Disposable Heroes

[Lasher]

Government support of returning Iraq and Afghan war veterans:

• Historically, soldiers typically did one tour and were rotated back home. Some Iraq troops are returning to the front three or four times, for long stretches
  
  
• Soldiers who discharged early because of battlefield injuries are required to repay enlistment bonuses
  
  
• The longest-serving National Guard unit were sent home after 729 days of combat in Iraq – one day shy of the 730 that the soldiers needed to qualify for education benefits
  
  
• The typical soldier is required to file 22 documents with eight different commands to enter and exit the medical processing world, according to government investigators
  
  
• 20,000 cases of brain trauma were omitted from the official tally of troops injured in Iraq
  
  
• 22,000 veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress were denied medical benefits by being discharged for having enlisted with “pre-existing personality disorders”
  
  
• The U.S. Army reported that the rate of suicide among soldiers in 2007 was the highest since the Army started counting in 1980. Double the amount since 2001.
  

[nickelfire]

That's really sick... Everything is just so damn corrupted. People are really treated like dirt and people involved in these rulings should be criminally charged...

[Jupiter]

Imagine if it is this bad now just think what is going to happen if and when they do the troop pullout, what kind of all out is going to happen then!
This issue hasn't even begun to surface its ugly head and I can tell you I have friends in the military and when the lid comes off of this its going to get bad. Already the suicide rate among this wars vets is way up over the percentage in other wars and the amount of disabled vets is sky high too. People should get on the stick and start banging on their elected officials doors. Add the cost of looking after these vets to the astronomical cost of making them in the first place. Then think about what we have done to the Iraqis.

[know knot]

lasher said:

The U.S. Army reported that the rate of suicide among soldiers in 2007 was the highest since the Army started counting in 1980. Double the amount since 2001.

But i wonder, why are the amount of soldier suicides escalating? Is this war worse than previous ones? Is it the combat action? Or is it the immorality of it all like that of Vietnam, that is disintegrating the ethics within the individual?

knot

[MagnetMan]

I swiped this from another forum. Am sure agincourt will not mind. mm


by agincourt on Thu Feb 28, 2008 9:56 am.
Being in the military is hard, being in the military during a war is even harder, being in the military during an unpopular war which has been mismanaged by the powers that be really fucking sucks.

I was in the Army from 94 to 02 and I missed out on the current shenanigans, while I was in our gripe was that every time they put a dead child on CNN we went and shot at people.

I have recieved VA care, it is top notch. However the system is far overtaxed and it is a great place to go get money and benefits if you are a shithead. Whenever the VA tries to police up it's programs it gets knocked for screwing veterans.

For every Infantryman (or tanker, cannon cocker, engineer, ect ect) in combat there are an average of 9 support troops. While I agree that their contribution is vital to the war effort, sitting in the mail room on a large FSB is not at all equivilant to getting in spitting distance of the enemy. This has changed somewhat in Iraq/Afghanistan because the enemy knows to attack our support train and that should be taken into acount. Still there are alot of 'fucked up vets' walking around drawing bennies and many of them have never heard a shot fired in anger.

The Military is not there to provide work for aimless youth, it is not there to provide college money for the poor, it is not there to provide a means for social advancement. The military exists to fight wars. Many people entering the military don't understand this and end up badly disapointed when they discover this fact the hard way. War sucks and it is hard on human beings, but there ARE people who are built for it. The Army (I can't speak for the other services) has long tried to cast itself as just another employer doing just another job and it has suffered for it. More importantly alot of kids who just joined for the college money suffered for it.

There will always be warriors in society, the military needs to adjust it's structure, recruiting, and policies in order to make sure that is what it is composed of. I sat in a room full of two hundred teenagers at Ft Benning and we all broke into smiles when a grizzly old Sgt Major explained that from now on our job was to kill people and break things. All of us probably recieved the same shock when we got to Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq or Afghanistan and learned what that actually meant but at least they warned us ahead of time.