from T. Christian Miller, ProPublica,
and Daniel Zwerdling, NPR
June 07, 2010 (view source)

WASHINGTON, D.C.--The military medical system is failing to diagnose brain injuries in troops who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, many of whom receive little or no treatment for lingering health problems, an investigation by ProPublica and NPR has found.

So-called mild traumatic brain injury has been called one of the wars' signature wounds. Shock waves from roadside bombs can ripple through soldiers' brains, causing damage that sometimes leaves no visible scars but may cause lasting mental and physical harm.

Officially, military figures say about 115,000 troops have suffered mild traumatic brain injuries since the wars began. But top Army officials acknowledged in interviews that those statistics likely understate the true toll. Tens of thousands of troops with such wounds have gone uncounted, according to unpublished military research obtained by ProPublica and NPR.

"When someone's missing a limb, you can see that," said Sgt. William Fraas, a Bronze Star recipient who survived several roadside blasts in Iraq. He can no longer drive, or remember simple lists of jobs to do around the house. "When someone has a brain injury, you can't see it, but it's still serious."

In 2007, under enormous public pressure, military leaders pledged to fix problems in diagnosing and treating brain injuries. Yet despite the hundreds of millions of dollars pumped into the effort since then, critical parts of this promise remain unfulfilled.

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There is very little need to tell anyone what happened at Fort Hood yesterday. A Major who specialized in treating soldiers with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder went on a shooting rampage killing 13 and wounding 30 more. This is a tragedy in many ways, for the families of the dead, for the wounded and their families, for the family of Maj. Hasan, for the soldiers of Fort Hood and for the nation.

"Originally posted at Squarestate.net"

In a few days, assuming Maj. Hasan survives the wounds from being shot, we will start to find out the specifics of why he lost control and inflicted this horrible damage on the soldiers on his base, but there is a larger issue the Dog would like to address here. Have we gone past the point of sustainability for the Armed Services in our two wars?

The war in Afghanistan has been waged for the last 8 years and the Iraq war has been going for 6 years. We are at the point of having the longest war of our history (depending on when you clock the start and stop of the Vietnam war) and already we are past the longest time frame we were fighting in two wars or two fronts in our history.

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During the past four months, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) backlog of unfinished disability claims grew by more than 100,000, adding to an already mountainous backlog that is now close to topping one million.

The VA's claims backlog, which includes all benefits claims and all appeals at the Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA) and the Board of Veterans Appeals at VA, was 803,000 on January 5, 2009. The backlog hit 915,000 on May 4, 2009, a staggering 14 percent increase in four months.

The issue has become so dire that veterans now wait an average of six months to receive disability benefits and as long as four years for their appeals to be heard in cases where their benefits were denied.

Rep. Tim Walz (D-Minnesota), a member of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, said during a hearing in March that the VA is "almost criminally behind in processing claims."

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Reading through opinion about "enhanced interrogation", you will find that there is a pervasive assumption that if there is no physical evidence of torture after the fact, the victim of torture remains unharmed. In fact, the Bush administration defined this as one of the axioms that justified their legal opinions that supported their methods -- and it is one that softens public opinion toward torture, as well. The fact is that if this assumption is wrong, the W administration's torture policy falls like a house of cards.

The crucial issue at hand is that, in the memos, torture was defined as something different than it was in practice. To understand the fundamental flaw in a way that is more than superficial, though, we have to think about what happens to a prisoner that undergoes "enhanced interrogation." We have to consider why these tactics cause long term harm. We also have to understand why a subject in a "cracked" state of mind will always provide dubious information.

So, what happens when Rambo cracks? Will he walk away unchanged by the experience? Even if he has no pre-existing psychological conditions?

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The following is a good article but it implies that PTSD has evolved instead of the fact we have evolved regarding knowledge, no longer dismissing what traumatic events can do to humans. If you go back in the historical records of battles throughout time, you will discover exactly how horrific warfare was and what it did to the warriors. Many accounts are within the Bible itself. Reading the words in most books of the Bible along with the discarded books eliminated from what we read today, you can find the trauma of war deeply changed the participants. David's accounts are one of many. Judges and Kings addresses warfare. When Joshua took Jericho, everyone was slaughtered by hand to hand combat. As for noise, screams would have filled every ear as the sound of the swords slashed thru skin and bones. Body parts and heads went flying thru the air. Ancient weaponry flung fire and burning oils onto the enemy forces on both sides. In many cases helpless captives were slaughtered after the battles were over.

In ancient times, the suffering of the warriors was treated as a judgment of God and hidden from others so they would not be ostracized. Even the ancients had ways of "healing" the warrior with cleansing rituals, spending time away from home to "purify" the warrior. Ancient Native Americans had sweat lodges and cleansing ceremonies as well.

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