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Tuesday, May 12, 2009

But we're supposed to believe our Iraq veterans would never, ever even CONSIDER joining up with the militia movement

Posted by Jill | 6:27 AM

Casualties of War:

An American Army sergeant shot and killed five fellow soldiers following an altercation at a counseling center on a military base in Iraq Monday, officials said. The attack drew attention to the issues of combat stress and morale among soldiers serving multiple combat tours over six years of war.

The suspect had been disarmed after an earlier incident at the center but returned with another weapon, according to a senior military official in Washington, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation into the shootings was ongoing.

Guys like this Army sergeant and the soldiers he killed yesterday were sent off to a war based on lies, a war based on ginned-up information. And they've been there ever since, for six fucking years. Stop-lossed nearly to death, being given tainted food and water and electrocuted by greedy corporations affiliated with Dick Cheney, the only surprise is that more Iraq veterans haven't gone off the deep end like this.

Somehow I don't think you're going to hear Sean Hannity talk about the anger issues that our returning veterans are dealing with; anger issues that could very well make them susceptible to the revenge fantasies of the militia movement. Of course we don't know what this particular soldier's motivation was, nor do we know that he in particular would have been targeted for recruitment by the eliminationists in this country. But just as we did the men returning from Vietnam no favor by ignoring the psychic wounds they suffered as the result of fighting in an unnecessary war, so do we do the veterans of George Bush's Iraq Adventure no service by ignoring the wounds they are bringing back. We can only hope that back stateside they can continue to get the help they may need so that they don't decide that killing Jews and other "nonwhites" to save the white race is a good course of action.

Labels: Iraq casualties, mental illness, Veterans

1 comments

1 Comments:

Bob said...

I think that plenty of veterans have gone "off the deep end." But they did it after they returned home, & murder/suicides are so common now we don't even hear about them unless whole families are killed.

5/12/09, 6:09 PM