Posted on 09/09/2007 12:43:59 PM PDT by james500
The war in Iraq is not over, but one legacy is already here in this city and others across America: an epidemic of brain-damaged soldiers.
Thousands of troops have been diagnosed with traumatic brain injury, or TBI. These blast-caused head injuries are so different from the ones doctors are used to seeing from falls and car crashes that treating them is as much faith as it is science.
"I've been in the field for 20-plus years dealing with TBI. I have a very experienced staff. And they're saying to me, 'We're seeing things we've never seen before,'" said Sandy Schneider, director of Vanderbilt University's brain injury rehabilitation program.
Doctors also are realizing that symptoms overlap with post-traumatic stress disorder, and that both must be treated. Odd as it may seem, brain injury can protect against PTSD by blurring awareness of what happened.
But as memory improves, emotional problems can emerge: One of the first "graduates" of Vanderbilt's program committed suicide three weeks later.
"Of all the ones here, he would not have been the one we would have thought," Schneider said. "They called him the Michelangelo of Fort Campbell" -- a guy who planned to go to art school.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsday.com ...
I appreciate your remarks. I agree with them.
It also occurs to me that the left has nearly pulled off what they accomplished in Vietnam.
If you’ll remember, they really cared about the troops in that campaign also. Despite that they had the American populace so scared of people who served in Vietnam, that they were reticent to hire them when they returned.
The same A.P. that cares for our men here, will herald with glee those who spit on their fellow troops when they return home.
Take care.
Sorry, should read...
The same A.P. that cares for our men here, will herald with glee those who spit on them when they return home.
A few soldiers have legitimate medical injury and need serious care. But they are just a foot in the door for a new "syndrome" meant to grow to thousands without any medical reality to back it up. Stress ailments in the context of an explosion having occurred anytime in the soldier's service career, are being shoehorned into the same category as men with actual physical head trauma, in a grostesque attempt to get legitimate solicitude for the latter, to extend to make-believe snake oil quackery for the former.
I've seen it half a dozen times before and this is no different. Gulf war syndrome, ADD, AHDD, child molestation nonsense, imaginary cell phone illness, imaginary power line dangers, etc etc ad nauseum. We are living in a nation of raving maniacs with terminal hypochondria.
Plato had it right. If it can be fixed by cutting something off or out, sewing something up, or taking the right medicine one off, then fix it. If it can't be cured, live with it and die or not as it falls out. Babying it won't make anybody immortal.
Are some men hurt by lingering trauma from combat, psychologically rather than biomedically? Sure. And you can't do anything about it, either. So suck it up and move on. Shaking down half the world to babysit grown men, is a scam and quackery.
I don’t know what’s happening to FR, but a bunch of mindless, hard-hearted, arrogant, morons are all over this site. Back in the day, we used to call the libs “sheeple”, now the tables are turned and many of the posters are the sheeple following after the republican line without a clue on how to think for themselves. This war is a hell hole and the price is too high.
“IMO YO that we shouldn’t be in Iraq speaks volumes.”
Outright lie. My comment was with regards to nation building. Am against it. There’s a difference between that nonsense which has, is and will fail and a mission to kill terrorists. But nice try at a smear.
This was the qeustion...
“Do you think we should pull our troops out now in as little time as possible? If not, how long should we give it?”
And this was your answer...
Again, nation building in that hellhole is just plain naieve and dumb. They’re modern day barbarians. Simply kill anyone who threatens us or our allies and be on our way.
My opinion wasn't a lie. It was simpply my opinion.
Now did you want to address a lie that did appear on this page? I don't care about the troops?
LOL, you'll have to try harder than that junior.
Your posts make your faux concern for our fighting men much clearer than anything I could pen. Your concern for the troops is conditional and thus something to be despised, not lauded. You’re on their side as long as Bush is buoyed politically or at the least not negatively affected by them.
Yawn...
Like I said junior, you're going to have to do better than that. You begin to touch on the hysterical. Calm down. Take a breath.
I don't like the media faux concern, and you choose to focus on that and extrapolate a conclusion that is close to psychotic.
Well, ta ta...
I hate to tell ya’ll but I have on these guys working for me.
Something about the preponderance of IED wounds that shook brainmatter in the skull like 1000 bover punches at once
and nobody really knows how this manifests over time
hey bud...we agree on this one.
we are working with a young man right now in my employ who got blasted on his second tour with delayed serious ramifications from convulsions to phantom pain and headaches for weeks that morphine barely helps
utter rage and depression too
and no, this is not the usual shellshock or battle fatigue
A large majority of these wounded have been retured to duty. Their wounds were severe, but our military medical complex is mighty and technologiically advanced.
Barely 50% of the casualties in Vietnam were caused by small arms fire; a huge percentage were caused by IEDs. IEDs are the preferred weapon of the side in any war that has the most contempt for human life.
What would have been the result, in the Second World War, if the mainstream media of that era focused on U.S casualties - to the exclusion of all other news - to the same extent that ABC/CBS/NBC/CNN/Reuters/AP/NYTimes/Washington Post do today?
hear hear.
this is not shell shock
it’s explosive impact on armour and helmets and the pressure and blast injuries that shook the brain and spine and stem away from God’s webbing
and everybody is learning sort of what that means as we go
never had a war with that proportion of injuries as now
i’ll ping an ordnance man we have here
like I said...one of these guys works for me...and he is suffering
dang ya’ll this is a conservative site...we are supposed to be empathetic
God bless and protect the troops. They are bringing freedom and progress to the Middle East and Arab culture without most of the devastation and loss of life encountered with the Japanese and Koreans.
Wouldn’t you agree the damage to these troops was caused by the shock wave of large munitions exploding in close proximity to them? I’m not sure why this must be reconized as something different than other wars. Shells exploded near troops in military campaigns since WWI. Why do you and others try to make the case this is different? Seriously.
Look this doesn’t mean I’m not concerned for our men, but to allow this writer to frame this in the manner you are, is to allow them to play up that this war is worse than any other.
Think of the millions of war injuries in WWII for instance. Were those injuries less important, less impactful, less damaging?
We have some physicians making claims that I am not confident can be substantiated. Why are these injuries worse? I cannot accept that.
The important thing is that our troops get the medical care they need and deserve. The important thing isn’t allowing some nit wit reporter to convince the American public that our leaders are craven manipulators who don’t care that our troops are being injured worse than ever before.
And that’s what I percieve is taking place here.
None of this should be taken as proof that I or anyone else don’t care about the troops.
I couldn’t agree more. Thanks.
This is, without a doubt, the strangest thread I have read in ages.....
The AP says soldiers have “brain damage”, in an obscure way....I guess my first thought is....yea......WWI and WWII and Korean and Vietnam Vets prob had some head problems as well.......what they didn’t have, except for the later, was an AP that wants them to lose.....
I don’t want to cast dispersions against anyone on this thread unless pressed to do so. I think there are several dynamics at play here.
1. Some people have come into the thread and are convinced I don’t care about our troops, because I am not focusing on them rather than A.P. Look, I think most of us are adults here and know the troops are getting the treatment they deserve. If I thought my comments were going to prevent that, I’d quite commenting, but the idea they could is absurd. Therefore I’m going after an organizaation that has worked their hardest to defeat these very troops, in their effort inside Iraq. If folks will go back and read my comments, they’ll see why I think the reporting is tended more to use the troops as a wedge tool, than to actually highlight some new injury that is worse than anything seen prior to this.
2. Some people don’t want our troops in Iraq. And while they don’t want to come out and demand they leave now, they will take any opportunity to trash folks who won’t buy into the “Bush is an X” line, because he ordered our men into Iraq, “...and you won’t damn him too for not bringing them out now!”
No, the A.P. and other wire services didn’t have the juevos to damn U.S. operations prior to Vietnam. During Vietnam and since, they have.
You see, I remember very well the tactics to kill respect for the troops in Vietnam. Post Traumatic Syndrome was the rage back then. Many of our troops had it, but by the time the media got through with them, nobody wanted to hire them. And by the time the media got through with them overall, spitting on them when them came home became the rage among leftists.
If folks can’t understand why I won’t tollerate for a moment, the media playing up injury issues for their own political gain, then they can go ahead and think I’m the worst guy ever. I’ll be content to know that the media isn’t going to get away with what they did last time, if I can help it. I’ll be more than happy to call them on every step they take.
I appreciate your comments.
Thanks for the feedback. I don’t know what the differences are between reports of ‘shell shock’ and these reported injuries. My intent is not to cast dispersions, but to discern between the actual injuries and those who seek to carpetbag off the injured.
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