52,375 veterans treated or evaluated for PTSD after Iraq or Afghanistan

That's only half to a third of those who will end up on disability for exposure to DU weapons. Many will be on for both.

But it will be worth it to have those military bases, and the war profiteering, and control of all that oil. Everybody's getting rich and the only casualities are all disposables anyway. Besides, the US taxpayer is footing all the bills, so costs are low and profits are high.

It's Can't Lose. So what's the problem?

There's no medal for dying to increase the profits of certain corporations, but they really do appreciate it, even if they can't really say so.

And thank Salon too...

It is tangling with a monster. War-dvd on the PC? What's a i-pod? I know the same bloody 8-Track Star Video tape gets tiresome. Cary Tennis calls the post-stinky (flatulence) phenomena, not a disorder, but a SYNDROME. thanks.

I prefer to call the naturally painful post-war condition that inflicts at least 52,375 veterans who are not now in total-trance-denial, Syndrome, and Disorder, tho it is in a sense, carries a mental health stigma. Getting treated or evaluated for Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, not Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, may take a dozen years or one may wait and post-pone treatment until languishing on their deathbed. Post-war is suffering. The nation too will suffer PTSS in different manners...wait and see...and the experience ain't fun...it percolates to the service like an irritating steam pot. I love to boil tea water and just to play with steam and mischievousness...not take the teapot off the heat...I love to hear others say, "Gads!"...Please..."Someone turn the damn pot off."

I know it's being nitpicker, but war is to experience something so phenomenally awful and debilitating, the word "terrible" don't suffice. War is outside the realm

of normal human experience. A eyewitness person will be altered in myriad ways, on and on, even in the most minute simple cell.

Every thought, disordered, or dull, or shrill, or turbulent (if you ever begin to become alive from the Shock and Sorrow and raise yourself from the "walking dead" and begin to think and wonder again), will pass via the net-of-war memories and stressful Suffering. Why?

Oh, my O day, and "Why would a people, aligned with criminal officials at the highest levels of murderous reigns (hint), allow such deceit and bloody betrayal continue to go on, and on, and on, and on, and on?"

A returning G.I. may ask why was I used as cannon-fodder?

That is the first sign that life, and spirit's animation is returning. The vet is back from hell's abode of the dead.

Without a more decent and respected citizenry to help push the Siren Button that screams out: "Stop killing and stealing oil real estate." Well, IMO, war will come to this homeland again.

Thanks to the Salon's gang for keeping up on this 'stuff'...

I use a VA hospital.

The other day I was there, getting a semi-annual clinic check-up: blood test, urine, and so forth.

Later, while waiting for some prescription items, I saw a young man (I could tell he was a young because I no longer am).

He had some papers and spoke to the woman at the pharmacy window. Then he stood off a bit in the hall.

I walked up to him and asked if was in Iraq. He said yes. I introduced myself as a "Vietnam guy" and felt my eyes well up as I said, simply, "Some of us know that it's important to say welcome home to guys like you. I'm glad you're back."

He thanked me, and as I left that area, I just gave him a thumbs up.

If people our age (today's doddering fools, the vaunted Boomers, whatever) really want to help our people who are returning from this disaster in Iraq, and the "zone" in Afghanistan, then help them.

Everybody our age knows what happened thirty or forty years ago.

Seek them out and shake their hands.

If you've got the guts, invite one of them to dinner.

Find out who they are.

Let them know they're really home and that they're appreciated, that it's okay, or may be someday.

It's simple.

A veteran could get PTSD negotiating the VA disability process, not just because it's adversarial, but also because the sense of isolation after "coming home" is so palpable. You really can feel that you don't know whether you're coming or going.

Many people today, as before during Vietnam, simply don't care about those who serve. It's human nature. It's a busy world. Who's kidding who?

Others, especially those with good debating skills, or those with a taste for "abstract" reasoning who hold forth in our elite debating societies or fancy blogs, or those who swim in a think tank, can feel better by parsing government reports on the possibility for reform in the VA system, while doing little more than saying, "Woe is us. Not again!"

However, standing with today's veterans, really standing with them, and pushing for the reforms that will deal with their real lifetime medical and psychic needs will make all the difference.

Talk is cheap.

Get involved.

Make it right for the veterans.

I too use the medical facilities at the regional VA health facility nearest me. I'm there on a regular basis. I have never left there without a rising anger and sense of betrayal not only by our federal government (that's a given) but by the way ordinary Americans look the other way.

Almost two years ago, as I waited in one of the stifling rabbit warren waiting rooms of a VA hospital clinic I sat next to a girl so young I couldn't believe she was/used to be a U.S. Army soldier. As the time passed and the waiting room crowd watched or tried to ignore the Jerry Springer slugfest and idiotic Judge Judy, I said to the girl, "Iraq?"

"Afghanistan," she said, looking down.

"Wounded?," I asked directly. In a VA hospital, one vet can ask another vet that question and it's not uncalled for or rude. We are warriors both. I don't care if she was 20 and I was at the end of my fifth decade, we share something of an exclusive club we didn't ask for.

"Broken back," she said.

Then she offered the story without further coaxing. She was a truck driver. that's a non-combat MOS in most places. But in Afghanistan and Iraq, there really is no such thing as a non-combat MOS.

It was a typical situation. Her convoy got hit. Her vehicle flipped. She got medivac to Landstuhl. Months of rehab. Almost a year waiting to get evaluated for a disability rating from the VA which would give her money to support her mother and her daughter and to get her into the VA system for on-going therapy.

Nobody helps, nobody cares. She pretty much slugged her way through the system alone, because she had no other choice.

But now things were really getting complicated for her. The VA gave her a 30 percent rating with regular exams, meaning they could reduce her rating at any time. This would put her back out on the street, looking for work, in a job market where all she could do is flip burgers.

Then she told me she hoped she got better so that she could apply for reenlistment and get back to a war zone in either Iraq or Afghanistan. Out of patriotism? Out of a sense of duty and honor? No. She wanted to go back because of the reenlistment bonuses and the relatively higher pay of an E-4 truck driver with haz duty pay!

All this, and I sat there thinking, "What kind of a fucking country do we live in?"

What kind of a fucking country do we live in where Halliburton executives, Lockheed Martin executives, TV personalities like Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly, are making millions and millions of dollars and this broken little girl, this brave and true American hero that the right wing pundits are always using for propaganda, sits in this shitty waiting room and wonders what in the world is going to become of her and how the hell is she going to support herself and her family.

This is beyond disgusting. This is a fucking disgrace!

We old Vietnam vets have been used to this for over 30 years. We've learned that you don't get anything unless you fight the VA to get it. The stingy bastards are constantly trying to reduce their budgets and fulfill the Republican mandate to lower taxes, lower taxes, lower taxes.

This young woman still at the very start of her life, has been dealt a blow that would knock down most civilians, who is every bit a combat vet, she deserves to get so much more from this so-called "grateful nation," than being shunted off into oblivion to worry in pain about what's going to happen next.

Think about that the next time you see that fucking smirk on Cheney's face.