The Mercenary’s Cookbook

In Vietnam, soldiers partook in the holy herb of the era as much as the hippies back in the States. So what is the drug of “choice” among Iraq Vets?

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Here’s a hint.

One that does what it should
One that wont make me feel too bad
One that wont make me feel too good

Here’s your answer.

I never understood why the military would be so concerned with limiting what soldiers can access on the Internet. This is what led to the crackdown on military web used called “Web 2.0″:

This winter, the Air Force, as the Pentagon’s point agency for “cyberwarfare,” banned access from official networks to many blogs, declaring that they weren’t “established, reputable media.” The Air Force didn’t seem concerned that international jihadists had long ago latched onto websites as cheap, effective tools for sharing ideas. Indeed, the Air Force’s ban was part of a widening military crackdown on the so-called “Web 2.0.” Mostly, Website-banning Pentagon officials were worried that U.S. troops might inadvertently release secret information on the Internet.

The flip side of this is that the military can also prevent Americans from finding out things about the war. Sgt. Scott Thomas Beauchamp became the target for many pro-war pundits for his accounts in The New Republic, when they were thought to have painted too grim a picture of the daily life of soldiers, thus demonstrating how naive people like Malkin really are — Beauchamp’s stories were tame compared to many I’ve heard.

However, a case can be made to limit what information people outside the military can get. What soldiers post on their blogs might give away, hower inadvertantly, information that could be used by insurgents and the like. We aren’t fighting a Superpower, where keeping our military budget secret made sense - what can an Afghani sitting in a cave do with that? So the old excuses for government secrecy and lack of accountability do not hold up as well as they did when we were facing down another SuperPower. What you don’t want is for terrorists to figure out troop movements, scope out targets, or study tactics.

Yet, by limiting access, you also limit the ability to share information, which has been hampering the military, who has fallen far behind terrorist groups who have become quite Internet savvy.

In a three part series in the Washington Independent by David Axe, we learn that the Army’s solution is a MySpace that has people sign up and limit who gets access to their posts:

The military MySpace – call it “MilSpace” – would eventually include the previously mentioned blogging function, allowing officers to develop and share ideas and tactics without necessarily having to work through the military’s lumbering, labyrinthine and strictly hierarchical chain of command. MilSpace and its blogs are part of a network of online discussion forums, created by the Center for Company-Level Leaders, that Lt. Col. Tony Burgess, Kimball’s boss, called a “virtual front porch” for hosting soldiers’ conversations.

The forums have their roots in the late 1990s, when they were a private project overseen by several young officers. In 2002 the Army officially sanctioned the forums. After months of work, the MilSpace addition went live in January this year, and the blogging function launched in late April. With each successive new feature, this “virtual front porch” has gained new users, new admirers in the senior ranks and a more prominent position in the Army’s emerging Internet strategy. “I would definitely characterize it [the Mil-Space blogs] as a success,” Kimball told The Washington Independent. “Anecdotally, conversations are more vibrant than they’ve ever been.”

 Lest you take too much heart, Part II, shows that where the army has taken steps forward, the Coast Guard and Navy have shown us how not to utilize the web:

The Coast Guard problem is one that a senior official described when addressing alleged inaccuracies in online news reports about the service’s over-budget shipbuilding program. “We are encountering an interesting phenomenon in the ‘blogosphere,’” Rear Adm. Gary Blore said in a Mar. 11 news conference. “A blog can be anything you want it to be,”

The next day, events unfolded that resulted in the Coast Guard publishing a faked first-hand account of an at-sea rescue on its official “Coast Guard Journal” blog.

That particular blog had been a centerpiece of a new Internet campaign by the nation’s fifth military service. In fact, Capt. Jim McPherson, the Coast Guard’s top public affairs officer, cited this blog in February, asserting his service was ahead of the pack when it came to the military services embracing the Internet.

So, factual accounts are shut down, fictional accounts promoted, while terrorist groups have been exploiting the freedom of the Internet at every opportunity.  One day, our government may simply have to accept, as China is finding out, that there is no Green Zone in cyberspace.

In the upside-down world of the Bush Administration the FDA is supposed to prevent private entrepreneurs from voluntarily testing their cattle for Mad Cow, the EPA is supposed to stop states from voluntarily enacting emissions standards, and the Veteran’s Administration is supposed compare PTSD to football injuries:

VA secretary Peake suggested some of the concern about post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury has been overblown.

Many of the brain injuries are serious but some of them are akin to what anyone who played football in their youth might have suffered, Peake [said].

That’s right. On the heels of a report saying veteran suicides could outnumber casualties, the VA secretary is saying we’re making too much of PTSD. After all, they volunteered for this, right?

The article goes on to say that the Vietnam Vet Peake was talking to found the answer “unsatisfying”, but I think the award for best response goes to VoteVets’, Brandon Friedman :

Frankly, Peake’s casually dismissive attitude sucks.  Being hunted by other humans every day for 15 months, watching your friend bleed to death, and having your brain flattened like a pancake from a thousand-pound detonation are not comparable to football injuries.  

And that’s all I have to say about that.

The West, long since written off as red state, is looking more blue all the time. It is central to Obama’s strategy for rewriting the political map, by putting traditionally red states in play to offset losses in Florida or Ohio, which have traumatized Democrats in recent elections. Central to such a strategy is Colorado, which is why the Dems are holding their Convention here. Though the state’s wilderness has always attracted a strange mixture of hunters, survivalists and hippie environmentalists, Colorado has a huge influx of people who offset some traditionally libertarian elements.

So, the cosmopolitan city centers, mixed with rural voters more receptive to the populist message, make the West possible Ground Zero of 2008.

Helping matters in Ohio and Colorado is the fact that the major players in the Republican Party in these states are suffering from multiple investigations, corruption and sex.

Today demonstrated just how much the state of the state has changed. Today, during a speech, McCain was shouted down by protestors chanting “Endless War!”
 

One doubts the Democratic Convention can hope to come close to the disarray of 1968, when you not only had a war, but assassinations seemed commonplace. But there are definitely some Democratic activists around to make this hostile territory for Republicans.

Progressivefuture has been interviewing an Iraqi veteran all week about the abuses she witnessed firsthand by contractors. Take a look.

Contractors Aren’t Free

 

Sewage in with the Bathwater

 

Witness Weighs in on KBR Water Scandal Reports

 

The Trauma of Silence

 

Contractor Accountability

This is amazing. It appears the nearly 4500 deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan to date could, quite literally, be only half of the story. Shortly after the release of a RAND study showing the rate of PTSD and depression in returning veterans, Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health, the government’s top psychiatric research group said because these veterans are unlikely to seek help, or have access to the appropriate health care, the rate of suidicides could outpace combate fatalities:

Exactly how many vets have taken their lives isn’t known for sure — and that lack of good data is part of the problem.

But CBS News, in a months-long investigation last year, uncovered what it called a “suicide epidemic” among vets: At least 6,256 veterans committed suicide in 2005 alone — an average of 17 a day. Vets overall were more than twice as likely as the general population to take their lives. Among young veterans ages 20 to 24, the rate was nearly four times that of the nonmilitary public.

Another estimate is that 1,000 veterans a month are attempting suicide.

What is the government doing about this? Covering it up:

At heated hearings this week, the chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, Rep. Bob Filner, D-Calif., charged that the Department of Veterans Affairs is either ignoring the extent of the veteran suicide problem or covering it up. Not only news organizations but also members of Congress trying to get data on veteran suicides have encountered bureaucratic resistance.

Support the war, not the troops.

Today’s NYT:

WASHINGTON — In October 2004, the United States Army issued an urgent bulletin to commanders across Iraq, warning them of a deadly new threat to American soldiers. Because of flawed electrical work by contractors, the bulletin stated, soldiers at American bases in Iraq had received severe electrical shocks, and some had even been electrocuted.

The bulletin, with the headline “The Unexpected Killer,” was issued after the horrific deaths of two soldiers who were caught in water — one in a shower, the other in a swimming pool — that was suddenly electrified after poorly grounded wiring short-circuited.

_____________________________

Since that warning, at least two more American soldiers have been electrocuted in similar circumstances. In all, at least a dozen American military personnel have been electrocuted in Iraq, according to the Pentagon and Congressional investigators.

The hissy fit McCain’s been throwing over the DNC and MoveOn ads”, one would think those clips make him a tad bit nervous.  The ads show clips of a townhall meeting where McCain shrugged off a questioner’s assertion that Bush would keep forces in Iraq for 50 years, and said, ”maybe 100″.

Here is the transcript:

Offscreen voice: President Bush has talked about our staying in Iraq for 50 years.
On screen graphic: Senator McCain. President Bush has talked about our staying in Iraq for 50 years.
McCain: Maybe a hundred. That’d be fine with me.
On screen: 100 years in Iraq.
On screen: 5 years. $500 billion. Over 4,000 dead.
Offscreen voice: President Bush has talked about our staying in Iraq for 50 years.
McCain: Maybe 100.
Narrator: If all he offers is more of the same, is John McCain the right choice for America’s future?
On screen: Is John McCain the right choice for America’s future?
Narrator: The Democratic National Committee is responsible for the content of this advertising.
 

McCain tried to explain away his remarks this way:

John McCain defended his now infamous “100 years in Iraq” comments made at a town hall back in January, contending the Democrats are deliberately distorting his remarks. He explained today that those who say he wants to fight in Iraq for 100 years are making a “direct falsification” and apologized that campaigns “have to deteriorate in this fashion.”

On a purely rational level, this argument is strange. It is impossible for McCain to say the ad “deliberately distorted” his words, unless he’s claiming the videotape was altered (which Republicans, at least, are not shy about doing).  Especially, when McCain is deliberately distorting what the ad says – there is no mention of “war” anywhere, only McCain’s answer.

What McCain is essentially saying is, “It’s outrageous to suggest I’d be willing to fight a war in Iraq for 100 years, when I clearly said we’d stay 100 years after we won the war.”  How long will that take? As long as it takes. Even if it takes 100 years.

Yet, the whining from GOP circles has been so ear-piercing that they even Factcheck wagged their fingers at an ad because they hadn’t done enough to spin what McCain actually meant by this. To make matters worse, the McCain camp duped the media into portraying his words as a “gaffe” when he not only repeated the claim, but extended it to 1,000, 10,000, even a million years when confronted about his comments days later.

If there is any argument at all, it is that McCain’s quote, clipped short, leaves an impression that McCain wants war. If the Democrats have a point, it is that McCain clearly implies he’s willing to stay under present circumstances, unless he’s completely bonkers and thinks we’re only a short time away from zero US casualties. By Factcheck’s own standards, their post is as irresponsible a distortion as the DNC because their “correction” implies  McCain would not stay in Iraq if the violence continues, when he has gone out of his way to suggest the opposite. I don’t think there’s a journalist, regardless of whether or not they are claiming McCain’s words were taken out of context, who is under any dellussions McCain would leave Iraq — which is precisely the message implied by both those ads that McCain wants to shoot down. He wants to shoot them down, not because they distort his position, but because it states all too clearly what his position actually is — which is why the “don’t cut-and-run” crowd are those objecting the loudest.

John H. McFadden had an interesting post on the tactics of guilty-by-association yesterday, in relation to the Rev. Wright controversy. Basically, he says even arguing why Obama didn’t leave the church has an implied message: “Because he stayed in that church, he must be a closet black radical.”

 I see a similar strategy at work here. Politics argues in poetry. What is said is often just a metaphore for the real argument — the one we aren’t allowed to have.

So when can we start the countdown on McCain’s 100 year war? He won’t say, and no one will ask. The implication being that it’s taboo to mention the elephant in the living room.

McCain doesn’t want to leave. So you better not say it.

In a new tell-all by Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, Wiser in Battle: A Soldier’s Story, the former Commander of U.S. Forces in Iraq takes his turn finger-pointing over where Iraq went wrong. Considering this Administration’s track record for punishing prescience and promoting loyal incompetence among its ranks, the fact that the three-star general took the fall for Abu Ghraib speaks in his favor. (Because, as we all know, it’s the soldier’s fault a few Bad Apples got “out of hand” — if by Bad Apples you mean, the White House.)

It might surprise you to learn (/snark) Sanchez thinks Rumsfeld might have had something to do with the failures of the first year:

“Hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars were unnecessarily spent, and worse yet, too many of our most precious military resource, our American soldiers, were unnecessarily wounded, maimed, and killed as a result. In my mind, this action by the Bush administration amounts to gross incompetence and dereliction of duty.”

If you think PTSD heals over time, think again. Chuck Keller tells his story, so Iraqi Vets don’t make his mistake:

I finally sought treatment at a veterans center a couple of years ago.  It’s still difficult to admit the problem.  I’ve always known deep inside that I had issues with what I saw and did in Vietnam.  I have learned through my conversations with other vets that Corpsmen and Medics tend to have “special” conflicts and damage because of the unique perspective of a “non-combatant.”

We are, as a rule, “healers.”  The violence and bloodiness of combat goes against the very nature of people who want to stop just those two things.  So, there is the trauma of combat multiplied by the stress of trying to overcome its consequences multiplied by the psychological pressure of wondering if you did enough or if you could have done more or if your training was sufficient for the job you were trying to accomplish.

Trauma is a strange thing. You can be brave, yet have no control over how your subconscious decides to react to trauma. I remember watching a show where one soldier started having flashbacks after seeing some body bags when he walked off the plane and stepped into Kuwait for the first time. Others can go through the worst events imaginable and be relatively functional, and it doesn’t seem to have much parallel to courage or bravery. It’s just an automatic response with different triggers for everyone.

My advice to returning vets:  Seek help.  Take advantage of the VA’s treatment centers.  Don’t be afraid to admit you’re suffering.  Don’t do what I did and let your best years fester away when they could have been so productive. 

It’s good advice.