Soldier with Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Punished by Army – Dahr Jamail

(Truthout) – Iraq war veteran Eric Jasinski, after seeking treatment for his post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), is being punished by the Army.

Jasinski turned himself in to the Army late last year, after having gone absent without leave (AWOL) in order to seek help for his PTSD. Help, he told Truthout, he was not receiving from the Army, even after requesting assistance on multiple occasions. Continue reading

Suicide Claims More US Military Lives Than Afghan War

American military personnel are continuing to take their own lives in unprecedented numbers, as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq wars drag on. By late November, at least 334 members of the armed forces had committed suicide in 2009, more than the 319 who were killed in Afghanistan or the 150 who died in Iraq. While a final figure is not available, the toll of military suicides last year was the worst since records began to be kept in 1980. Continue reading

The Psychological Implosion of Our Soldiers – Dahr Jamail

US Army Specialist Lateef Al-Saraji, a decorated combat veteran, came back from the occupation of Iraq with severe post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Continue reading

Hell Comes Home – Killing is the ultimate traumatic experience

There’s no armor, it turns out, for conscience.
So our men and women are coming home from the killing fields wounded in their heads, used up, greeted only by the military’s own meat grinder of inadequate health care and intolerance for “weakness.” Continue reading

Stop Begging Obama to Be Obama and Get Mad

The right-wing accusations against Barack Obama are true. He is a socialist, although he practices socialism for corporations. He is squandering the country’s future with deficits that can never be repaid. He has retained and even bolstered our surveillance state to spy on Americans. He is forcing us to buy into a health care system that will enrich corporations and expand the abuse of our for-profit medical care. He will not stanch unemployment. He will not end our wars. He will not rebuild the nation. He is a tool of the corporate state. Continue reading

Weaponizing Psychology – Treating People Like Dogs

Nearly all of the Pentagon’s counter-insurgency warfare doctrine has been based on distortions of the pirated theories of former president of the American Psychological Association, Prof. Martin Seligman.  Now we learn that post traumatic stress disorder (ptsd) treatments for war veterans have been developed from his work as well. Continue reading

Video: Drugged to Death; Our Kids and Our Troops

(Jim Marrs) – Today, one of the biggest problem we have, and one of the things that shocks so many Americans, is the rise of teen suicides and the rise of school shootings. Yet all we hear from the corporate mass media on the shootings is “Well, we need to take the guns away.” Let me tell you something, I went to school in Texas. We took guns to school. Nobody shot anybody. So what’s changed? Drugs. Continue reading

Prepare to Disengage

During the Vietnam War, GI dissent was both documented and nurtured by a slew of underground GI newspapers. Papers like “Up Against the Bulkhead,” “Harass the Brass” and “About Face” were mimeographed and passed from base to base, hand to hand. These bold, clever, ragtag papers gave voice to the soldiers’ rage against the injustices of the military and offered advice on everything from filing for conscientious-objector status to organizing anti-war protests. Continue reading

52 percent of U.S. soldiers wounded in Iraq, Afghanistan diagnosed with TBI

Some 52 percent of soldiers severely injured in Iraq and Afghanistan who have come to the U.S. Army’s largest hospital for treatment have been diagnosed with traumatic brain injuries (TBI), an internal study has found. Continue reading

Irregular Army: The rise of alcoholism and drug abuse in the US military

The twin vices of drug addiction and alcoholism were rampant in the U.S. military during the Vietnam war and through movies like Apocalypse Now and Platoon became the emblematic image of the armed forces during that war. But figures shows that by the end 2005, of the 104,000 who had sought medical help after serving in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, 32,010 were suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder, depression, drug addiction or alcoholism. Proportionally, that’s three times as many as those who returned from Vietnam. Continue reading