This absolutely frightening - and needs our active participation to resolve!---Kelly

Think Again: There They Go Again: The “Pro-Military” Conservatives

Mike Bowman picks up a photo of his son Tim, who committed suicide after serving in the Iraq war, after testifying at a House Veterans' Affairs Committee hearing on veterans' mental health issues. SOURCE: AP/Susan Walsh

By Eric Alterman, George Zornick | May 22, 2008 http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/05/go_again.html

You know the old cliché: Conservatives, not liberals, “support the military.” For example, last year, David Broder, the “dean” of Washington conventional wisdom, wrote the following about a speech by General Wesley Clark before a presumed-to-be-liberal audience in Washington:

“One of the losers in the weekend oratorical marathon was retired Gen. Wesley Clark, who repeatedly invoked the West Point motto of ‘Duty, Honor, Country,’ forgetting that few in this particular audience have much experience with, or sympathy for, the military.”

This unsupported, and today largely unsupportable, supposition continues to dominate media coverage and invite exploitation by conservative politicians. For instance, George W. Bush proclaimed at the 2000 Republican National Convention that, “Our military is low on parts, pay and morale. If called on by the commander-in-chief today, two entire divisions of the Army would have to report, ‘Not ready for duty, sir.’” (This not-ready-for-duty charge was effectively refuted in many places, including an article by Josh Marshall published four days later at Salon.com).

But how has President Bush’s conservative administration treated those in the military? Leaving aside entirely the matter of the wisdom and benefit of committing troops to Iraq in the first place, a brief look at the evidence should retire generalizations about “pro-military conservatives” for a while.

A recent study by the RAND Corporation discovered that one in five veterans returning from Iraq or Afghanistan experience post-traumatic stress disorder—and only half are seeking treatment. The RAND study found that, of the half that do seek treatment, just half of these “receive treatment that researchers consider ‘minimally adequate’ for their illnesses.”

The study estimates that PTSD and depression disorders among veterans cost the nation as much as $6.2 billion in the two years following deployment—an amount that includes both direct medical care and costs for lost productivity and suicide. Investing in more high-quality treatment could save close to $2 billion within two years, RAND estimates.

Even more disturbing are the numbers of soldiers afflicted with a traumatic brain injury. Sixty percent of troops entering Walter Reed Army Medical Center suffer from brain trauma as their primary or secondary malady, according to the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center in Washington. (Brain injuries usually result from the explosion of an improvised explosive device, and leave their victims prone to loss of memory and language skills, depression, volatile moods, and self-destructive behavior).

The immense psychological damage done to veterans—in the form of PTSD and traumatic brain injuries—is creating a largely invisible, but quickly escalating, death toll. Each day, it’s been reported, five U.S. soldiers try to kill themselves, a figure that has seen an increase of over 500 percent since the start of the ruinous Iraq war. We’ve actually reached the point where, according to Dr. Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health, “It’s quite possible that the suicides and psychiatric mortality of this war could trump the combat deaths.”

What has been the response of this conservative, “pro-military” administration?

Read the rest at http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/05/go_again.html  (please do read the rest!)