked out.

Kender, there is a lot of truth to what you’ve said. When we consider that the past wars were much gorier and bloodier. My own father saw a lot of gore; he lost many friends. Yet he managed to move on without letting it get to him; he chose to live his life as he wanted and not to succumb to his ghosts, as I call them.

The men of the past are a lost breed. -- Raven

via SadlyNo.com

There's no truth in what he is saying, none. How dare you judge any of us. What the hell do you know about gore? You think watching a movie gives you any idea? That stupid fuck doesn't have any idea what its like. Liberal mindset? Not only did I vote for Reagan, I worked for him.

I am a officer in the local VFW, and ya know what's funny, its really easy to tell the guys who actually were in the shit, versus the guys who meet the requirements to join the VFW. Its all the strange guys, all the broken people. The walking wounded. It doesn't matter what the conflict is either. Be it Iraq War I, the Korean war, or any other conflict. Its perfectly clear to me why my Nam' chopper pilot buddy still gets dead drunk every single weekend and gets into fights with cops, at 59 years old. Its because he learned to bury that shit deep down and he learned that because of dumbasses like you flapping your gums about something you absolutely no idea about. You are the same people who used to step over my brothers on the street on your way to work.

You morons want to pretend this is some kind of 'war' we are having, the left and the right? That's fine. Lets see who outlasts whom. You see, in September, 1979 I swore to uphold and defend the constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic, and that's you, the republican camp followers. Bush's lickspittle sycophants.

Me?, I'm fighting the long war and I learned my trade in the jungles of Honduras and the streets of San Salvador and I haven't forgotten a thing.

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Postscript to the Webb Amendment

“Why Don't Mommy & Daddy Come Home?”

Republicans.
Another edition of Short Answers to Foolish Questions:

Who voted down the Webb Amendment?

Main and Central

I'm Sorry, Brothers

We know many of you have a sense of belief in what you’re doing over there in what I’ve called “Mr Bu$h’s ego-war.” Some of you probably feel that it is the United States’ world-wide responsibility to step in and overthrow murderous dictators. Part of me agrees with you. I’d like to see the murderous dictators in lots of other countries overthrown, too. (I’m sure it’s only coincidence there’s no oil in those countries.) You deserve my respect for backing your beliefs with your lives, even if I disagree with you.

Some of you seem to believe that Saddam Hussein personally and individually went out and rounded up a bunch of lunatics, financed them, trained them, and sent them off to attack innocent Americans on September 11th. You might be right. But we haven’t found any evidence for that. But did you know that 15 of the 19 people who killed Americans on 9/11 were Saudis? I can’t help wondering why he didn’t recruit Iraqis, or alternatively, who did recruit the Saudis? In any case, I still respect you, even if your beliefs are illogical.

Some of you just love your country and are willing to back that love. Or maybe you’re just trying to get enough money in the bank to go to college. You have my respect.

A lot of you are tired. You’re on your second, third and fourth tours – now extended to 15 months, with a really good chance of them being extended again to 18 months - and your wives are dispirited, jumping every time the doorbell rings, and your kids cry at night, wondering where their Daddy is.

I’m sorry.

I know some of you stick it out because of pride in yourselves and your brothers. I know how that is because I remember how it was for me, too.

I wish you were allowed to read this because I wanted you to know we’re trying everything we possibly can to get you guys some slack. Jim Webb, a veteran and Senator from Virginia, has been trying to get an amendment passed to get you guys more slack. His plan is simple: for every month over there you get a month here in the States. Guaranteed. Time to relax a bit. Time to remind your wives that you love them. Time for your kids to relearn how their Daddy loves them.

We thought we had it nailed, this time. It looked like the Webb Amendment would pass yesterday. Even John Warner, a Republican Senator from Virginia, promised to support the amendment.

When the final vote count was revealed we could only marshal 56 of the 60 votes needed to invoke cloture and get the bill onto the Senate floor for a public vote. I know this will surprise you, but it was the Republican Party that didn’t want you to get treated humanely.

John Warner, who’d promised Jim Webb he would support the amendment, lied like a cheap Persian rug in a third rate Algerian bordello. He voted against the Webb amendment, even though he voted for it the last time. That sack of crap said, “I’m 80 years old, I’m going to retire, and I’m more afraid of George Bu$h and Dick Cheney than I am of the troops and the voters.” Or words to that effect. Fuck him twice.

Mel Martinez, one of my own particular bits of shame, said

“I think we would demean their service if we were to say to them that there had to be a parity between the time in service out of the country and the time at home.”

So Senator Martinez, who’s never had to put on a uniform, stand guard, hear the bee-buzz of bullets over his head, watch a buddy’s head explode into catsup, or hold someone tight as he bleeds out, asking for his mother, figures you’d just be “demeaned” if you caught a break.

Fuck him three times.

I’ll tell you who voted against the amendment: 43 Republican Senators. You know, the assholes who keep crowing how much they support the troops.

Fuck them all, four times.

Oh, and Joe Lieberman, the Republican from Tel Aviv who pretends he’s an Independent from Connecticut, who wants all your asses over there until each and every one of Israel’s enemies is destroyed,

Fuck him until the cows come home.

Sorry, brothers, we tried. We’ll try again, and keep trying until we get you treated like human beings.

Amen.

It's all talk to the Republicans; you, your children and loved ones, mean shit.

We'll get you home to your families. I don't know how yet, but I promise.

We'll get you all taken care of. This I vow. Count on it.

Hat tip Minstrel Boy

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Shell Shock

Forget Doc's post, listen to this...



Data Linkage to Possible Audio Transmission (MP3) --> GFC.mp3

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