Subject: The Mental Illness called "American" (Max Cleland Op-Ed, NYT)

Date: Nov 7, 2009 4:56 AM

ARTICLE BELOW
=========================

Nobody I know - nobody around me - gives
a crap about the false cases for war and
the 911 stunt.  This is seen in the lack
of action about it.  The reason is "the evil
they bring into their houses: the television."

There's always a Warrior! cooking show
or something like that on, to watch.

Oddly.

TV makes it alll go awaaay...  But where
do all the Americans go, in their heads?

I think Everyday Life in America is simply
diffused awareness of reality due to the
Brain Shock of TV exposure.  I bet if they
studied it, it would show up as a sleepwalking
state.

People with Lymebrain (shown in SPECT scans
as hypoperfusion or reduced blood flow to the
brain:
http://www.actionlyme.org/PHILLIPS_JE_PERVERT.htm
so struggle with consciousness (sleepwalking and
sleeptyping and sleepdriving...)], it's given us a
chance to appreciate the fact that we, through this
extreme abuse of us, are relatively wide awake.

Some of us have even survived (barely) modern
witch trials. "Unabomber Chemist?"  Dangerously
Intelligent?"-  Doesn't that sound like the
21st century version of a Salem witch trial?

The plain old regular people are not shocked
by reality.  The brutalized and shorn remains
of a man who comes back from war is nowhere
near as exciting to us as the personalities of
the hosts of the Talent or Cooking Shows.

I don't know what to do about it.  For how
many years have I been screaming about the
abuse of Lyme and LYMErix victims, *daily,*
except for the 8 months I spent in a cage
for being a witch?:
http://www.fda.gov/OHRMS/DOCKETS/ac/01/slides/3680s2.htm

http://www.actionlyme.org/GAUVIN_DEATH_PENALTY.htm

1999:
http://groups.google.com/group/sci.med.diseases.lyme/msg/8c8115f81813...
"I have to defend Parenti and SKB as well as the LDF.
I talked to Dr. Parenti.  He seemed like an decent guy
and ***explained to me in great detail how patients
should report adverse reactions.***)
http://www.actionlyme.org/DICKSON_FDA_SUBMISSION_FULL.htm

"Parenti explained to me in great detail how patients
should report adverse reactions to LYMErix to the FDA in
the summer of 1999."

Parenti, LYMErix:
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/abstract/339/4/209

Except for the 8 months in jail for
being a witch, 10 years.

But to get the story of the Great Imitator
Vaccine in the New York Times?  Fuhget aboudit.
The Times hasn't even written up the Blumenthal
lawsuit yet:
http://www.actionlyme.org/080430_RICO_CABAL_CAVES.htm

False case for war?
911 Thermate?
Dancing- and Weapons-Dealing Israelis?

That ain't nothin compared to the tough
guy warrior-eater in NY who takes down
the toughest chili peppers.

KMDickson
http://www.actionlyme.org
http://www.relapsingfever.org
=====================================

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/07/opinion/07cleland.html?_r=1&hp=&pag...

November 7, 2009
Op-Ed Contributor
The Forever War of the Mind
By Max Cleland

“EVERY day I was in Vietnam, I thought about home. And, every day I’ve
been home, I’ve thought about Vietnam.” So said one of the millions of
soldiers who fought there as I did. Change the name of the battlefield
and it could have been said by one of the American servicemen coming
home from Iraq or Afghanistan today. Wars are not over when the
shooting stops. They live on in the lives of those who fight them.
That is the curse of the soldier. He never forgets.

While the authorities say they cannot yet tell us why an Army
psychiatrist would go on a shooting rampage at Fort Hood in Texas, we
do know the sorts of stories he had been dealing with as he tried to
help those returning from Iraq and Afghanistan readjust to life
outside the war zone. A soldier’s mind can be just as dangerous to
himself, and to those around him, as wars fought on traditional
battlefields.

War is haunting. Death. Pain. Blood. Dismemberment. A buddy dying in
your arms. Imagine trying to get over the memory of a bomb splitting a
Humvee apart beneath your feet and taking your leg with it. The first
time I saw the stilled bodies of American soldiers dead on the
battlefield is as stark and brutal a memory as the one of the grenade
that ripped off my right arm and both legs.

No, the soldier never forgets. But neither should the rest of us.

Veterans returning today represent the first real influx of combat-
wounded soldiers in a generation. They are returning to a nation
unprepared for what war does to the soul. Those new veterans will need
all of our help. After America’s wars, the used-up fighters are too
often left to fend for themselves. Many of the hoboes in the
Depression were veterans of World War I. When they came home, they
were labeled shell-shocked and discharged from the Army too broken to
make it during the economic cataclysm.

So it is again, with too many stories about veterans of Iraq and
Afghanistan ending up unemployed and homeless. Figures from the
Department of Veterans Affairs show that 131,000 of the nation’s 24
million veterans are homeless each night, and about twice that many
will spend part of this year homeless.

We know of the recent failures at Walter Reed Medical Center, where
soldiers were stranded in substandard barracks infested with rats
while awaiting treatment. I was in Walter Reed myself at that time
seeking counseling for post-traumatic stress disorder, which, ignited
by a barrage of Iraq headlines and the loss of my United States Senate
seat, had simply consumed me.

I never saw it coming. Forty years after I had left the battlefield,
my memories of death and wounding were suddenly as fresh and present
as they had been in 1968. I thought I was past that. I learned that
none of us are ever past it. Were it not for the surgeons and nurses
at Walter Reed, I never would have survived those first months back
from Vietnam. Were it not for the counselors there today, I do not
think I would have survived what I’ve come to call my second Vietnam,
the one that played out entirely in my mind.

When I was wounded, post-traumatic stress disorder did not officially
exist. It was recognized as a legitimate illness only in 1978, during
my tenure as head of the Veterans Administration under President Jimmy
Carter. Today, it is not only recognized, but the Army and the V.A.
know how to treat it. I can offer no better testament than my own
recovery.

Weeks before the troubles at Walter Reed became public in 2007, my
counselor put it to me simply. “We are drowning in war,” she said. The
problems at Walter Reed had nothing to do with the dedicated doctors
and nurses there. The problems had to do with the White House and
Congress and the Department of Defense. The problems had to do with
money.

When we are at war, America spends billions on missiles, tanks, attack
helicopters and such. But the wounded warriors who will never fight
again tend to be put on the back burner.

This is inexcusable, and it comes with frightening moral costs. There
are estimates that 35 percent of the soldiers who fought in Iraq will
suffer post-traumatic stress disorder. I’m sure the numbers for
Afghanistan are similar. Researchers have found that nearly half of
those returning with the disorder have suicidal thoughts. Suicide
among active-duty soldiers is on pace to hit a record total this year.
More than 1.7 million soldiers have served in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Imagine that some 600,000 of them will have crippling memories,
trapped in a vivid and horrible past from which they can’t seem to
escape.

We have a family Army today, unlike the Army seen in any generation
before. We have fought these wars with the Reserves and the National
Guard. Fathers, mothers, soccer coaches and teachers are the soldiers
coming home. Whether they like it or not, they will bring their war
experiences home to their families and communities.

In his poem “The Dead Young Soldiers,” Archibald MacLeish, whose
younger brother died in World War I, has the soldiers in the poem tell
us:“We leave you our deaths. Give them their meaning.” Until we help
our returning soldiers get their lives back when they come home, the
promise of restoring that meaning will go unfulfilled.

Max Cleland, the secretary of the American Battle Monuments
Commission, was a Democratic senator from Georgia from 1997 to 2003.
He is the author, with Ben Raines, of “Heart of a Patriot: How I Found
the Courage to Survive Vietnam, Walter Reed and Karl Rove.”

Home

    * World
    * U.S.
    * N.Y. / Region
    * Business
    * Technology
    * Science
    * Health
    * Sports
    * Opinion
    * Arts
    * Style
    * Travel
    * Jobs
    * Real Estate
    * Automobiles
    * Back to Top

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

    * Privacy Policy
    * Terms of Service
    * Search
    * Corrections
    * RSS
    * First Look
    * Help
    * Contact Us
    * Work for Us
    * Site Map