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Ask a Vet
Author: TriSec    Date: 08/10/2010 10:35:29

Good Morning.

Today is our 2,701st day in Iraq and our 3,217th 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): 4414
Since "Mission Accomplished" (5/1/03): 4275
Since Capture of Saddam (12/13/03): 3953
Since Handover (6/29/04): 3555
Since Obama Inauguration (1/20/09): 186

Other Coalition Troops - Iraq: 318
US Military Deaths - Afghanistan: 1,220
Other Military Deaths - Afghanistan: 770
Contractor Employee Deaths - Iraq: 1,457
Journalists - Iraq: 338
Academics Killed - Iraq: 437

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

$ 1, 063, 350, 400, 000 .00



Perhaps you've been following the fire stories out of Russia with interest. Moscow has been shrouded in smoke for days....the wheat crop is failing due to the ongoing drought, and most dangerous of all, the forested areas around the Chernobyl nuclear accident site are under threat of burning, which may or may not release more radiation into the atmosphere.



It's a far different fire threat than the one faced by our soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq. What do you suppose happens to all the waste and trash generated by the American military in a war zone? Most of it is burned, in the open, in vast 'burn pits'.

But what do you think happens to the troops working the trash fires? Like everything else about these wars, soldier safety seems to be an afterthought.


Hundreds of military service members and contractor employees have fallen ill with cancer or severe breathing problems after serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, and they say they were poisoned by thick, black smoke produced by the burning of tons of trash generated on U.S. bases.

In a lawsuit in federal court in Maryland, 241 people from 42 states are suing Houston-based contractor Kellogg Brown & Root, which has operated more than two dozen so-called burn pits in the two countries. The burn pits were used to dispose of plastic water bottles, Styrofoam food containers, mangled bits of metal, paint, solvent, medical waste, even dead animals. The garbage was tossed in, doused with fuel and set on fire.

The military personnel and civilian workers say they inhaled a toxic haze from the pits that caused severe illnesses. Six with leukemia have died, and five are being treated for the disease, a cancer of the blood and bone marrow. At night, more than a dozen rely on machines to help them breathe or to monitor their breathing; others use inhalers.

"You'd cough up black stuff, and you couldn't seem to catch your breath. And your eyes were burning," said Anthony Roles, 33, a father and Air Force retiree from Little Rock, who was told that he had a blood disorder shortly after returning from Iraq in 2004. "I can still smell it to this very day."

Roles said there was a nickname for the symptoms: "Iraqi crud."



But that's OK...why do we need to provide any medical support for our troops, anyway? Jesus can cure them. This story is just beyond what I can write here. Our friendly chaplain needs to go out on patrol in a regular old Humvee without body armor. Jesus can protect him, too.


Many Christians believe faith in Jesus Christ can cure almost anything: alcoholism, cancer, homosexuality, even the Son of Sam. But can it cure post traumatic stress disorder in troops returning from Afghanistan and Iraq? The Army Reserves' top chaplain for military policemen believes so, and published his prescription on the Army Reserves' official Web site for everyone to see, in an act a watchdog organization argues is unconstitutional and dangerous when soldiers continue to kill themselves at an alarming rate.

In a nearly 11,000 word essay, "Spiritual Resiliency: Helping Troops Recover from Combat," Command Chaplain Col. Donald W. Holdridge of the 200th Military Police Command at Fort Meade, Maryland, argues belief in Jesus Christ and Bible reading, particularly King David's Psalms, can help cure a soldiers' PTSD. "Combat vets need to know that most of these [PTSD symptoms] do fade in time, like scars," writes Holdridge, a professor at the Baptist Bible College, as the Army Reserves banner hangs from the top of the Webpage. "They will always be there to some degree, but their intensity will fade. What will help them fade is the application of the principles of Scripture."

The tone of Holdridge's essay only gets more unapologetically evangelical as the chaplain's initial wading in a Christian sea slides into more brackish waters, evangelizing soldiers with PTSD that their service was part of a larger theological plan and dangerously merges church and state. "Military and law enforcement personnel bear the additional burden of contending with evil by acting as an arm of the state to punish those who have no respect for human life (Rom.13:4)," he writes. "It is messy business, but necessary in a fallen world. If the military member knows Christ as savior, they can be assured that Jesus is with them until the end of the age (Mt.28:20)." (If this doesn't seem offensive or incendiary for a military Website to publish this, replace "Christ as savior" with "the Prophet Mohammed" and "Jesus" with "Allah.")



There is the old saying "there are no atheists in foxholes", but this one seems a bit much.


 

42 comments (Latest Comment: 08/11/2010 02:18:02 by Raine)
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