a worthy cause

From Andrew of the must-read Obsidian Wings comes this entreaty:

Project Valour-IT is a fund drive intended to raise money for troops injured in Iraq and Afghanistan, purchasing voice-operated laptops for troops with hand and arm injuries or amputations. If anyone has a few dollars to spare and is looking for someplace to spend it, I think it's a pretty good cause.

More about Project Valour-IT:

Every cent raised for Project Valour-IT goes directly to the purchase and shipment of voice-activated laptops for wounded servicemembers. As of October 2006, Valour-IT has distributed nearly 600 laptops to severely wounded soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines across the country.

During its initial phase, Valour-IT created "libraries" of laptops equipped with voice-controlled software for the severely wounded staying at major military medical centers. In many cases a laptop was provided to a wounded hero for permanent use. Most recently thanks to the efforts of the Military Order of the Purple Heart, Valour-IT is now able to reach personnel in VA hospitals who would benefit from a Valour-IT laptop.

If you can afford to contribute to this cause, please consider doing so.

"she's nothing like she used to be"

From the Whittier Daily News:

After a one-year tour of duty in Iraq, U.S. Army Pfc. Monica Perales is not the same person she was when she left in March 2003, her family says.

Always sweet and patient, the Whittier resident now snaps at them, at her friends and even at strangers at the slightest provocation, said her mother, Terry Perales.

Monica served with the 8th Battalion, 101st Aviation Regiment, unloading aircraft parts from trucks in a military camp called "Key West" in southern Iraq.

"She was a sweetheart. Now she lashes out at people all the time because she's so short-tempered," Terry Perales said. "She's nothing like she used to be. Now she speaks her mind, not thinking who she's going to hurt.

"And she has no patience with her daughter anymore," she added.

Monica, 23, said she is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a condition that more than 30 percent of veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars sought treatment for in the first year they returned home, according to a recent study from the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research.

She said she still has nightmares of people trying to kill her and finds herself constantly looking over her shoulder for danger.

Thanks to the war in Iraq, PTSD is going to affect tens of thousands of American men and women over the next fifty or sixty years. The lucky ones will be diagnosed and treated. The unlucky ones won't be.

Many of them will become alcoholics or undergo severe depression. Some, perhaps most, of them will from time to time lash out in anger against their will at strangers and loved ones alike. Some of them will commit suicide.

But hey, look at the bright side. A few Iraqi schools got painted this year. I guess it all evens out in the end.

a test

Let's say we line up, oh, hell, a couple hundred thousand American soldiers, fine men and women in combat uniform, officers, non-coms, grunts, and we put them on TV. Then George W. Bush walks in with a loaded Glock. Now let's say that the President puts the gun to the temple of the first soldier and says, "If I shoot this Army private dead, there's a chance America will be victorious and democracy will bring peace to Iraq. Do you want me to do it?" There's no guarantees, though--just the chance. What would you say?

Who else but The Rude Pundit could explain the Iraq war in so stark a fashion? Too bad no one who supports the war has the guts to take this test.

Cross-posted at Waffle Ass.

falling down the rabbit hole

Chris Rose, a columnist for the New Orleans Times-Picayune, has written a moving account of his own personal descent into post-Katrina depression:

For all of my adult life, when I gave it thought--which wasn't very often--I regarded the concepts of depression and anxiety as pretty much a load of hooey.

I never accorded any credibility to the idea that such conditions were medical in nature. Nothing scientific about it. You get sick, get fired, fall in love, get laid, buy a new pair of shoes, join a gym, get religion, seasons change--whatever; you go with the flow, dust yourself off, get back in the game. I thought anti-depressants were for desperate housewives and fragile poets.

I no longer feel that way. Not since I fell down the rabbit hole myself and enough hands reached down to pull me out.

One of those hands belonged to a psychiatrist holding a prescription for anti-depressants. I took it. And it changed my life.

Read the whole thing here. Yes, it's long, but it's well worth your time.

Via DK, who handles the weekend shift at Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo.

somehow

Somehow back at home, support for the soldiers meant having a five-year-old kindergartener scribble a picture with crayons and send it overseas, or slapping stickers on cars, or lobbying Congress for an extra pad in a helmet. It’s interesting that a soldier on his third or fourth tour should care about a drawing from a five-year-old; or a faded sticker on a car as his friends die around him; or an extra pad in a helmet, as if it will protect him when an IED throws his vehicle 50 feet into the air as his body comes apart and his skin melts to the seat.

That's a quote from an essay at truthdig by Kevin Tillman. Kevin, pictured above (right), and his brother Pat (left) served as Army Rangers in Iraq and Afghanistan. Kevin came home in 2005. Pat came home in 2004 in a coffin.

Read the whole thing.

I'd give a month's pay to be in the same room if Kevin Tillman ever got a chance to meet George W. Bush. One of them wouldn't be able to look the other in the eye. And we all know which of those that would be.

a guide to the military

Click on the cartoon for a larger version. You might need to save it and look at it in a file viewer if it looks too small in your browser.

This is by cartoonist Ward Sutton. His "Sutton Impact" appears each week in the Village Voice.

snark from the master

As regards bram's post below about Army Strong, here's what Tbogg, one of the very best bloggers out there, had to say:

The U.S. Army has unleashed a new ad campaign called Army Strong because Army Of One was too wordy and included math.

How can you beat that? Read the rest.

the slogans are replaced, by the by

Wow, the Army came up with a new recruiting slogan! "Army Strong" will replace "Army of One."

The U.S. Army has tried to lure recruits with the advertising slogan "An Army of One" for less than six years, a blink of an eye in the hidebound traditions of the U.S. military. But the Army plans to dump it, starting next month, in favor of "Army Strong."

"An Army of One" was introduced to combat what consultants determined was a view among recruiting-age people that the Army was dehumanizing. The slogan has been derided by many from its outset as a glib fantasy of the regimentation required by the uniform.

The new slogan, developed in numerous tests with focus groups and interviews with soldiers, is meant to convey the idea that if you join the Army you will gain physical and emotional strength, as well as strength of character and purpose.

Aw, I'm going to miss "Army of One." After all, I am an Army of One every time I fight the bureaucracy for my benefits at the Veterans Administration.

I imagine it is pretty tough recruiting people to join the Army right now, what with that little squirmish in Iraq, and the resulting high injury count, not to mention the occasional death. Or 2,700 of them, and counting.

To see what actual soldiers are thinking and feeling, check out the section of Doonesbury cartoonist Garry Trudeau's website called The Sandbox:

Welcome to The Sandbox, our command-wide milblog, featuring comments, anecdotes, and observations from service members currently deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. This is GWOT-lit's forward position, offering those in-country a chance to share their experiences and reflections with the rest of us. The Sandbox's focus is not on policy and partisanship (go to our Blowback page for that), but on the unclassified details of deployment -- the everyday, the extraordinary, the wonderful, the messed-up, the absurd. The Sandbox is a clean, lightly-edited debriefing environment where all correspondence is read, and as much as possible is posted. And contributors may rest assured that all content, no matter how robust, is currently secured by the First Amendment.

Hats off to Trudeau for this. I read some of the posts, but had to stop for today. I can only take so much of this at a time. Real people, real lives, real tragedy.

Update: We've added a link to The Sandbox in the sidebar to the right.

a matter of priorities

Writing for the McClatchy Newspapers, David Goldstein reports:

The Department of Veterans Affairs failed to fully spend a promised $300 million since 2005 to fill critical gaps in mental health services for returning troops and others, congressional investigators said.

The money was supposed to be used to improve awareness of the VA's mental health programs and provide better access to them for troops who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, women and other veterans suffering from serious mental illnesses.

But a Government Accountability Office report released Thursday found that the agency underspent the money and that not all of what it did spend went to those programs.

More here.

Awareness of mental health programs? Better access? Who needs that kind of crap? No, the government has better things to do with your money. Like throw a victory party:

The military's top generals have warned that Iraq is on the cusp of a civil war and that US troops must remain in large numbers until at least next spring. But if the winds suddenly blow a different direction, Congress is ready to celebrate with a $20 million victory party.

Lawmakers included language in this year's defense spending bill, approved last week, allowing them to spend the money. The funds for "commemoration of success" in Iraq and Afghanistan were originally tucked into last year's defense measure, but went unspent amid an uptick in violence in both countries that forced the Pentagon to extend tours of duty for thousands of troops.

Priorities.

These stories certainly aren't amusing, but they do remind me of the joke about the guy who hung around the slot machines in Vegas, asking passersby for $10 so he could buy milk and bread for his children.

"Milk and bread, my ass," one passing gambler said to the first man. "How do I know you won't spend that money on the slots?"

The first man was offended by the suggestion, and looked the other man in the eye. "Sir, don't be ridiculous. I have gambling money."