I think the one poster put it succinctly: "I don't support the

troops, Fuck them!". This is and has been the true attitude of

this country since Vietnam. Most Americans today have no connection

to the war and they truly do not care nor are they ever going to.

They live in their pampered extravagent affluent arrogance.

Think of it as spitting on the veterans and calling them "baby-

killers" in a more sophisticated 21st-Century way.

Regrettably, I suspect the attitude of djr41den (I don't support the troops,

Fuck them- and their families) and others is mainstream in the America of 2007.

Certainly the America of today's twenty and thirtynothings.

I have one small thing to say, that I said before we (yes, we) chose to go into Iraq.

When you ask young men to kill people for reasons that are not clear, you create a generation that will struggle for the rest of their lives to understand their actions. The military complex has yet to find ways to effectively deal with this issue and to simply tell sufferers to go to their nearest VA....The VA looks and sounds a lot like the military that abused these men.

I am glad the authors of the article are trying to understand more about PTSD and it's causes.

Let's hope they soon focus on better treatment and care for those who suffer from it.

God bless all the soliers for their struggles.

Patricia;

I am part of a Vietnam veterans' group that has reached out to today's returning Iraqi war veterans. The experience of one young returnee we tried to help is of particular note. Diagnosed with PTSD and medically discharged by the military as a result, this man went to the VA for treatment based on our group's encouragement. I believe his VA 'treatment' has added more stress and futility to his condition. The VA informed him that he did not have PTSD in spite of the three separate diagnoses he already had in his military service records. The VA counselor told this man that he was probably just depressed about his marriage being on the rocks, and therefore he would not receive treatment because his condition was 'not service connected.'

I believe this blatant act of cost containment by the VA has actually contributed to the severity of this soldier's condition. It has certainly not helped. How many other returning soldiers are experiencing such mistreatment? We Vietnam veterans used to say we were treated as cannon fodder when we left for Vietnam, and used-up obsolete government assets when we returned. It seems the cycle of VA/government denial of the cost of war continues.

The damn gov't is reluctant to study these phenomena because they regard our beloved troops as throwaways/ disposable.

And those of us who have not forgotten what happened to our troops as a result of the Vietnam war and anguish on a daily basis over our troops, as I do, and about the huge lack of any humanity in the Bush admin or the rethug party as they push for this endless war which is caused by rethug greed for power and money and Bush's legacy no matter the cost to our troops and the Iraqi people.

And THEY call us who dissent and question as having a lack of patriotism when in reality it is THEY whose sole allegiance is to the Republican Party not to America or our troops. As our troops need the social and health network to care for them the so called Conservative Pro-Life(thats a big joke) Republican Party of christian morals really have no morals at all. Religious absolutism is destroying America.

Also let us not forget that the rethuglikkkan party has three 'Pillers' of support, like many oil rigs(pun intended and so appropos) the three 'pillers' which keep the rethugs going are the Corportocracy, the Neocons and the Theocons/Theocrats which are predominately the white southern Baptists and the Catholic Church, my church, a church of narrow minded religious absolutists who serve only their own selfish agenda no matter the cost to America or our troops or the people of the ME.

If 'we the people' could get rid of these three 'Pillers'we might yet dig our way out of their mess which we have been dragged DOWN into and which our troops and the Iraqi people are paying the ultimate price. And just as our Vietnam War vets were shortchanged and many, many still suffer to this very day and will do so for the rest of their lives as will their families, so to will the vets of Iraq and Afghanistan and their families be shortchanged and will suffer, many for their entire lives.

So again we must ask ourselves is it all worth it? I say NO. This was a phony war from the beginning, and Bin Laden still walks around free; as do the three 'Pillers' supporting the Repub party most especially my own religion the Catholic religion and the Pope both of whom are so egregiously guilty and complicit in their reign of death and the horrors suffered our troops and the people of Iraq and Afghanistan.

"Yet he also noted that mental states are difficulty to quantify. You can count, say, the number of people a soldier believes he killed. But how do you measure disillusionment? In a scientific study, Shay noted, there is "a constant suction toward measurability" and away from topics that seem too squishy to quantify."

It sounds like this issue needs a qualitative study that develops a definition of the concept "disillusionment," and then some nice, quantitative measures that ask vets things like, "While in combat, how much did you feel the Americans back home were not supporting your efforts on a Likert scale from 1-7."

That gets the ball rolling and begins to identify the aspects of disillusionment that are relevant to the hypothesis that disillusionment is a moderator of PTSD.

That's why science invented the squishy approach of qualitative studies.

--cbelz

FYI, Dr. Jonathan Shay has published a great deal on chronic PTSD being rooted more in moral injury than exposure to traumas themselves(www.belisarius.com/modern_business_strategy/shay/shay_prevent_psy_injury.htm). We need to love those who protect us. Merry Christmas.