Deployed Soldiers Suffer Mental Health Problems

"Deployed Soldiers Suffer Mental Health Problems"
Now theres a freakin revelation!

Who could have imagined?

---
I used to be an atheist, until I realized I had nothing to shout
during blow jobs!
"Oh RANDOM Chance!"
"Oh RANDOM Chaannaace!"

Just doesn't cut it.
R

May not be Ours & May not be Afghanistan, but still relevant:<br />
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com:80/2007/03/13/world/middleeast/13alcohol.html?ex=1174449600&en=d10c70346aec80e2&ei=5070&emc=eta1">http://www.nytimes.com:80/2007/03/13/world/middleeast/13alcohol.html?ex=1174449600&en=d10c70346aec80e2&ei=5070&emc=eta1</a><br />
<p>---<br>"When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change." <br />
-Max Planck<br />
<br />

I have gone through all kinds of tests and examinations by top line professionals, who knew some of my background, I say some, because nobody else knows the full story, and passed with flying colours. As one my friends, a UBC prof of psychiatry said to me after one of the tests: "You're disgustingly well balanced....." and shook his head.

It may have helped that I was only 17 at the time and didn't quite comprehend what was happening until years later. The worst damage I would say may have been caused by the long stretches of starvation. I still would like to choke people who leave heaps of uneaten food on their plates and I'm always the first to finish a meal no matter where.

The one thing I can say was that I didn't have a pleasant dream for 50 years after the war, always running away from something, but I got used to it and it didn't bother me after a while and a few minutes after waking up I could remember no details. In the hospitals I was in, some of the wounded were screaming and giving orders in their dreams.

There was one occasion, when an idiot lieutenant ordered about a hundred of us into an attack against a Russian guard army and led us into a trap, with the 30 of us left breaking out 2 days later. I can remember getting behind a Russian tank, without our helmets on, pretending to be Russian infantry as they went on an attack against the German lines, The tank had a shot off muffler and blue flames were coming out of the right hand exhaust pipe, then the last thing, that we crossed a hedgerow and a ditch, without the tank, but how we got there and came out I have no idea to this day.

I've talked to many other veterans of all nations and many of them had the same blackout experience.

I still hate the military, lieutenants and generals with a passion and have absolutely no sympathy for what happens to either, or any of them.

Ed Deak.

Without going into detail I have personal experience that have been said to cause guarenteed neuroses, with no ill effects on my ever so delicate pysche'

And that always leaves me saying "Sheesh, If I can do this so can others"

Please do NOT misunderstand me as being without concern for those who are struck down by wars and harsh acts
or not


---
The whole order of things is as outrageous as any miracle which could presume to violate it.
Gilbert K. Chesterton

"Troops from Afghanistan too rowdy for bars"

Yup. I can relate. It's really a shock to spend 6 months overseas and for every single second of that time to be on alert for people that want to kill you. You develop 'fight or flight' reflexes. You see things that no normal member of the public will ever see. Then one day, you are flown home and dropped off at an airport to go on a month leave.

During that month leave, your reflexes don't change. Any little thing can set you off. Someone dropping an innocent object on the street can seem like a threat, and you can instinctively deal with that threat. A car backfires, and you reach for a gun that isn't there. Someone in traffic makes a move that seems like someone being agressive to you while you were on patrol in an APC, and 'road rage' seems like a perfectly logical survival tactic.

And the easiest way to deal with it all is to drink. To excess. Or get stoned. Or just crawl in a cool dark place and let the rest of the people go about their business until you get shipped back overseas, where things seem more 'normal'.

It's a really tough job, and I hope DND has learned how to help soldiers deal with the extreme change in dealing with normal society when they return from a deployment. I went from the hot Somali desert to the air conditioning of Pearson International, and I looked at everyone like 'don't you people know what the real world is like?'. After being spit on and threatened bodily because of my Maroon Beret, it was all I could do to go on the next deployment. Luckily (I say that with great irony) 2 PPCLI was heading out to Croatia. So after that, I came back to Pearson with the smell of burning human baby in my nose, and I could not relate to the public in general. Even my own family ethier didn't believe a word I said about what I saw, or they just couldn't relate.

It really twists the mind, the difference and the shock of going from one extreme to another. And it's not like surviving a car crash or anything, because you wanted to serve your country and you wanted to be tested under the most extreme conditions. But those extreme conditions change you in ways that other people just can't releate to.

---
The preceding comment deals with mature subject matter, however immaturely presented. Viewer discretion is advised.

…And after having gone through all that has it never occurred to you that the reasons for your being in such a set of circumstances where bogus?

Wars are rarely, if ever, fought for the reasons we are being told. With all the rancor towards politicians in every other regard why is it that normally rational folks will buy into the lies that are used to send them to where you have been?

The idea that one is "serving their country" by placing themselves in the position of experiencing what you did defies all reason.
Doc
I have come to have a respect for you and the manner in which you conduct your self here, but on this topic, wars, I cannot agree.
repectfully, Dio

---
"And God said: 'Let there be Satan, so people don't blame everything on me. And let there be lawyers, so people don't blame everything on Satan."

* George Bu

"…And after having gone through all that has it never occurred to you that the reasons for your being in such a set of circumstances where bogus?"

No. It doesn't really matter. I did good. I protected the weak from the bully. That was my intention, that was the result. Why Canada asked those things of me is not my concern any more. I don't see how those missions were anything other than what they appeared to be. Now I must ensure that future requests of the military are equally honourable.

"The idea that one is "serving their country" by placing themselves in the position of experiencing what you did defies all reason. Doc"

Yes, but it was never my intention to experience those things. Walk a line, guard a post, patrol a street and keep two sides apart - that was what I signed on for. No one, not even 20 year veterans had any idea what would happen on those missions. To this day, Canadian troops had seen nothing like that since Korea, until Afghanistan.

"I have come to have a respect for you and the manner in which you conduct your self here, but on this topic, wars, I cannot agree. repectfully, Dio"

I apppreciate that Dio. We don't have to agree, although I do see your points. I only posted the above so some people who have not gone through it can understand what the men and women over there have to go through when they get back here. If you ever meet one such person on your travels, understand that their experiences may be of a totally different nature from the average Canadian. Why they were sent there was not their decision. Their only motivation is to serve Canada and do some good.

That they come back damaged physically or emotionally is our responsibility.

---
The preceding comment deals with mature subject matter, however immaturely presented. Viewer discretion is advised.

I've spent a lifetime studyig wars and have realized many years ago that wars, for all practical purposes, are never fought by countries, or peoples, but between rulers and governments, who persuade their peoples to climb the scaling ladders in their service.

My definition of wars:

"All wars are fought over certain forms of energy control."

I'm just re-reading one of my old books on the German battleship "Tirpitz". Whenever I read any of these books, on any war, or on war preparations, I always find it astonishing the amount of energy wasted for "energy control".

Right now, 10 days of military spending around the world could provide clean drinking water for everybody, yet the filth people are forced to drink, much of it caused by wars and war preparations, kills millions every year.

Meanwhile the B52s are over our heads all th time. I calculated once that the fuel they waste during the time I can see them, would run my truck, tractors and engines for 5 years.

And all this for "energy control" ?

Humanity is the stupidest form of life on Earth.

Ed Deak.

Actually I thought it was to exercise control over territory and the resources within it.

Energy is today's flavour of the week, but water and food will probably be next.

Not too many people I know need 8 glasses of gasoline a day in order to stay healthy.

---
The two most common things in the universe are apparently Hydrogen and stupidity.