The Mercenary’s Cookbook

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.

Okay… what soldier doesn’t march through some Baghdad street, exchanging the evil eye with the locals, and think, “I could paid four times as much working for Dyncorp.” Well, the private sector does have its down side:

AN AMERICAN security guard recruited by DynCorp International to serve at the As Sayliyah base has been “stranded” in Qatar for over a year after he was sacked by his employers in April 2007.

Remember, Mehran Karimi Nasseri, the inspiration for Steven Spielberg’s The Terminal? I’m betting this guy wishes he was stuck in an airport.

What’s worse is this disgruntled (to put it mildly) employee claims it was all a negotiating tactic on the part of Dyncorp:

“[T]hings started to fall apart as I arrived here in October 2006. I was forced to sign an employment contract in which the emoluments were less than what had been promised and agreed in the US.

“One of the major setbacks was the absence of a pension plan which figured prominently in the promises made in the US. There was also a shortfall of about $15,000 in the annual package in the new offer.”
 

According to him, things came to a head when he, along with eleven other contractors, complained to Qatar’s Labour Department. Then Dyncorp refused to pay up, so they fired him and told him to take the next plane home. So he gets an injunction against his deportation so his suit could go forward, and his former employers handed over his passport to the police and reported him as an absconder.

Dyncorp managed to dodge service for three months, and he sat, waiting around in Dyncorp housing for over a year to have his day in court. That is, until this past week when the company tried to have him evicted, which is what prompted him to go to the paper. The American embassy couldn’t help because it was a “civil matter”, which is a clever way of placing PMC’s outside of the law — US laws don’t apply because they are in Qatar, Qatar is dragging its feet about getting involved in a dispute between an American company and American employee, and the US embassy won’t get involved because… I don’t know why.

Dyncorp employees have been pushing on various fronts to find some avenue for compensation or accountability of the Guantanamos of business law. A former sub-conractor testified before Congress that a comrade would not have been killed if the armored  car was not being used to transport prostitutes to Dyncorp hotels. In 2002, two former employees won in court after Dyncorp fired them for blowing the whistle on the trafficing of sex slaves in Bosnia.

The International Crisis Group has released their report “Iraq After the Surge”.  So how are we doing?

Against the odds, the U.S. military surge contributed to a significant reduction in violence. Its achievements should not be understated. But in the absence of the fundamental political changes in Iraq the surge was meant to facilitate, its successes will remain insufficient, fragile and reversible. The ever-more relative lull is an opportunity for the U.S. to focus on two missing ingredients: pressuring the Iraqi government to take long overdue steps toward political compromise and altering the regional climate so that Iraq’s neighbours use their leverage to encourage that compromise and make it stick. As shown in these two companion reports, this entails ceasing to provide the Iraqi government with unconditional military support; reaching out to what remains of the insurgency; using its leverage to encourage free and fair provincial elections and progress toward a broad national dialogue and compact; and engaging in real diplomacy with all Iraq’s neighbours, Iran and Syria included.

So, basically our troops have had their benefits cut, their tours extended, and still managed to clamp down on the violence to give the politicians the breathing room they needed to form a government. For the politicians’ part, they have bungled it even worse than before. For the military’s trouble, those politicians get to tout our troops’ success so they can justify extending out troops tours even longer.

Hasn’t this pretty much been the theme of the war?

You can download the PDF version here.

CBC Newsworld will be airing Afghanistan: The Choice of Women tonight, about Habiba Sorabi, Afghanistan’s first female governor, and Aisha Habibi, Afghanistan’s notorious female warlord, also known as “Commander Kaftar”. You can read more about her here.

No. We do not need to justify why the banana had to be where it was. Letting you know the reason for putting the banana there would be tipping off the terrorists to our techniques. They could use this information about our anti-terror tactics against us.  Not shoving a banana up his ass would be letting the terrorists win. I find it funny how you show so much sympathy for terrorists. What about the people he’s killed?

Did he kill anybody?

He must have. There’s a banana in his ass. Would there be a banana in his ass if he didn’t kill anybody?

I don’t know. Would there?

We can’t tell you. But believe me, we had our reasons.

Isn’t it illegal?

No. The Geneva Conventions forbid the use of torture. We would never torture.

How do you define torture? At the very least, this looks to be very unpleasant for the man.

Prison isn’t supposed to be a country club, and believe me, back in our college days we shoved bananas up people’s asses if they wanted to join the Skull and Bones. To be torture, it would have to cause pain equivalent to death or catastrophic organ failure. As you can see, this man’s organs are still functioning.  He’s just going to be shitting blood for a while.

So, it’s not torture unless that man dies?  Okay. What happens then?

We can’t be held responsible if the man dies, because we didn’t mean to do it.

Don’t you think shoving bananas up people’s asses might be part of the reason why they hate us?

No. He hates us for our freedom.

Well, after all this, I hope it worked.

Did what work?

Shoving a banana up this man’s ass.

Sadly, sometimes we find only being able to shove a banana up a man’s ass to be far too limiting to effectively fight the War on Terror. Often more extreme measures are required.

Like what?

Like extraditing prisoners to countries that are not as constrained by the dictates of Political Correctness. Some people in this country still have a problem seeing anything worse than a banana shoved up a man’s ass.  

Don’t you worry that it hurts America’s image abroad to see these photos of a banana in a man’s ass?

Yes I do. That’s why they never should have been released. There needs to be an investigation.

But you can’t stop leaking. Perhaps it would be easier not to stick a banana up a man’s ass in the first place?

Believe me, Saddam’s done far worse, so we’ve got a long way to go before you’re in any position to complain about it.  I don’t hear you whining about what Saddam did.

I thought we were supposed to be better.

We are better. We have other people do the really rough stuff.

Do you ever worry that the banana in the man’s ass will get a lot of media attention in the US?

No. So far the media has not uncovered any evidence of Democrats sticking banana’s in people’s rear ends. They can’t report this until they can say Democrats have done it also.

Do you ever worry that the people will rise up against this kind of tactic?

No. They love their country too much to do that.  They know how important that banana is.  They know we wouldn’t shove a banana up a man’s ass unless it was absolutely necessary.

But if they do?

Then there should be an investigation. This administration does not tolerate leakers.

Hussein says he’s innocent. Which Bush says is proof of his guilty.