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Author: TriSec    Date: 04/20/2010 10:25:28

Good Morning.

Today is our 2,589th day in Iraq and our 3,117th day in Afghanistan.

We'll start this morning as we always do, with the latest casualty figures from our ongoing wars, courtesy of Antiwar.com:

American Deaths
Since war began (3/19/03): 4392
Since "Mission Accomplished" (5/1/03): 4253
Since Capture of Saddam (12/13/03): 3929
Since Handover (6/29/04): 3533
Since Obama Inauguration (1/20/09): 164

Other Coalition Troops - Iraq: 318
US Military Deaths - Afghanistan: 1,044
Other Military Deaths - Afghanistan: 687
Contractor Employee Deaths - Iraq: 1,457
Journalists - Iraq: 338
Academics Killed - Iraq: 437


We find this morning's cost of war passing through:

$ 984, 943, 250, 000 .00



Dr. Rachel Maddow has perhaps said it best...."The Iraq war won't end until the last tortured veteran dies screaming in his sleep perhaps 75 years from now."



While the story below doesn't involve combat veterans, the survivors of the Holocaust have just as many challenges as soldiers; perhaps they have more. Sixty-Five years after the end of WWII, there are still survivors that were never able to return to society. Israel has done its best to care for them.


PARDES HANNA, Israel — Some patients refuse to shower because it reminds them of the gas chambers. Others hoard meat in pillow cases because they fear going hungry.

At the Shaar Menashe Mental Health Center in northern Israel, it’s as though the Holocaust never ended.

As Israel tonight begins its annual 24 hours of remembrance of the Nazi genocide, the focus is on the 6 million Jews murdered and on the survivors who built new lives in the Jewish state.

Much less is ever said about the survivors for whom mental illness is part of the Holocaust’s legacy. At Shaar Menashe, patients remain frozen in time. Even today, 65 years after the end of World War II, there are sometimes screams of “The Nazis are coming!’’

“These are the forgotten people. These are the ones who have been left behind,’’ said Rachel Tiram, the facility’s longtime social worker.

Even among survivors with sanity intact, it can take decades to open up about their experiences. Here, most of the patients still will not speak. They are introverted and unresponsive. They mumble and shake uncontrollably, slump in front of blank TV screens and look aimlessly into the distance while sucking hard on cigarettes.

The details of their haunted pasts are sketchy and emerge only from hints in their behavior.

Meir Moskowitz, 81, endured pogroms and days inside a cramped cattle car in his native Romania. His body still quivers. During five hours in the company of visitors, he spoke just one word: “Germania.’’

Arieh Bleier, a gentle, 87-year-old Hungarian with deep, sullen eyes, survived the Mauthausen concentration camp. His parents and brother perished in Auschwitz. When asked about World War II, he looked away and shook his head.

Survivors driven insane by their experiences ended up in ordinary institutions that were not always a good fit; for instance, they had to wear pajamas, which reminded them of concentration camp inmates’ uniforms. Sometimes the children and grandchildren of patients were simply told they had died in the Holocaust.

Only in 1998 did Israel build three homes for survivors, starting with Shaar Menashe. Today about 220,000 survivors are still alive in Israel. About 200 are in Shaar Menashe and the other two homes.

Alexander Grinshpoon, director of Shaar Menashe, said all survivors have some form of post-traumatic stress disorder. But the roughly 80 in his care are men and women who could not overcome their wartime traumas, perhaps because their suffering was so profound, or because they were predisposed to mental illness.

Grinshpoon said research has shown that those who have experienced emotional trauma are five times more likely to develop serious mental illnesses. Holocaust survivors, he said, have a higher rate of suicide.

Eighty percent have trouble sleeping and two-thirds suffer from emotional distress, according to a survey commissioned by the Foundation for the Benefit of Holocaust Victims in Israel.

The foundation’s chairman, Zeev Factor, is an Auschwitz survivor. He says he has been able to maintain his sanity by focusing on the present but still suffers in his dreams.

At Shaar Menashe, patients are not required to wear pajamas. They have lawns, arts and crafts lessons, and workshops with pets. Some have developed hobbies, cultivated friendships, and reconnected with children and grandchildren.

Still, the shadow of death is never far away. “They live in this world and in that world at the same time,’’ Factor said.


But what does this mean in terms of our veterans? Survivors of the Holocaust spent years in the most depraved conditions....and some may have survived the entire 12 years of the Nazi regime. Our troops are where they are by choice, but at what cost? I remember a handful of vets that I read about during the first Gulf War...complaining that they signed up to get money for college, and now they're out shooting at people. Our current vets must be looking back at the 7 month long operation with envy.

Today's vets have been rotated through the combat zone three and four times...and it's all taking a toll.


Nearly 300,000 American troops have served three, four or more times in Iraq and/or Afghanistan, while cases of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) have risen dramatically since the wars began. The possible correlation between these two facts has led to the question of whether it’s fair to send young men and women back into combat again and again, and risk causing long-term mental and emotional problems.

One U.S. Army study from 2009 found troops in Afghanistan were more vulnerable to developing psychological problems as the number of tours went up (31% for three tours, more than double the rate of those with just one). Another study focused on Iraq showed nearly 15% of Army troops who served two tours suffered from depression, anxiety or traumatic stress, more than double that of a single tour. The PTSD rate was almost 2.5 times higher for two deployments compared with one.

“We just don’t know whether it’s combat exposure, repeated separation from the family or (not enough) time off,” Lieutenant Colonel Paul Bliese, director of the division of psychiatry and neuroscience at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, told the Associated Press. “All of those are reasonable explanations.”


But thanks to "President" Bush, the Republican-dominated Congress, and their 8-year indifference to our veterans, the resources our warriors need to return to normal society are stretched to the breaking point...or just simply aren't there. IAVA is working with the current congress and President Obama to try to undo the damage...but it will all take time.

Time that some of our troops just simply don't have...like Jesse Charles Huff of Dayton, OH.


DAYTON -- Jesse Charles Huff walked up to the VA Medical Center yesterday wearing Army fatigues and battling pain from his Iraq war wounds and a recent bout with depression.

The 27-year-old Dayton man had entered the center's emergency room about 1a.m. yesterday and requested some sort of treatment. But Huff did not get that treatment, police said, and about 5:45 a.m., he reappeared at the center's entrance, put a military-style rifle to his head and twice pulled the trigger.

Police would not specify what treatment Huff sought and why he did not receive it. Medical center spokeswoman Donna Simmons declined to answer questions about Huff's treatment, citing privacy laws. But police believe Huff killed himself to make a statement.

Scott Labensky, whose son lived with Huff, agreed. He said the veteran was injured by a ground blast while serving in Iraq and received ongoing treatment for a back injury and depression.

"He never got adequate care from the VA he was trying to get," Labensky said. "I believe he (killed himself) to bring attention to that fact."

Simmons said Huff had received care at the center since August 2008 and his care was being handled by a case manager.

Huff drove a van to the medical center. Police found nothing dangerous inside the van, which contained some Army clothing, a carton of cigarettes and a prescription bottle of oxycodone with Huff's name on it.


I fear that we'll read more stories like this in the coming years and decades; will we remember and have the werewithall to care for these soldiers?


 

48 comments (Latest Comment: 04/20/2010 22:03:34 by Will in Chicago)
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