Dead and Injured Americans

Combat is nothing like television. What is seen with the eye may appear the same. An explosion in a movie is no different than an explosion seen by the naked eye, but it’s the other four senses that truly define combat. The smells of gunfire. The loud ping of bullets bouncing off of metal. The vibrations of grenades exploding nearby. The taste of your own fear climbing up into your throat. This is combat. And no matter how many times you experience it, you learn one more thing about yourself and you’re always happy to be walking away. —Sminklemeyer, a.k.a. former Staff Sergeant Fred Minnick, on his blog “In Iraq for 365”

As of March 23, 2007 3,230 U.S. soldiers have been killed in Iraq. About 53,000 have been wounded. Over 10,000 of these troops are so severely injured that they will never be able to serve again. About 40 percent of U.S. Deaths have been the result of IEDs or improvised explosive devices. Many deaths have also resulted from gun-fire and car accidents, and car bombs.

The Pentagon has been cutting the visible number of war injuries in half by discounting soldiers discharged because of mental disorders. Senators Olympia Snowe and Barack Obama have introduced legislation to require the Veterans Affairs Department and the Defense Department to start keeping honest figures on the troops and the potential future costs of the war. “It doesn't make a difference whether you were hit by enemy fire, or injured because your vehicle crashed, or got sick because of serving in a war zone. The effects on the soldiers and their families are the same. And the impact in terms of the current fighting force and future demands on the VA are also the same,” Obama said in a statement.

The most common mental disorder among veterans is PTSD or post-traumatic stress disorder. People’s brains can only absorb a certain amount of stress and disappointment. Normally, after a person experiences a tragedy, he or she goes through a period of healing and mourning, but is able to lead a normal life. When the threshold for absorbing trauma is surpassed people lose the ability to overcome traumatic events. Frustration consumes their lives and they can no longer function normally. They have PTSD.

Due to its developmental process, PTSD may not appear in a veteran until he or she experiences an additional tragedy later in life (Among Vietnam veterans this delayed appearance of trauma was very common). Symptoms of PTSD include nightmares, flashbacks, emotional detachment, insomnia, loss of appetite, irritability, edginess, memory loss, difficulty paying attention, paranoia, clinical depression, anxiety and avoidance of reminders of trauma and extreme distress when exposed to those reminders. Many people suffering from PTSD also exhibit one or more other comorbid psychiatric disorders; often bipolar disorder and a variety of addictions.

On blogs and in interviews, most soldiers discuss drinking constantly upon homecoming. Surveys have found that combat veterans are more likely to abuse drugs and alcohol, and be domestically violent, unemployed and depressed. So far the Veterans Association has diagnosed 34,000 veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan with possible PTSD.1

Not all service members diagnosed with PTSD are removed from the army. Bryce Sieverson developed PTSD when he was stationed in Germany. His father describes the transformation, “New Year’s Eve after his first tour when he heard the fireworks going off, the shoot-shoot-shoot, it reminded him of incoming mortars and he started with PTSD. His personality changed. He had trouble remembering things. He started having trouble controlling his anger, and it changed him so much that his wife talked about divorce because he was no longer the man she married.” Bryce was airlifted to Walter Reed Medical Center to be kept under suicide watch when troubles with his wife escalated. Despite these difficulties, Bryce was not allowed to leave the army. He was sent to Ramadi, the heart of the Sunni Triangle. Meanwhile, Bryce’s mother had to quit her job because his troubles had sent her into such a state of panic that she was temporarily hospitalized for stress-related intestinal troubles.2

Psychological damage is far more common in female service members. Reporter, Sara Corbett did a study for New York Times Magazine on how it is extremely common for female soldiers to be sexually harassed, and in light of this they suffer from a more intense form of PTSD. This excerpt from the article exemplifies the experience of many female officers.

Females now comprise over ten percent of the armed forces. A 2003 report sampling women who sought health service through the V.A. said one third of the women claimed to have experienced rape, or attempted rape, during their military service. Thirty-seven percent of those women said that they were raped multiple times. Fourteen percent said that they were gang raped. Swift filed three complaints against officers who had sexually harassed her. The sergeant that she reported to in Iraq sexually propositioned her from her first day there. When she tried to end the sexual relationship she felt coerced into having with him, he punished her by making her do extra training exercises etc. She filed another complaint against a higher up, and a third against a fellow officer. All three men denied her allegations. Only the fellow officer was sent a letter of reprimand and transferred to a different unit. Swift is now on trial for going AWOL before being formally diagnosed with PTSD.

The military seems equally unsympathetic towards other females with complaints. Another female officer who was sexually assaulted in Kuwait came home and realized that she had PTSD. The V.A. hospital she went to put her into group therapy for trauma survivors. Her group was composed entirely of male Vietnam Veterans. Some of these men were trying to work through the sex crimes they had committed during the war.4

This lack of proper medical care does not just extend to female officers. Washington Post reporters Dana Priest and Ann Hull did an entire exposé about Walter Reed Medical Center. Walter Reed, the military's poster-board hospital, located in Washington D.C. is supposed to offer the best treatment available. The Post found that many veterans facilities are nearly uninhabitable and that bureaucratic hassles and paper-pushing make the processes of repairing buildings, redressing patient grievances and providing veterans with basic goods nearly impossible. Many veterans leave Walter Reed without the compensation they clearly deserve for their sacrifices. The article, Rotten Homecoming; This is no way to treat a veteran. began:

Veterans with the worst, most publicized injuries in the hospital go to Mologne House, which has oil paintings and a fancy bar. There, “The customers sitting around the tables are missing limbs, their ears are melted off, and their faces are tattooed purple by shrapnel patterns.”6 But even these Veterans do not get truly adequate service. The reporters found that many of the Malogne House residents were having trouble leaving, getting uniforms and receiving disability payments.

According to Patty Murray, leader of the Senate's Veteran's affairs committee many other medical facilities are equally troubling when compared to Walter Reed. In South Dakota internal investigations found bed frames held together by wire and duct-tape.7 It is disgusting that our soldiers are fighting everyday to the detriment of themselves and their families only to make a bad situation worse.

(Footnotes)

1 Courbett, Sara. The Women’s War. New York Times Magazine. March 18, 2007

2 Conan, Neil. “Personal Stories of the Iraq War.” NPR. January, 31 2007.

3 Courbett, Sara. The Women’s War. New York Times Magazine. March 18, 2007

4Courbett, Sara. The Women’s War. New York Times Magazine. March 18, 2007

5Anne Hull and Dana Priest. “Soldiers Face Neglect, Frustration At Army's Top Medical Facility.” The Washington Post. Feb 19, 2007.

6Anne Hull and Dana Priest. “The Hotel Aftermath; Inside Mologne House, the Survivors of War Wrestle With Military Bureaucracy and Personal Demons.” The Washington Post. Feb 19, 2007.

7http://murray.senate.gov/news.cfm?id=271112