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“At least sixteen Army recruiters have killed themselves, nationwide, since 2000. Five of those deaths have occurred in Texas”.

Saturday Houston Chronicle

Sunday Houston Chronicle

These troubling words were published in a stunning Houston Chronicle story last Saturday.  Please follow the links and read Lindsay Wise’s two-part story about the deaths by suicide of Army recruiter and two-tour veteran Nils Aron Andersson and his wife, Cassy Walton. There can be no plainer, deeper expression of the outfall of this costly war than this story offers. There can be no sterner warning about the cognitive dissonance thses soldiers must feel between patriotism and the pressure of the war’s shifting purpose. And that mental, emotional and spiritual clash inside our soldiers is causing Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

This extreme dissonance between duty and being perhaps disgusted, perhaps feeling despair, perhaps feeling deceived, is manifesting itself as sanity-threatening Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in about one out of three of America’s Afghanistan and Iraq veterans.

It took Nils Aron Andersson to a place where he took his own life and in her grief and despair, his young wife killed herself as well.

And look again at that shocking fact……….sixteen Army recruiters have taken their own lives since 2000, five of them from Texas.

This means something about society, Iraq and despair. It is something beyond “battle fatigue”. We can guess, but we can’t say what for absolute fact.   But these shocking numbers are too high.

Please see American journalist and anchor of PBS news show Bill Moyers’ blog, which he read at the end of his Friday show, where I first heard about the fate of Nils Aron Andersson, his wife Cassy Walton and fifteen other U.S. Army recruiters.

Bill Moyers’ Essay

“Eighteen American war veterans kill themselves every day.”

This article goes on to explain that a thousand veterans receiving care from the U.S. Veterans Administration attempt suicide every month.

It looks like Post Truamatic Stress Syndrome and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder are killing more American people, more American soldiers, than are being lost to the enemy in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Why? We know the Veterans Administration is letting them down. We know the VA is low on money, as is the rest of America.

We can conclude these tragic suicides have to do with the hopelessness soldiers feel. We can guess it has to do with the cognitive dissonance some of them feel between the war’s shifting aims, rationale and what they know in themselves to be correct and right.

And it’s killing them!

Soldiers are “coming home” and killing themselves in record numbers and the VA is out of money to help them.

Is the war right? That’s up to you.

Is the war too expensive? YES! AND THAT IS A FACT!!!!!!!!!

source

Did you know the U.S. Veterans Administration stated they are too broke to pay expected benefits to injured veterans?

They said as much on December 15, 2007 in response to the huge class action lawsuit brought against them by a large group of America’s veterans. The class action suit, Disabled Veterans v. Nicholson, filed in July of 2007, says the VA is breaking the 1988 federal law which says the Veterans Administration will provide two years of medical care to veterans.

The Veterans Administration’s response about being out of money? According to a story about the veterans’ rights group, Independent Veterans for United Truth at War, a veterans’ group headquartered in Santa Barbara, California:

“It (the Veterans Administration) did not argue the merits (of the suit) but said that civil courts have no authority and the 1988 law does not mandate two years of care, but only what the agency can afford. It also claimed the plaintiffs had no right to sue.” See the story in the Santa Barbara Independent

Yes, the Veterans Administration replied by saying:

*they cannot afford more care than they are giving

*they are above civil court rulings

*veterans have no right to sue them

The suit, Disabled Veterans v Nicholson:

*asks for no damages, it asks the 1988 law about two years’ care be upheld

*asks for resolution to the waiting list for care problem

*asks for resolution to the inadequate services problem

*asks for the VA to address the problem of veterans with Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome/Disorder

It seems veterans’ troubles with PTSS are not being well-addressed at all. The Santa Barbara Independent calls PTSS “the signature disorder” of veterans returning from Afghanistan and Iraq. CNN reported on the tragic lack of treatment for PTSS when Disabled Veterans v Nicholson was filed in July of 2007, saying,

“The lawsuit also accuses the VA of deliberately cheating some veterans by allegedly working with the Pentagon to misclassify some PTSD claims as preexisting personality disorders to avoid paying out benefits.” CNN source story

Deliberately cheating some veterans? Those are frightening words, fighting words. As an indication that these are NOT alarmist words, three days before their “we cannot afford more care” reply to the lawsuit, the Veterans Administration admitted they are not collecting data on veterans’ suicides.

My heart and mind is with the veterans. But I am willing to admit, I may not have all the facts.

But I know for a fact, since this case has been launched, America’s veterans need the help of their fellow citizens. This needs our attention as it goes through court. These stories from which I drew this material may be in greater sympathy with the veterans than the VA. This issue needs our help, our study and if the veterans are indeed being cheated, they need citizens to stand with them. If the VA is indeed broke, then that astonishing fact need the attention of the citizenry as well.

If America’s veterans are being deliberately cheated and the tragedy of Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome/Disorder is being methodically downplayed, our support of our veterans needs to be thunderous in volume.

When I first read the story below, about Tyson, I was extremely distressed. I wrote this rant:

There is no hope left in America — none.

What I have seen tonight has destroyed me and my belief in my country once and for all.

Disabled veterans are being treated like garbage.

There is no hope for America.

Read. And know it is over. This condemns us all to darkness.

veterans are trash

ARE WE GOING TO STAND FOR VETERANS BEING TREATED LIKE THIS? PAY BACK YOUR BONUS, DISABLED VETERAN?????????

IS THIS THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA??????????????????????

DON’T BE PART OF THE DARKNESS!!!!!!! PROTEST!!!!!!!

My apology for inaccuracy and corrections in my original story below!

I have just had the great pleasure of visiting the Channel Islands Live! Eagle CAM Discussion Forum. These eagle supporters know the facts and I am very grateful to them. Please have a happy, interesting look at their top-notch forum!

Channel Islands Live! Eagle CAM Discussion Forum

My story below has incorrect facts. I want to thank readers for noting this and I want to say I am sorry and it will not happen again.

My worst mistake was failing to correctly name the rescuers! They were biologists from International Wildlife Services and they hiked to the location.

The attacking bird was a “sub adult”. The dropping of the second baby took place an hour after the first attack. And Skye and Spirit, whose new names I learned when I visited the Channel Islands Live! Eagle CAM Discussion Forum, are being taken care of at a wildlife center in Orange County, California.

Here is a great account, much better than mine and accurate, about what really happened to these babies. This is from the MSNBC site and they have a picture of the eaglets up, too!

MSNBC story

My original story:

As astonished wildlife webcam viewers in Ventura, California watched this afternoon, a “rogue” adult Bald Eagle flew into another Bald Eagle’s nest and grabbed one of the pair of seven-week old eaglets and hurled the baby to the rocks, forty feet below. Many webcam viewers immediately phoned wildlife services of Ventura County on behalf of the lost chick. As people were on the lines to wildlife services, the rouge bird attacked again, grabbing the remaining chick by its beak and throwing it after its sibling.

Ventura County Wildlife Services immediately dispatched a helicopter to Ventura County’s Santa Cruz Island and flew several wildlife rangers the dozens of miles across the sea to the eagle nest site.

Tonight, the two eaglets, plucked from the rocks below their nest, are in a veterinary facility in Thousand Oaks, California, receiving care. One baby suffered a broken wing because of its fall and the other is being treated for its punctured beak. This little pair will heal, gather strength and then, be returned to an artificial nest on Santa Cruz Island. Other injured eaglets, rescued in the past, have had a successful return to the wild after medical rehabilitation and structured care in an artificial nest.

The strange part is, attacks by adult eagles on the babies of other eagles were, until today, unknown. It is a mystery as to why one eagle should destroy the nest of another bird. Of course, with the recent advent of wildlife webcams, this may simply be the first time such an attack has been seen.

Strange things happen as the human population grows, as animal habitats are destroyed and as animals have less space, less food, fewer resources. No people live on tiny, rocky Santa Cruz Island, just animals. And there are the webcams.

It is heartwarming to see such a piece on our TV news as this news about the rescue of these little birds. It is a happy thing to know they are responding to veterinary treatment and have a good chance to someday flourish in the wild. And, it is a lovely human interest story in that so many wildlife webcam viewers called for help and that Ventura County, California has wildlife rangers who can answer such a call.

It all leaves me wishing so many more things in the world could work in just this happy way. How we would love for webcams to be used for happy purposes like this. How fine this world would be if everyone cared for his fellow man the way these birds were cared for. How sweet things would be if attacks by one person upon another were very rare and when they happened, it signaled a need for study. And what a world we would have if we has the resources, the vehicles, the drive, the manpower, to save all those who have a dangerous fall.

This month, May of 2008, people are laboring long and hard to save as many as they can from the Sichuan earthquake in China, from the devastation of Cyclone Nargis in Burma. And those are only the folks we know of in trouble today.

This heartwarming animal rescue reflects a human ideal we all desire. Let us keep asking ourselves what we can do, every day of our lives, to bring ourselves, others and our creatures the world over closer to the joy and comfort of this story of plentitude, resolve and victory over want.

Did Geo. W. Bush coin the cultural morality term, “culture of life”? No, he didn’t. I always thought a speech writer coined it for him. Turns out, in 1993, it was a speech writer for the late Pope John Paul II who came up with it.

Geo. W. Bush mentioned it several times in his campaign run of 2000 –the respect for life from conception to its “natural end”. Bush’s detractors mentioned the many executions he oversaw when he was the governor of Texas. Nowadays, people talk about the fact we’re actually waging a war against Iran, after it was strongly implied we were going Iraq to overthrow Saddam and counter his weapons of mass destruction.

So, moral conservatives tend to see “culture of life” as meaning no abortion, no stem cell research, no cloning research, no right-to-die. I have even heard it said that considering the truth of global warming, is a violation of the “culture of life”, because temperature change is God’s work and man should not put himself above God.

This is a ridiculous statement to most of us. Nevertheless, the would-be moral theocracy we have in the U.S. would like nothing better than to dictate our personal and national actions, based on what supports a religion-based “culture of life”.

Here is a very fitting “Culture of Life Top Ten List, written in 2005 by Micheal Blanding.

view source

Blanding says, you’d think a Culture of Life in the United States would:

1. support troop withdrawl

2. eradicate the death penalty

3. pass effective gun control laws

4. fund social services

5. enact universal health care for children

6. research alternative enrgy

7. investigate prisoner abuses

8. support AIDS clinics abroad

9. implement a fair guestworker program

10. join the international criminal court

So, how are we doing on real culture of life issues in the United States?

What does it mean to you?

Now I’m hiding in Honduras,

and I’m a desperate man.

Send lawyers, guns and money.

The shit has hit the fan.

We have the late Warren Zevon to thank for that song.

Looks like many people use “Lawyers, Guns and Money” as a blog title.  But it’s an admirably compact way of naming the countless things in life we all need to survive, and then, to get by on and then, to make something we call progress in our lives and then, to make progress in the lives of others.

Survive, get by, make progress in our lives, make progress in the lives of others.

Survive?  You have to not be killed.  As The Clash once sang, “You Have a Right Not To Be Killed”.  You have a right not to be spiritually and emotionally assassinated, too.

Get By?  I’d say that’s muddling along without being knocked back to survival mode and gathering strength in a way you feel good about and enjoy.  Getting by is preparing to make something of your life which you know is good for you.

How does anyone define progress?  I guess it’s personal, but it has to be you feeling well and strong enough to play into your opportunities to enjoy and benefit from the things you need and like.

Progress for others?  The Establishment is pressing down on too many people, world-wide.  Things have got to change.  Protest.  Work.

The lawyer is you, your allies, or the allied guys who don’t get it, the ones you’ll be facing when you protest, work.  Guns?  That’s your metaphor for anything you point with good intent, or anything they aim at you.  Money…..there has to be fuel.

The shit’s always hitting the fan somewhere.  Send as much as you’ve got into the fray.  If you’re in survival mode, get ready to get by, then get ready to move, then be there for the protest, the fight, the work.

Sometimes it happens all in one day as the hours change.  And by 10 PM, you’re back to just trying to survive.  That’s okay.  It happens to millions of us, every day.

Lawyers, guns and money at our command.  On demand.  At hand.  Our favorite brand.