Memorial Day

1st Battalion 1st Marine Division. Korea.

Open Thread

As I do each year, I'll be spending part of today at Tahoma National Cemetery. The kids aren't with me, which is unusual. They're at a party in the south-east part of Puget Sound.

A lot of veterans come out to the cemetery. Including during the year, but especially Memorial Day weekend, 4th of July, and Veterans Day.

Later in the day, I'm going to go to a good restaurant and have a steak. I feel the need for some serious protein in my diet. And I continue to work my way through Jeff Sharlet's amazing book, The Family. Which I'll do a full post on, once I'm done reading. Amazing material, highly recommended.

What are your plans?

There's more...

VoteVets Call To Action and Excellent Ads

(from the signing of the first GI Bill)

It is time for a new GI Bill.
VoteVets.org is putting on the pressure.

It's crunch time. This week, the Senate is expected to take up the 21st Century GI Bill, offered by Senators Jim Webb and Chuck Hagel, after the measure passed the House last week. And, VoteVets.org is right there to keep the pressure on, with a 36-hour ad blitz on the bill.

For the next day and a half, no one in Washington DC will be able to turn on their TV, without seeing an ad on the GI Bill that challenges Senator John McCain to back the Webb-Hagel bill. As you know, Senator McCain has his own watered-down measure that only gives a fraction of the costs of college to veterans. As our veterans say in the ad, "We didn't give a fraction in Iraq, we gave 100 percent."

Meanwhile, in key markets in Texas, we challenge Senator John Cornyn to back the Webb-Hagel bill. Senator Cornyn is one of the few Senators representing a large veterans population who has not signed onto the Webb-Hagel Bill.

As our Vice Chairman, Iraq and Afghanistan Veteran and Texan Brandon Friedman said today, "After serving in combat, veterans shouldn't be placed in a position where they have to choose between going to school and paying the rent. That was never the intention of the original bill. Senator Cornyn needs to follow the lead of so many of his colleagues from both sides, who are doing the right thing to support our troops and veterans by voting for this bill." The same goes for Senator McCain.
Thank you,- Brian McGough http://www.votevets.org/index_html

Here is their excellent ad.

Send them some blog-love and support for their important campaign.

There's more...

The Pentagon's Treatment of Our War Dead

During this week, while the GNB is being featured on Air America, we're listening over there even more often than usual, and these stories really caught us.

and more; overseas and vets voter suppression and the Pentagon "looking into" things. RFK Jr. and Pap run down this week's buried stories that mainstream media is scared to report

There's more...

Georgia on my mind.

It is Wed. and that means it is time for the wonderful Wednesday Wire; coming out every week. From this week's edition;

ELECTION UPDATE GEORGIA. Five military veterans are running as Democrats against five entrenched Republican members of the House. They are Bill Jones, former Air Force officer against Tom Price in GA – 06; Doug Heckman, former Army Colonel against John Linder in GA-07; Bill Gillespie, retired Army Lt. Col against Jack Kingston in GA – 01; Bobby Saxon, National Guard major against Paul Broun in GA – 10 and Bud Gammon, Air Force Academy grad against Phil Gingrey in GA –11. With the Republicans having a hard time finding top drawer candidates to take on our perennial vulnerables Jim Marshall (GA – 08) and John Barrow (GA -12) (both very conservative Dems)

This expansion of the playing field could make serious trouble for the Georgia GOP. Don’t expect any of the five to win, but in a wave election year, surprises do happen.

My favorite quote from the homepages of the Georgia Fighting 5 is this jem from Bobby Saxon;

I'm as sick of politics as most of you are and this is exactly why I'm running for Congress. I believe our political leaders should serve the best interests of this country. They should work for the good of all people and they should act like adults and find a way to work together for the common good of all Americans. (emphasis, mine)

Hear.Hear!

Read more news, views and state by state analysis from John McQueen at http://www.wednesdaywire.com/ every week. He is a pragmatic progressive and mentor-extraordinaire. Do you know more vets running? More exciting House and Senate races we should be paying attention to? Share in the thread. And here's an old sweet song in honor of the Georgia Fighting 5! Don't hesitate to send them some bloggy-love in the form of contributions. Every little bit can make a big difference in the house races.

There's more...

So Long...

Lurch (John F) of Main and Central has died.

Just.... damn.

I liked John a lot. A classic old-style newsman and veteran, he wrote for Main and Central out of a fierce dedication to veteran's issues.

He was a friend, filled with a fiery passion about troop safety. His work on the body armor series at Main and Central going back years, is amazing. Everything you've ever wanted to know.

What a lousy day. I'm going to miss his writing and the notes back and forth enormously.

Main and Central

Today is a sad day in Blogtopia. We have learned, through a detective with the local police, that our dear friend Lurch has passed away. We didn't receive any details, the information is privileged for family members, but the cop was decent enough to give us that much.

I didn't know him that well, mostly through this blog and via email, but my wife and I feel honored we were able to break bread with him when he visited Long Island a year ago.

Lurch had a personality that drew one to him and the time we spent with him seemed far too short. Unfortunately, the trip he planned a few months back fell through and we're saddened another get-together is no longer in the cards.

What I know of his military service would fill a thimble, though I knew he served his nation with honor and distinction as an Army paratrooper during the war in Vietnam. Through his experience and study, he was one of the most knowledgeable people when it came to the workings of the service, strategy and tactics, and some of the best insight when it came to reading between the lines on defense issues. He was an invaluable resource as well as a friend.

Please join me in mourning our friend as well as passing on condolences to his family. I'm grateful for the time he spent with us here in Blogtopia, grateful for his insights, and grateful for the opportunity to have known him. I am proud to call him a brother in arms.

As they say in the Navy: Fair winds and following seas, my friend.

Until we meet again.

Updated Feb 24: Main and Central has put back up the original post, which they'd temporarily taken down at the request of the family to let the family properly notify people. The original post and comments are now back up, at a new location (linked below.)

In addition, M&C's Fixer brings us word from the medical examiner's office, along with a beautiful personal remembrance (by his blog partner, Gordon.) I still find myself missing Lurch. *sighs*

Main and Central (Fixer, then Gordon for the remembrance.)

I posted on the death of our friend 10 days ago and then removed them at the request of his family. There were people to be notified and they did not want them to learn of it from the blog. I saved the post and comments, as well as my blog partner Gordon's post at the Brain and have reproduced them here.

*****

A few words in farewell

Lurch came to visit me in 2006. Please go read the post I did about his visit. There's a photo there so you can see what he looked like.

We were in contact ever since. We would chat on the phone occasionally, frequent e-mails, and we commented on each other's blogs. We kidded each other like the blazes.

Lurch was a thoughtful man. He sent me five pounds of his favorite BBQ pork, and a USS Fremont Zippo to replace the one I lost forty years ago. I burned him a CD or two. We exchanged Christmas cards.

Just the simple things friends do. Separated by a continent, we liked each other and tried to stay close nonetheless.

Memories. Good ones.

Lurch and I were just about the same age, in our early 60s. As we get older, the sandbar in the river of life that we're all standing on gets less and less secure. We see more and more of our friends getting washed away at an increasing rate, and we think of our own turn, for it is coming as surely as the sun will rise.

It does not get any easier to see them go.

Lurch was a good one, and I am proud to call him my friend.

Vaya con Dios, Amigo. I'll be seeing you.

There's more...

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

There's more...

Free Speech Van

photo Dominick Fiorille/Times Herald-Record

"Many people believe in free speech until you say something they don't like."

Disabled Vet Frederick "Fritz" Kaestner, used to be known as "Uncle Sam" in Monroe, a small town in the Hudson River Valley of New York.

After 9/11 Fritz dressed up as Uncle Sam, painted his car as an American flag, and drove around town all patriotic, to the accolades of his town-mates.

Fritz by the way, has gone in and out of depression for many years, is a Vietnam-era vet (Military Police), and has been both homeless and unemployed at various times. He is, um, unusual, but till now anyway, accepted in his community.

Times have changed.

Recently, Fritz took his 1998 Dodge Ram van and turned it into a flag-covered coffin. He has slogans over the motorized coffin: "Fuck Bush", "Fuck the Republican Party," "Iraq Had Nothing to do with 9/11," and a current count currently reading: "Dead: 3,859," "Wounded: 28,451."

Many parents don't want their children reading his van. Many business owners are afraid him parking near their store will hurt business. And many people just think it's an asshole thing to do.

The cops are backing up Fritz, saying if he parks on public property, he's fine.

Free speech. It isn't about people being comfortable.

Good man Fritz. People are dying. Bring it on.

I have absolutely no use for people who are "okay" with the status quo, with not working their ass off to make a goddamn difference, who sleep well at night with things the way they are.

Fuck that and fuck them. Wake the fuck up and get to goddamn work. These people in the Hudson valley or anywhere in the world, sitting on their ass make me sick.

Gilly died. We have an obligation to speak out with everything we have at our command and I'm not fucking around.

The nice thing about being the Publisher of GNB is, I don't have to fucking settle. Ever. I can speak out. I don't have to wait for anyone.

Go Fritz. Show them what's what.

There's more...

Wounded Soldiers told: Pay Up Deadbeats!

Apparently the geniuses at the pentagon are working overtime thinking up ways to save the taxpayer a few bucks.

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) ―

The U.S. Military is demanding that thousands of wounded service personnel give back signing bonuses because they are unable to serve out their commitments.

To get people to sign up, the military gives enlistment bonuses up to $30,000 in some cases.

Now men and women who have lost arms, legs, eyesight, hearing and can no longer serve are being ordered to pay some of that money back.

One of them is Jordan Fox, a young soldier from the South Hills.

He finds solace in the hundreds of boxes he loads onto a truck in Carnegie. In each box is a care package that will be sent to a man or woman serving in Iraq. It was in his name Operation Pittsburgh Pride was started. Fox was seriously injured when a roadside bomb blew up his vehicle. He was knocked unconscious. His back was injured and lost all vision in his right eye. A few months later Fox was sent home. His injuries prohibited him from fulfilling three months of his commitment. A few days ago, he received a letter from the military demanding nearly $3,000 of his signing bonus back.

I really appreciate all the efforts that the pentagon will go to for me. Chasing after a half blind disabled veteran for 3 large. It warms my heart. Does anyone know if Rumsfeld got a bonus before he got canned? I would be happy to help him find his pockets.

Congressman Altmire (D), of Pennsylvania is sponsoring legislation to stop this bullshit. Please contact your rep. to ask them to help move it out of committee.

(via TPM)

There's more...

Happy Veterans Day

I was going to post up the list of KIA from Iraq. But, its grown too long and is troublesome for blogger. I am so sick of this day. What was the price tag they are looking at? $450 billion in additional veterans costs coming up. 1 out of 4 homeless are veterans. 1 out of 4, think about that for a minute. Bush's budget for veterans healthcare hasn't even kept pace with inflation. Support the troops my ass.

via Thor Heyerdahl in comments:

FTW.

There's more...