Veteran Killers

Al Swearengen on 2/23/2006:

“Iraq Vet Mutilates Wife” – Get ready America, the war’s not over when these guys leave Iraq. Typical of youngsters who sign up while suffering from a mental disorder commonly known as ‘outrageous stupidity’…Marry a woman who, like yourself, just entered legal adulthood, then take off for a 9 month horror show in Iraq. Combine this with a smart mouth and (perhaps) a man on the side, it can trigger something within this wounded, emotionally disturbed, 19 year old, “battle-hardened” trained killer…like, memories of a time not long past when someone running their mouth could be easily silenced in a number of different ways.”

We know that veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have been committing suicide at higher rates, and that in an effort to maintain troop levels, the Army has been intimidating soldiers seeking treatment for post traumatic stress and other mental health issues, then separating those who fail to ‘suck it up and drive on’ without medical benefits. The Army defends its poor government from all these gold-digging fakers by declaring that the soldier’s brain damage was an undeclared condition they developed before enlisting. In the air-conditioned Pentagon, our Army’s top generals assure us that the numbers look good – no doubt the product of this internal campaign of terror, while on the front end ramping up (exponentiating) the number of “volunteers” who meet their recruiter in prison.

It is a numbers game. Like police having to turn murder into manslaughter for the bosses, wounded soldiers are considered full strength. This sort of policy helps to explain why suicide numbers for both active duty and veterans keep rising. Then there’s the job itself, a bloody ordeal experienced in as many fifteen month deployments as one’s luck allows. Come home all fucked up, be without the support of this country you just put your life on the line for, and try to hold on. Along with the amount of terrorists we have created since 2003, I wonder how many Americans have been turned into psychopathic criminals along the way. How many McVeighs have the Army and this loser already produced?

“Killings After Combat 1/13/08 – NEW YORK – At least 121 Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans have committed a killing or been charged in one in the United States after returning from combat, The New York Times reported Sunday. The newspaper said it also logged 349 homicides involving all active-duty military personnel and new veterans in the six years since military action began in Afghanistan, and later Iraq. That represents an 89-percent increase over the previous six-year period, the newspaper said. About three-quarters of those homicides involved Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans, the newspaper said. The report did not illuminate the exact relationship between those cases and the 121 killings also mentioned in the report.

The newspaper said its research involved searching local news reports, examining police, court and military records and interviewing defendants, their lawyers and families, victims’ families and military and law enforcement officials…The 121 killings ranged from shootings and stabbings to bathtub drownings and fatal car crashes resulting from drunken driving, the newspaper said. All but one of those implicated was male. About a third of the victims were girlfriends or relatives, including a 2-year-old girl slain by her 20-year-old father while he was recovering from wounds sustained in Iraq. A quarter of the victims were military personnel. One was stabbed and set afire by fellow soldiers a day after they all returned from Iraq.

Compared with what this former military interrogator described in March of 2007, it’s pretty clear that Iraq just isn’t a “by the book” type of gig:

Confessions of a Torturer It was bad, in particular the First Recon they’re sort of like marine special forces, an elite unit [attached to the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, known as 24th MEU]. Every time they went on a raid it didn’t matter who they were bringing back, they would just fuck these guys up. Old men, 15-year-old kids, they all came with bruises and broken bones. One guy came with a blister on the back of his leg. It was big, it was horrible, a burn blister. They’d made him sit on the exhaust pipe of a running truck.

Watch Out!