Posted on 08/07/2007 4:06:19 PM PDT by chessplayer
Afghanistan -- Just outside the main gate to Bagram airfield, a U.S. military installation in Afghanistan, sits a series of small makeshift shops known by locals as the Bagram Bazaar.
(Excerpt) Read more at salon.com ...
Exactly right. I understand it’s easy for Salon employees to score cocain and PCP too. Course you’d have to ween them off heroin for it to matter.
Don’t even try to get me to think of my offering as any different than theirs on our troops.
The DC Press Corps is smearing the troops again. Some things haven’t changed in the past 40 years.
You can get it just as easy in the U.S..
Who do they think they are kidding?
GEESH!
Well Duh.
The entire country is awash in opium poppys
So they have MLK Boulevards in Afghanistan, too?
[. . .The anecdotal information, however, suggests there may be a wave of new patients coming, and it will include many heroin users. . .]
“Anecdotal information” is what reporters use to prove a point when no concrete information exists.
Down near the end of the article is the truth:
“The VA is the world’s largest provider of substance abuse services, caring for more than 350,000 veterans per year, of whom about 30,000 are being treated for opiate addiction. Only preliminary information for Iraq and Afghanistan is available, however, and veterans of those conflicts are not yet showing up in the stats.”
8888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888
Despite the hopeful “not yet”, you can bet the truth is very near zero......I say this because the VA loooooovvveesss anything it can claim to increase its own budget of money to waste..............after 6 years of being in Afghanistan, it just isn’t happening, no matter how hard the lefties wish for or try to conjure it......and you can bet that the vast, vast majority of “opiate” cases the VA cites are legitimate Rx’s that they themselves Rx to veterans for legitimate purposes that got out of hand.
Afghanistan and Iraq are not producing the junkies so desirable and dear to the lefties.
It’s easy for Airmen to score weed just outside Kirtland AFB.
It’s easy for Airmen to score cocaine just outside Nellis AFB.
It’s easy for Airmen to score crack just outside Shaw AFB.
It’s easy for Soldiers to score heroin just outside Ft. Jackson.
The titles could go on and on.
Do they do it? Not likely, but some may.
Just sticking to their tried and true tactics.
I left about the same time you arrived.....I never once saw or heard of heroin, and I knew plenty who smoked weed when back in the rear....my frame of reference ends in Jul 68....the only other thing I saw beside weed and alcohol was once in a while someone came up with some of that blue stuff to smear on a Winston......
The true extent of the heroin problem among American soldiers now serving in Iraq and Afghanistan is unknown
How do you write an article on drug abuse and not have a soldier as an example. The Marines test guys all the time and lose very few due to positive tests.
Seems like it would be easy for the military to institute drug testing, if this became a problem.
If fact, I thought they already did some drug testing, but I’m not sure where/how/if?
P.S.
reading what I wrote above makes it sound like I am denying that heroin was a problem in Vietnam.....I could have written it clear, to make the point that it came LATER than 1968, at least in anything one could possibly interpret as widespread......and I’m still not sure it was as widespread later as it was made to seem.
The true extent of the heroin problem among American soldiers now serving in Iraq and Afghanistan is unknown.
“So we’ll come up with a headline hoping to make the public think they’re all drug crazed baby killers!”
Sounds like Salon either has an addict or a dealer on the payroll. Would it take more than one transaction to prove you can buy the drugs in Bagram?
This just in, it’s easy for soldiers to get Twinkies at 7-11, and a Big Mac at McDonald’s. I hope they are not accusing my friends over there of being addicts.. I do not think I could look down on the MSM any less if they are.
The political Left in this country is the lowest form of lying trash.
In the military, scoring drugs has always been just as easy as scoring women for those so inclined..........
Our troops get regularly tested at home (in the US) for drugs. Every once in a long while you hear about someone “popping on a piss test”. I am pretty sure they probably do it overseas as well.
Its easy to score chocolate in Hersey.
When you are where any product is mass produced, it is proably easy to secure.
MRE’s can bung up your cornhole, why put yourself at further risk with smack, it does the same thing...
I MEANT GETTING REGULARLY TESTED.....NOT popping on a piss test. SORRY.
I have in-processed almost 1,500 OEF/OIF disability claims in the last four years in my small VA Regional Office and the total number of opiate-dependent veterans I have seen among them is — exactly zero. The “30,000” figure alluded to in the article is (I would bet) 90% from the period 1967-1980 when the US military went to hell and had to be recovered.
Can't speak for other units, but the stories I heard from friends at the time suggest it was pretty widespread.
This reporter seems to have spent a lot of time trying to prove that the war is creating GI addicts but, like he says, all his information is “anecdotal.”
John Kerry finally admitted that he never witnessed a single atrocity in Vietnam and that all his information was “anecdotal”—urban legend.
The experience the U.S. military had with heroin in Vietnam showed that out of all personnel who tested positive for opiates upon their return to the states, all but about 10 percent recovered after some treatment and counseling. What this seemed to indicate was that of the minority of U.S. personnel in RVN who were experimenting with or abusing heroin or opium, only about 10 percent were true addicts who could not permanently recover. This chronic addict group was probably a smaller percentage than addicts in the U.S. general population.
The disease concept of chemical dependency—the prevailing theory of addiction among a majority of medical, mental health and treatment professionals—states that alcoholics and addicts are born with a genetic predisposition to addiction which manifests itself with the first use of these substances.
Popular propaganda has claimed for 40 years that Vietnam produced an army of drug addicts, drunks and psychotics. The news media, Hollywood and activist historians used a lot of “anecdotal information” and veteran imposters to push this crap.
B.G. Burkett and Glenna Whitley wrote “Stolen Valor” (Verity Press—ISBN 096670360-X) in 1998. This is an exhaustively researched book that proves Vietnam veterans as a whole statistically had lower rates of desertion and criminal indictment than World War II veterans. It also shows how popular culture created the “Rambo” myth.
The Salon story is just one of the constant smears the news media publishes to diminish the honor of America’s fighting forces and lower the public’s morale in the War on Terror. The media are old hands at this game.
Since the honor, courage and patriotism of our Armed Forces have produced so little fodder for the left to use to damage morale and undermine the war effort salon thought they might make something up. They have no evidence that a problem even exists, but since the drive by has such a problem with substance abuse and sexual deviance, even if the Armed forces have a fraction of the problem then it's major.
The unit I was in was awash in heroin in `70-`71.Heard
2 shots when some bro`s shot a major trying to arrest
them smoking mj.
Yeah,you could get those little vials of scag for about
$2 and put it in your Marlboro and smoke it like normal,
Then there were your hard core that warmed it up.
A wee problem with race relations,yeah.It was scary where
I was.I liked it better out in the field,
I saw first hand only up until mid-68 and only in the 1st Inf Div....the news references about it didn’t begin until long after that.......I’m sure it was available, but it wasn’t popular, so to speak, until later..........geez, when I got drafted in fall of 66 marijuana in the states wasn’t very widely and openly available yet except for places like NYC, SFO, etc. I am absolutely certain I knew more guys in Vn who smoked their first reefer THERE than had ever tried or even had a chance to consider junk. But I do also know that what you say is and was true 2 yrs after my DEROS. By that time the “Woodstock generation” was arriving in Vn.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.