President Bush spent the official holiday of Veteran’s Day at his ranch in
Texas, letting his vice do the ceremonial wreath-laying at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier near
Washington.
In my previous job, I learned from reading early academic studies that veterans of the Iraq/Afghanistan wars had much higher rates of post-traumatic stress disorder than did veterans of previous wars. It could well be that the PTSD syndrome is better understood now and thus more documented, but there is now a national scandal growing around the domestic effects of this foreign exercise of W’s manhood.
No further comment is needed beyond the two-part series in the Los Angeles Times about the lasting icon of this war – the Marlboro Marine – and how the United States government treated him.
(Part two of the series)
President Bush spent the official holiday of Veteran’s Day at his ranch in 
I thought it was quite a telling statistic that nearly twice as many US combat veterans have committed suicide as have died in Iraq - about 6,200.
ReplyDeleteIt's clear that politicians and the military top brass, not just in America, have no real idea what the stresses of intense combat situations do to someone's psyche and the signs are either ignored or not taken sufficiently seriously
Brian F