The interview is pretty long. Very eye opening.
"A soldier back from Iraq discusses the war and the U.S. soldiers fighting that war, the suicides, and much more."
http://www.interventionmag.com/ <snip>
Do you think the American public is well-informed about what is happening in Iraq? No, I really don’t. I see young people on my medical table all the time, people who have lost their legs or arms or had other terrible injuries. No one back home sees any of that. I’ve been home for a month and I haven’t seen a casualty yet on television. I’m still waiting. Where are the casualties? It’s as if it doesn’t exist, as if it doesn’t happen.
<snip>
Are the men and women in the U.S. military in Iraq sufficiently trained before going over there? No. I am extremely concerned about the major shift that is taking place right now, between now and June, where there’s going to be a much higher percentage of the troops being Reserves rather than full-time, active duty military. The difference is that the active duty go through far more training than Reserves.
<snip>
What did you think about President Bush’s Thanksgiving visit to Iraq? I was there when President Bush came to the
airport. The day before, you had to fill out a questionnaire and answer questions, that would determine whether they would allow you in the room with the President.
What was on the questionnaire?
“Do you support the president?”
Really!
Yes.
Members of the military were asked whether they support the president politically?
Yes. And if the answer was not a gung-ho, A-1, 100 percent yes, then you were not allowed into the cafeteria. You were not allowed to eat the Thanksgiving meal that day. You had an MRE.
<snip>
Does the military, and particularly those members who have served in combat zones, have a higher than average rate of suicide?
Yes.
Have you seen any of these?
Yes. They’re normally the younger ones. The older guys who have been around, like myself, we know that life is too short to end like that. But the younger guys are the ones you have to worry about. There are signs – major depression, they want to get killed, they want to get shot – you can tell.
If, as a medical corpsman, you see a soldier exhibiting those characteristics, how do you handle it?
I grab him. I talk to him. I spend a lot of time talking to people. I’m kind of like the chaplain, too. I’m the one that people tell their problems to. If they can’t go to the CO or the XO or the sergeant, they come to “doc.” Doc’s not going to tell anybody their secrets.
It’s not just suicides. We also have a 70 percent divorce rate in my unit. People change when they’re on deployment.
Is that more true for younger people, who haven’t been married as long?
It’s true for both. My first sergeant hung himself at Fort Lejeune. His wife divorced him. The crazy thing about it was that he stepped off a chair, and if he had just put his legs down he wouldn’t have killed himself. But when we walked into the room, his legs were still pulled up. So he really wanted to kill himself. This was when we got back from Iraq. There were four suicides since we got back.
Four suicides in a group of how many?
About 600. Suicide is wild. You make it back safe, without a scratch. And then you kill yourself.
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
