I haven't wanted to write much about the atrocity at Fort Hood. I am beyond distressed at the media coverage of the Fort Hood massacre, the Army's politically correct response to an obvious problem in their midst which they chose to ignore, and the President's remarks. Obama told Jake Tapper of ABC News that Nidal Hasan may have "cracked" because of stress.That's evidently Obama's story, and I guess he's sticking to it.
But when I read J.R.Salzman's description of what it's like to get your arm blown off in Iraq, I wanted to post this on my blog. Do you want to know what PTSD is? Read this soldier's eloquent description.
If you can get PTSD from treating soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center then why the hell haven't more people snapped? Why haven't all the therapists in physical therapy and occupational therapy, and all the staff on Ward 57 ran around shooting up the place? They have seen far more wounded Soldiers than this POS ever did. My occupational and physical therapists, like many of the civilian personnel at Walter Reed, have been there since the beginning of OEF. They have taken care of countless (probably hundreds) Soldiers with a variety of different injuries. Missing arms (like me). Missing legs. Missing both. Missing parts of the face. Severe burns. Whole chunks of the skull missing. Missing jaws. Ears. Eyes. Severe PTSD. . . . you don't get PTSD from sitting on your ass around Walter Reed. Not only is it not possible to “catch” secondhand PTSD, but it is not that kind of a place. I would know, I was a patient there for nine months. The place is simply not that stressful or chaotic. When I was there my PTSD got better, not worse. And I would be willing to bet my dog tags that I saw far more wounded Soldiers than sh-t bag Major did during our overlapping time there in 2007.
I have also been heartened by Ralph Peters' (Lt. Col., retired) brutally frank words about how the Fort Hood shootings have been handled. This is from his article in the New York Post: "Fort Hood's 9/11."
Political correctness killed those patriotic Americans at Ft. Hood as surely as the Islamist gunman did. And the media treat it like a case of non-denominational shoplifting. This was a terrorist act. When an extremist plans and executes a murderous plot against our unarmed soldiers to protest our efforts to counter Islamist fanatics, it’s an act of terror. Period. . . . But when do we, the American public, knock off the PC nonsense?
Obama's eulogy today for those killed at Fort Hood gives me a glimmer of hope that perhaps it's starting to dawn on him that he can't get away with sweeping this under the rug as a lone nut killer who snapped. We'll see. I'm willing to suspend my disbelief for a little while to see how the investigation is handled. I would really like to quit ragging on Obama all the time. Maybe it's moments like today, where he had to face the Fort Hood community as Commander-in-Chief, that might help him to grow into the job. It was a pretty good speech.
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