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Ask a Vet
Author: TriSec    Date: 02/01/2011 11:29:39

Good Morning.

Today is our 2,876th day in Iraq and our 3,404th day in Afghanistan.

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

American Deaths
Since war began (3/19/03): 4436
Since "Mission Accomplished" (5/1/03): 4297
Since Handover (6/29/04): 3577
Since Obama Inauguration (1/20/09): 208
Since Operation New Dawn: 18

Other Coalition Troops - Iraq
318
US Military Deaths - Afghanistan: 1,466
Other Military Deaths - Afghanistan: 842
Contractor Employee Deaths - Iraq: 1,487
Journalists - Iraq : 348
Academics Killed - Iraq: 448

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

$ 1, 145, 935, 750, 000 .00




So, do you think the problems at Arlington are isolated? That maybe they're a result of the Bush Administration's callous disregard for our war dead? You're probably mostly correct, but I'm sorry to report that it's not just Arlington. News broke last week about a military cemetery in Vicksburg, MS that has similar issues with lost and unmarked graves, and missing paperwork. The stunner though, is that the cemetery has been closed to burials since 1961, except for those WWII vets with prior arrangements. Two unmarked coffins were discovered while preparing for a current burial. I'm no longer mad; like a lot of things, all the anger is gone and it's been replaced by sadness. I myself have relatives buried at both Arlington and the Massachusetts Veteran's cemetery in Mashpee (Cape Cod). How do I know who is under those stones now?


VICKSBURG, Miss. — Authorities said Thursday they fear dozens of veterans could lie in unmarked graves at a Mississippi military cemetery after they found two unidentified coffins and used radar to detect other possible plots.

The two coffins and other potential graves were found in sections of Vicksburg National Military Cemetery that were opened in the 1940s for World War I, World War II and Korean War veterans, National Park Service officials said at a news conference. The sprawling cemetery is the final resting place for more than 18,000 veterans, mostly Union soldiers from the Civil War.

The problems were discovered after workers preparing a burial site for a World War II veteran found a coffin in August. Another coffin was found nearby. The veteran was buried elsewhere in the cemetery and the graves were left alone, authorities said.

The cemetery stopped offering burials in 1961, except for veterans who had prior arrangements. There have been 109 burials since then.

The park service asked for help from the Army Corps of Engineers, which used ground-penetrating radar devices to search for graves. Those sites were then checked by pushing metal rods into the ground, which in several cases hit solid objects that could be coffins.

The National Park Service’s Southeast Archaeological Center has also been helping. Officials said a preliminary analysis of their research identified “eight probable and 48 possible unmarked graves.”

Vicksburg National Military Park Superintendent Michael Madell said officials haven’t found any documentation to help identify the unmarked graves, despite searching cemetery records, archives and looking for lost documents.

Madell said federal authorities are trying to respect the dead by using research methods that don’t physically disturb the graves, like the radar devices.

The park service is confident it will be able to determine how many of the sites are indeed graves by using the minimally intrusive detection methods, searching archives around the country and contacting veterans groups, said spokesman Bill Reynolds.



Ah, but that "callous disregard" extends to the living, too. We're all familiar with the Vietnam Era stereotype of the drug-addicted soldier? Drugs have always been a part of our society, whether it's drink, or tobacco, or something stronger, soldiers will always find something to escape the terrors at hand. But these days, there's a new kind of addiction faced by veterans. Many return from combat with devastating injuries and are looking at a lifetime wracked by pain. There is a growing number of vets addicted to painkillers, something that a 3-star general is trying to address by coming out himself.


TAMPA, Fla. — Standing before a packed hall of 700 military doctors and medics here, the deputy commander of the nation’s elite special operations forces warned about an epidemic of chronic pain sweeping through the U.S. military after a decade of continuous war.

Be careful about handing out narcotic pain relievers, Lt. Gen. David Fridovich told the audience last month. “What we don’t want is that next generation of veterans coming out with some bad habits.”

What Fridovich didn’t say was that he was talking as much about himself as anyone.

For nearly five years, the Green Beret general quietly has been hooked on narcotics he has taken for chronic pain — a reflection of an addiction problem that is spreading across the military. Hospitalizations and diagnoses for substance abuse doubled among members of U.S. forces in recent years. This week, nurses and case managers at Army wounded care units reported that one in three of their patients are addicted or dependent on drugs.

In going public about his drug dependency during interviews, Fridovich, 59, echoes the findings of an Army surgeon general task force last year that said doctors too often rely on handing out addictive narcotics to quell pain.

An internal Army investigation report released Tuesday revealed that 25 percent to 35 percent of about 10,000 soldiers assigned to special units for the wounded, ill or injured are addicted or dependent on drugs, according to their nurses and case managers. Doctors in those care units told investigators they need training in other ways to manage pain besides only using narcotics.

“I was amazed at how easy it was for me or almost anybody to have access and to get medication, without really an owner’s manual,” says Fridovich, deputy commander of the nation’s roughly 60,000 Green Berets, Army Rangers, Navy SEALs and secretive Delta Force teams.

For such a high-ranking military officer, publicly acknowledging drug dependency was unprecedented.

Retired Army Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, a former commander in Iraq, says Fridovich has now joined a small cadre of senior military leaders willing to discuss publicly personal struggles, such as living with post-traumatic stress disorder. Such admissions are difficult professional decisions, Eaton says.

“Nobody wants to show weaknesses. You want to be perceived as perfection,” he says. “But sometimes moral courage kicks in where moral courage is demanded.”


It seems to me that our veterans are about to be swept under the rug again; with the new congress focusing on the things that matter to Americans (Abortion, repealing healthcare, and who knows what else), we'll be back to the Bush Era indifference before we know it.






 

32 comments (Latest Comment: 02/01/2011 23:58:24 by TriSec)
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