Posted on 01/13/2008 3:01:14 PM PST by forkinsocket
Late one night in the summer of 2005, Matthew Sepi, a 20-year-old Iraq combat veteran, headed out to a 7-Eleven in the seedy Las Vegas neighborhood where he had settled after leaving the Army.
This particular 7-Eleven sits in the shadow of the Stratosphere casino-hotel in a section of town called the Naked City. By day, the area, littered with malt liquor cans, looks depressed but not menacing. By night, it becomes, in the words of a local homicide detective, “like Falluja.”
Mr. Sepi did not like to venture outside too late. But, plagued by nightmares about an Iraqi civilian killed by his unit, he often needed alcohol to fall asleep. And so it was that night, when, seized by a gut feeling of lurking danger, he slid a trench coat over his slight frame — and tucked an assault rifle inside it.
“Matthew knew he shouldn’t be taking his AK-47 to the 7-Eleven,” Detective Laura Andersen said, “but he was scared to death in that neighborhood, he was military trained and, in his mind, he needed the weapon to protect himself.”
Head bowed, Mr. Sepi scurried down an alley, ignoring shouts about trespassing on gang turf. A battle-weary grenadier who was still legally under-age, he paid a stranger to buy him two tall cans of beer, his self-prescribed treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder.
As Mr. Sepi started home, two gang members, both large and both armed, stepped out of the darkness. Mr. Sepi said in an interview that he spied the butt of a gun, heard a boom, saw a flash and “just snapped.”
In the end, one gang member lay dead, bleeding onto the pavement. The other was wounded. And Mr. Sepi fled, “breaking contact” with the enemy, as he later described it.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Oh PLEASE... Not this crap again!
Oh the stress! The post traumatic stress! Maybe we need to commission a study.
Then shouldn't we withdraw?
When in England at a fairly large conference, Colin Powell was asked by the Archbishop of Canterbury if our plans for Iraq were just an example of ‘empire building’ by George Bush.
He answered by saying, “Over the years, the United States has sent many of its fine young men and women into great peril to fight for freedom beyond our borders. The only amount of land we have ever asked for in return is enough to bury those that did not return (home).”
It became very quiet in the room.
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Then there was a conference in France where a number of international engineers were taking part, including French and American. During a break one of the French engineers came back into the room saying “Have you heard the latest dumb stunt Bush has done? He has sent an aircraft carrier to Indonesia to help the tsunami victims. What does he intend to do, bomb them?”
A Boeing engineer stood up and replied quietly: “Our carriers have three hospitals on board that can treat several hundred people; they are nuclear powered and can supply emergency electrical power to shore facilities; they have three cafeterias with the capacity to feed 3,000 people three meals a day, they can produce several thousand gallons of fresh water from sea water each day, and they carry half a dozen helicopters for use in transporting victims and injured to and from their flight deck.. We have eleven such ships; how many does France have?”
Once again, dead silence.
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A U.S. Navy Admiral was attending a naval conference that included Admirals from the U.S., English, Canadian, Australian and French navies. At a cocktail reception, he found himself standing with a large group of Officers that included personnel from most of those countries. Everyone
was chatting away in English as they sipped their drinks but a French admiral suddenly complained that, ‘whereas Europeans learn many languages, Americans learn only English.’ He then asked, ‘Why is it that we always have to speak English in these conferences rather than speaking French?’ Without hesitating, the American Admiral replied ‘Maybe it’s because the Brits, Canadians, Aussies and Americans arranged it so you wouldn't’t have to speak German.’
You could have heard a pin drop!
That’s a nice list and makes me feel a bit better, but just for your fund of military information, aircraft carriers can produce up to 400,000 gallons of fresh water daily. That’s an average. I imagine if the Chief Engineer was in a hurry and wanted to boost capacity a bit he could probably top that.
Makes me sick to my stomach too.
Eleanor Roosevelt also urged keeping soldiers returning from the Pacific Theater from reentering the civilian world for a considerable time because they would be savages. I suspect it goes back much farther than even that.
Powerline responded well to this article:
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives2/2008/01/019533.php
The whole post is good but here’s the weenie:
Now put yourself in the place of a newspaper editor. Suppose you are asked to evaluate whether your paper should run a long article on a nationwide epidemic of murders committed by veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan—a crime wave that, your reporter suggests, constitutes a “cross-country trail of death and heartbreak.” Suppose that the reporter who proposes to write the article says it will be a searing indictment of the U.S. military’s inadequate attention to post-traumatic stress disorder. Suppose further that you are not a complete idiot.
Given that last assumption, I’m pretty sure your first question will be: “How does the murder rate among veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan compare to the murder rate for young American men generally?” Remarkably, this is a question the New York Times did not think to ask. Or, if the Times asked the question and figured out the answer, the paper preferred not to report it.
Thanks.
Yeah. That’s my Dad. Someone only a democrat would call a savage.
We couldn’t stand to listen to Eleanor Roosevelt and she was on the radio all the time. Such a screech, drove the kids crazy. A lot like Hillary!08.
This story was up on Yahoo and Breitbart this morning but disappeared by noon or so. I think your suggestion that the murder rate by combat veterans be compared to the rate of males of comparable age in the general population is coming up in various places. And I suspect that if anyone takes the example of singling out veterans to be license to single out other specific groups for comparison, the bleeding heart liberals and leftist MSM MF’s may end up with some egg on their faces.
One gang member dead and another wounded before they could rob the 711, I’m sorry I don’t see the problem here.
Utterly disgraceful.
Yes, but its their mindset. Copy Powerline’s response and send it to 10 of your friends. Have them send it to ten of their friends.
The did the same thing in Viet Nam, we can stop it this time.
The posters over there gave John (Hinderacker?) a pretty good shellacking over the posting, too.
Take a look at the comments at the end of the article...
One, Charles de Gaulle, and being French designed and maintained, she doesn't work most of the time. She's also only a light carrier, and not as big nor as capable, even in this context, as our Nimitz class ships.
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