May 29, 2010 08:53 PM UTC

I'd like you to remember THIS on Memorial Day...

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• by: SSG_Dan

(Well said, and a great reminder that Memorial Day is not a partisan holiday. – promoted by Colorado Pols)

Ok, I’m angry…actually, I’m livid. I had to get up from the keyboard, walk up to the Marine Barracks, see the young kids standing guard in their dress blues to get my mind back to sanity.

All from the stupid rantings of a political blog.

No check, that. It’s not just the smartass or downright stupid comments on Coloradopols.com. It’s media-types who actually have to balls to hoot or screech about what particular memorial service the President is going to attend. To the Angry Right, geographical location is the measure of how sincere a tribute is.

So, I’ll start by asking this – we know where the CiC and the VP are on Monday, but do you know where Rep. John Boehner is? Erstwhile GOP presidential candidate Sen McCain is? Sean Hannity?  

I do –  but it doesn’t matter for SHIT. Not to me, not to veterans, and certainly not to the dead. If you take a moment, and I truly mean A MOMENT on Monday at 3PM for a minute of reflection and silence, you’ll honor our dead veterans far more than anything that gets posted on the interwebz.

So, instead of engaging in debate on what Memorial Day Service the President should attend, I’d like all of the few people who read this diary to remember this:

1. To date, there have been 90,955 documented U.S. troop casualties in the current wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Of these, 4,378 troops have died; 37,280 have been wounded in action; and 48,272 have been medically evacuated due to injury or disease.

2. 2,052,405 service men and women have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001. Over 40 percent of them have been deployed two or more times. Some will have been deployed as many as five years Currently 94,000 U.S. troops are serving in Afghanistan and 92,000 in Iraq.

3. Of those, the DoD is warning that 20% or more have serious Traumatic Brain Injuries from the numerous IED blasts and combat operations they’ve engaged in. These may cause diffuse brain bleeding and result in PTSD and problems with mood, attention, concentration, memory, pain, balance, hearing and vision. There’s ongoing research that shows it may lead to chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE. It’s also known as Punch-Drunk syndrome, which is marked by dementia, paranoia, chronic memory problems, insanity and eventually death….it’s what killed Steeler’s All-Pro Center Mike Webster.

4. 508,152 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans are patients in the VA system.  There are almost an additional ONE MILLION CLAIMS backlogged in the Veterans Benefit Administration “in box,” and the average time to approve one claim is nearly 4 months.  40% of those patients actually being seen by the VHA are for mental health treatment, and 28% are being seen for PTSD.

5. Every day, five U.S. soldiers attempt suicide, a 500 percent increase since 2001.

6. Every day 18 U.S. veterans attempt suicide, more than four times the national average. Of the 30,000 suicides each year in the U.S., 20 percent are committed by veterans, though veterans make up only 7.6 percent of the population.

7. In 2009, there were 3,230 reports of sexual assault including rape, according to the DoD, with many more that number thought to be unreported. In a 2003 survey of female veterans 30 percent reported being raped in the military. A 2004 study of veterans with PTSD reported that 71 percent of women seeking treatment said they were sexually assaulted or raped while serving in the military. Additionally, male on male rape is increasing rapidly in the  US Military, though it is massively under-reported, and the DoD currently has not released their figures from their latest study. The National Guard Military Sexual Trauma Officer I worked with on Veterans court reports that the case load between Male/Female and Male/Male rape is almost equal.

If the participants of this fine website would like to have a debate about a substantive issue, here you go. If you would like to adopt partisan stances on these points, please do.

And if any of you would like to help on any of this, I’d be happy to connect you with the Volunteer Service Coordinator at the Denver VA Hospital, invite you to the United Veterans Committee monthly meeting, or even send you a link to donate your unused airline miles to Fisher House.

But just stop….STOP this senseless and empty rhetoric about where our leaders need to be on Memorial Day to properly “respect our fallen heroes.”

Because if any of the them could hear you from the Halls of Valhalla, they’d be the ones to reach out and slap the shit out of you.

http://www.alternet.org/story/…

http://stopmilitaryrape.org/news/

http://www.volunteer.va.gov/

http://www.woundedwarriorproje…

http://www.unitedveteranscommi…

http://www.fisherhouse.org/

http://www.fisherhouse.org/pro…