The liver and white pit bull you see a few times in the vid is a rescue that my brother and sis in law saved from euthanasia for no other reason that he is a pit bull. Only four months old. Now he’s providing love and assistance to a wounded soldier. Here is the Wags 4 Warriors website, check them out. Two more Ohio Pit Rescue groups- Muttly Crue and Rowdy to the Rescue. Here is my original post about Wiley (now Radar).
When I first read the L.A. Times headline, I couldn’t imagine why troops who returned home would be particularly poor drivers. Are they more prone to driving under the influence? Are they suffering from post traumatic stress disorder, maybe having flashbacks? Have they given up caring? Or do they feel invincible?
Some of the above:
Members of the U.S. military — especially enlisted troops in the Army and Marines — were significantly more likely to cause auto accidents within six months of returning from deployment, according to a study by USAA Property and & Casualty Insurance Group, a major insurer for military families.
These veterans probably are engaging in survival driving habits for a war zone, such as not stopping in traffic, driving fast and making sudden, unpredictable turns, experts said. But those same driving practices create havoc back in the United States. [...]
Officers had far lower accident rates than enlisted troops, and drivers younger than 22 were more prone to crashes than older members of the military.
The good news is that there wasn’t a rise in fatal accidents.
Bradley Hammond, who left the Army after serving in Iraq in 2006:
“I want to drive as close to the middle as I can because subconsciously if I see a box or some trash on the side of the road I am thinking it will explode,” said Hammond of Lakewood, Colo. “Sometimes I get a feeling someone is following me and I just turn. Something will set me off.”
Wars, and in this case IEDs, have taken such a heavy toll on lives and on psyches.
Interestingly, none of the non-deployed service members surveyed reported anxiety while driving.
More here.
My dear friend and top notch investigative reporter, Jason Leopold, has a post up at Truthout.org that he has invited me to share. Here’s a portion of what he wrote, and the video. Please go here for the rest:
In this compelling and heartrending on-camera interview, Phillips, who spent more than five years researching and writing “None of Us Were Like This Before,” discusses his investigation into the 2004 death of Army Sgt. Adam Gray, and how it led him to uncover a tragic story about torture’s other victims.
I can personally attest to the pain and suffering military families endure, even when their loved ones haven’t been “officially” tortured or abused, and Jason nailed it when he referred to soldiers who “turn to alcohol and drugs to ease their mental injuries.”
One of my dearest students suffered greatly herself, first because her father was on the battlefield, involved in some of the most dangerous missions, as she was growing up. She was in constant, real fear that he’d be injured or worse, and turned to drugs herself. Then, once he finally returned home, he fell into alcoholism, had major bouts of PTSD, and became violent, ripping the family apart.
He tried to get help from the various groups available to veterans, but it wasn’t enough.
Even those who haven’t undergone intentional physical or mental abuse have felt tortured, and have the “deep psychological scars” that Jason Leopold refers to, that much is obvious.
Thank you, Jason, for staying on this topic while so many others either choose to ignore it, or have simply lost interest.
So there I was, minding my own morning business, when I heard Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta making a speech on my Tee Vee Box saying that BushCo’s fraudulent war, the invasion of a sovereign country that did not attack us, that did not have “weapons of mass destruction,” that did not provide any evidence of a looming “mushroom cloud,” was worth it. “Shock and awe-ing” Iraq to smithereens was worth it.
I’msorrywhat?
That’s right, Panetta thinks that nearly nine years, 4,500 dead Americans, 100,000 dead Iraqis, 32,000 wounded Americans wounded (don’t get me started on the post traumatic stress and suicides, the alcoholism, the unemployment, the homelessness, the gut-wrenching despair that so many veterans suffer), and more than $800 billion… all that was “worth it” to Panetta.
US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta has arrived in Baghdad to formally end the nearly nine-year war in Iraq.
He says it was worth the cost in blood and dollars, as it set Iraq on a path to democracy. [...]
During several stops in Afghanistan this week, Panetta made it clear that the US can be proud of its accomplishments in Iraq, and that the cost of the bitterly divisive war was worth it.
“We spilled a lot of blood there,” Panetta said. “But all of that has not been in vain. It’s been to achieve a mission making that country sovereign and independent and able to govern and secure itself.”
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