This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Veterans Issues

  • AP: Beware veterans with guns

    There’s an Associated Press article today entitled “Slayings highlight risks of ‘gun therapy’ for veterans” that warns the public that veterans shouldn’t have guns, based on the single incident in Texas this weekend. In fact, in the article, they talk to veterans about the “therapy” of firing guns, but the they totally disregard what veterans tell them and go with what the “experts” say;

    “These types of programs can often be an on-ramp for people who won’t go to any other type of program,” Rieckhoff said. “Anything that is connected to the military culture is an easier bridge to cross.”

    However, he said, therapy with guns is not “incredibly common right now.”

    Former soldiers sometimes take solace in target shooting and use it to reconnect with other veterans, said Rieckhoff and Tim McCarty, a former Air Force staff sergeant who now works at a gun range.

    Yeah, for me, range time is like a warm hug – the smells and sounds remind me of some of the best days of my life. I didn’t realize how much I’d missed it until I bought my AR last Spring and even cleaning the weapon reminded me of the hours that I spent with my troops with a case of beer after the a long exercise, bullshit and talking shit for hours while we detailed the nooks sand crannies of the machine. But, that doesn’t matter to the “experts”;

    “The smell of the gunpowder, the flash from the gun, the sight, the sound,” [Dr. Harry Croft, a San Antonio psychiatrist] said. “All of that can trigger a response … that the person’s not aware of.”

    Croft said he considered gun therapy a “bad idea in the main,” although he acknowledged that target shooting could be a welcome diversion for some people. He also pointed to the high rate of veteran suicides – estimated last year at about 22 a day.

    “I believe that until treatment occurs, being around guns is probably not a good idea,” Croft said.

    Yeah, Doctor Croft watched Rambo once too often. PTS isn’t the “flashback” syndrome that Hollywood attaches to veterans. It rarely triggers violence and is most likely to appear as isolation.

    “It’s just a familiarity thing. It’s comforting,” [Tim McCarty, a former Air Force staff sergeant] said of firing a gun. “I don’t want to say it’s a way to hang onto the past, but for a lot of guys, the military was the last thing they knew, and it was one of the best times of their lives, and it’s a way to hang onto that.”

    Eddie Ray Routh, the guy who shot Chris Kyle, had substance abuse problems – so I’m wondering about his claims of PTS. He was a unit armorer, for Pete’s sake. Granted that he might have served in another capacity when he was deployed, but, still. The article says that Routh’s father knew there were problems and he was threatening to take away Routh’s gun. And stealing isn’t a PTS thing. But PTS is always an excuse used by scoundrels.

  • CDR Salamander: Veterans Suicide: Facts Against Chatter

    A hundred of you have sent us links over the past few weeks about the scourge of veterans suicides and I’ve really wanted to write about it, but I’ve written so much about it in the last several months that I’ve run out of things to say about it. So checking our links today, I ran across an article by CDR Salamander at the award-winning blog US Naval Institute and since he said it all so well, I don’t have to;

    It’s ok. It’s not just you. You’re not alone.

    No, I not writing words of encouragement to veterans suffering with PTSD; though they are out there and probably need it. No, I am not writing to veterans who are suicidal; though they are out there and probably need it. No, I am writing to those who are sick of the drumbeat of articles, news stories, or listening to the empathy addict down the street that just won’t shut up about how much she cares and only wants to hear things that validate her preconceived notions.

    You should read the whole thing, Veterans Suicide: Facts Against Chatter

  • Another Comes Home

    Another fallen brother-in-arms returns home to receive belated final honors.

    Naval aviator LT Richard Laws was lost over North Vietnam in 1966. At the time, he was assigned to Attack Squadron 24 operating from the USS Hancock.

    At the time, he was presumed dead.

    His remains were later recovered.  However, at the time of recovery they could not be positively identified.

    Recent DNA testing has confirmed that the remains are indeed those of LT Laws.  He will be interred at the US Naval Academy on May 10, 2013.

    Welcome home, my elder brother-in-arms.  Welcome home at last.

  • Some more Chris Kyle news

    Our buddy, Alex Horton, writes the best warrior’s tribute to Chris Kyle at the New York Times “At War” blog that you will read. I promise;

    A profound dedication to the safety of fellow troops will always mark snipers generally, and Mr. Kyle in particular, both in and out of war. And for the battle to return home that can last decades, veterans everywhere lost a good man watching over them.

    I’m willing to bet Iraqi insurgents had the same debates and fears about the Devil of Ramadi that we did about Juba. Was he even real? Could he ever be killed? For both sides, only one thing was certain: he was more than a man and a rifle.

    Meanwhile the investigation continues. Athena sends us links to some of the legal documents leading to the arrest of Eddie Ray Routh for the murder of Chris Kyle and Chad Littlefield and it looks like it was a simple car robbery according to Routh’s sister who gave the statement to the police;

    Kyle Murder

    Routh told his sister that he had “traded his soul for a new truck” and that he was headed to Oklahoma to hide out. That probably makes him a less sympathetic figure, because even if he did suffer from PTS, that doesn’t make people steal trucks, normally.

  • Morally Vicious, Intellectually Vacuous Left, Always With Us

    It is a sad day in the warrior community when one of our own is slain by another of our own. In the extant situation, the shooting of a genuine hero, former SEAL, Chris Kyle, it seems fairly evident that his killer, a former Marine, is suffering from PTSD. While his mental state will never provide total absolution from his guilt, for those of us here who have seen ground combat, suffered its lingering effects and overcome them over time, our condemnation has to be mostly of the crime and not the man. That said, I fully understand the anger shown in yesterday’s comments here at TAH.

    What are harder to fathom or forgive are the rabidly vicious comments bubbling up from the sulphurous depths of leftist fury. To their everlasting shame, some in the liberal media always will resort to this sort of cruel gloating at the death of a man who served his country well. However when reading the truly hateful comments on the social networks, it is helpful to bear in mind who the most likely perpetrators of such venom actually are. Picture some pimply-faced, insecure, unemployed nerd with a degree in humanities, cloistered in his old bedroom at his parent’s home, angrily banging away at the keyboard, venting his self-caused frustration at those who have accomplished so much more with their lives than he can ever hope to. Picture that and you will probably have a fairly close image of your culprit.

    Thanks to Obamanomics, our country has far too many of these contemporary cave-dwellers still dependent on their parents; and, unrecognized by them, it is the failure of their Great Leader’s socialist policies to lead them out of their darkened bedrooms into a world of prosperity that has them so frustrated and resentful. What the younger of you reading this don’t realize is how fortunate we are that so many of these trolls are hidden away from sight. When I returned from Vietnam in December 1966, the streets and campuses were full of these effete mama’s boys and their equally deluded female counterparts, all screaming vicious anti-military and anti-American slogans provided by Soviet propagandists who couldn’t believe their incredible luck in having so many gullible chumps available to do their dirty work.

    Tens of thousands of those useful idiots, even then as now, unsuited for real work and achievement, eventually migrated into that field best suited for such people, education, and created a huge socialist incubator warmed and fed with our tax dollars, that today continues to perpetuate this parade of know-nothing, liberal twits who mistakenly fancy themselves intellectually and morally superior to the rest of us. It is on such occasions as the death of Chris Kyle that we get an opportunity to see that moral and intellectual superiority for just what it truly is, juvenile emotionalism grounded in insulated ignorance and made manifest in a venomous and frenzied hatred of anyone who disagrees with them.

    We had a “Joe” back in my day with a far larger audience than the fool who trolls here. That was John F. Kerry and the vicious slanders and libels he directed at Vietnam veterans makes our Joe look like the minor league putz he his. We Vietnam vets have had to stifle our anger for decades as the liberal Democrats deified this traitor and even tried to make him our commander-in-chief. Now we have to suppress the urge to scream out our frustrations as this fool of a president spits in our eyes by elevating Kerry even further, making him representative to the world for the nation he betrayed. But then, that’s Democrats for you.

    While you lefties vilify our dead hero, I will honor one of yours by congratulating the “Lion of the Senate” Ted Kennedy, for now having gone three years, five months and eight days without a drink. What a lady-killer that Teddy, a true liberal icon and hero, right up there in the Democrat pantheon with phony war hero, John Kerry, serial sexual predator, Bill Clinton and Marxist, Muslim skeetster, Barack Obama. It is so predictably perverted how all you morally and intellectually superior liberal elites pick your heroes that it is almost laughable; almost, not quite. Actually it’s rather sad, so you can keep ‘em.

    We have a tradition of honoring authentic heroes: RIP Chris Kyle.

  • Update on SSG Terry Achane.

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    It seems that a lot has happens since the last post in Jan 25th that announced that Terry Achane will have custody of his Daughter for the time being. Since then the fabebook page “Support Terry Achane has been helping out by setting up a online registry to provide all the things that a two year old would need. The support from just watching the facebook has been nothing short of amazing and that even when money is tight that people are willing to help out. Also the site is still asking for support in helping with the legal fees and that the case is still ongoing. The hearing should be in Early August. I will try to update at possible.

  • Chris Kyle; RIP

    Since I knew about it before most people, you’d think I’d have dealt with it by now. But I haven’t. I’ve been staring at an empty screen for more than two hours wondering what I could write. I never met Chris Kyle, but after reading his book, you get a sense that you have met him.

    But, last night, I got a call from someone who wanted us to help the police find Kyle’s killer. I was stunned when he gave me the news. I have no idea who it was that called, but he had access to police message traffic, so, you know, I can guess. So I called the sheriff’s department and they confirmed for me that the incident had indeed happened, but they wouldn’t confirm that Kyle was involved.

    But, anyway, I guess they caught Eddie Routh, Kyle’s killer. According to some of our Marines with access to the Marines On Line database, Routh is a corporal and a unit armorer and currently in the Individual Ready Reserve – that status you do before you get out of the service.

    According to Fox News, Routh was apprehended near Lancaster, TX at about 9:30 local time last night after shooting Kyle and his neighbor in the back and fleeing the scene in a pickup belonging to one of his victims, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

    Now, if you don’t want to get pissed off, you should stop reading here. I cruised over the Huffington Post and read some of the comments those tiny-brained morons were leaving and, of course, it’s all about gun control and veterans. And of course, they tell us that Kyle’s death was karma for killing more than 150 insurgents. Twitchy logged some of the “tweets” from the Leftist ghouls yesterday celebrating the death and standing on his body for their political agenda.

    Here’s an example;
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  • Warrior Voices Veterans: learn to write the words they could not speak.(Update)

    This was going to be just about the this story that was re-posted by the American Legions Facebook, but since Casey Porter’s Movie “Present Day” is being debuted today I wanted to include this as well.

    The first one is about finding a better way to treat PTSD and other issues that happen after returning from deployments. Ron Capps is trying using writing as a way to help Veterans deal and overcome these issues. The idea come from writing about his own experiences with when he wrote a article in 2009 called;Back From The Brink: War, Suicide, And PTSD. Now he has helped form a outlet for Veterans to write in the same way that he did in 2009. It is called the Veterans Writing Project.

    At The Veterans Writing Project we believe that every veteran has a story. We know that some of us need a little help telling that story. So we provide no-cost writing seminars and workshops for veterans, active and reserve service members, and military family members. We publish a quarterly literary review, a podcast and an ongoing scroll of writing by our friends on our sister site, O-Dark-Thirty. Soon, we’ll begin publishing books through our publishing branch, BCG Books.

    We approach our work with three goals in mind. The first is literary. We believe there is a new wave of great literature coming and that much of that will be written by veterans and their families. The next is social. We have in the United States right now the smallest ever proportion of our population in service during a time of war. Less than 1% of Americans have taken part in these most recent wars. Our WWII veterans are dying off at a rate of nearly 1000 per day. We want to put as many of these stories in front of as many readers as we can. Finally, writing is therapeutic. Returning warriors have known for centuries the healing power of narrative. We give veterans the skills they need to capture their stories and do so in an environment of mutual trust and respect.

    Also this is helpful in dealing with integration after returning home.

    Ms. Hoit received critiques from other veterans; she trusted their reactions. She had recently graduated from the University at Albany, where she studied journalism. She was no stranger to sharing her writing, but had found civilian classrooms awkward and frustrating. She had felt judged for her subject matter.

    Even now, as a student in Johns Hopkins’s M.F.A. program, she finds herself battling stereotypes. After one reading, a classmate asked her, “Why would anyone join the military if they didn’t want to kill someone?” She is angry about the “media-shaped” portrayal of the wars and feels a responsibility to “reshape that picture and ground it into truth.”

    “It’s like people think the only people who join the military are poor or lesbians,” she says.

    Several other writing websites were listed in the article to include Army of Dude who comments here from time to time.

    Also today Casey Porter has been working with the Moonlight Fund group to produce the movie “Present Day” that opened in the Boerne Community Theater.

    In closing I think that there any many stories that exist that need to be heard but are not. This because they do not fit into what Society has imaged was serving in the military is like. For this reason Veterans hesitant on telling people their experiences let along asking for help with the many issues that one can face due to the fear that one is going to be labeled as a Crazy Veteran. It does not help that the media keeps this stereotype alive and well.

    Also it is important that you can help Veterans of all eras by simply showing that you care by simply asking;”How can I help you?”. It is as simple as that. There are many people that are listed above that could use your assistance right now.

    Update:Casey Porter wanted to let everyone know that the video will put online on February 11th and the new trailer can be found here. Additional links are posted were you can follow the newest updates for this film.