{"id":36407,"date":"2013-06-26T12:27:53","date_gmt":"2013-06-26T16:27:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=36407"},"modified":"2013-06-26T12:27:53","modified_gmt":"2013-06-26T16:27:53","slug":"daniel-somers-i-am-sorry-it-has-come-to-this","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=36407","title":{"rendered":"Daniel Somers: I am sorry it has come to this"},"content":{"rendered":"

Several of you have been sending me this link<\/a> over the past couple of days about Daniel Somers. I could have sworn that I wrote about the kid before, but I can’t find the post now. But, this Iraq war veteran killed himself, somehow, and his family gave permission to publish his suicide letter. I expect they’ll withdraw that permission, here, in a couple of days. But the parts that jump out at me are about “things he saw” and “things he did” that he couldn’t live with. Well, according to Gawker<\/a>;<\/p>\n

He was part of Task Force Lightning, an intelligence unit. In 2004-2005, he was mainly assigned to a Tactical Human-Intelligence Team (THT) in Baghdad, Iraq, where he ran more than 400 combat missions as a machine gunner in the turret of a Humvee, interviewed countless Iraqis ranging from concerned citizens to community leaders and and government officials, and interrogated dozens of insurgents and terrorist suspects. In 2006-2007, Daniel worked with Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) through his former unit in Mosul where he ran the Northern Iraq Intelligence Center. His official role was as a senior analyst for the Levant (Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel, and part of Turkey). Daniel suffered greatly from PTSD and had been diagnosed with traumatic brain injury and several other war-related conditions. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In his suicide letter he wrote;<\/p>\n

The simple truth is this: During my first deployment, I was made to participate in things, the enormity of which is hard to describe. War crimes, crimes against humanity. Though I did not participate willingly, and made what I thought was my best effort to stop these events, there are some things that a person simply can not come back from.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

To force me to do these things and then participate in the ensuing coverup is more than any government has the right to demand. Then, the same government has turned around and abandoned me. They offer no help, and actively block the pursuit of gaining outside help via their corrupt agents at the DEA.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yeah, it’s pretty cryptic. I think it’s intentionally so. Specifics might open him up to criticism like those criticisms being suffered by the deadly SFC Dillard Johnson over the last few days. Of course, the money is in this part;<\/p>\n

It leaves us to where all we have to look forward to is constant pain, misery, poverty, and dishonor. I assure you that, when the numbers do finally drop, it will merely be because those who were pushed the farthest are all already dead.<\/p>\n

And for what? Bush\u2019s religious lunacy? Cheney\u2019s ever growing fortune and that of his corporate friends? Is this what we destroy lives for <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yay! Occupiers gather ’round! The kid killed himself and it’s Bush’s fault…and Darth Chaney. Wave the bloody shirt!<\/p>\n

This is what brought me to my actual final mission. Not suicide, but a mercy killing. I know how to kill, and I know how to do it so that there is no pain whatsoever.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Actually, there are millions of veterans who suffer from PTS every day and DON’T kill themselves, they don’t threaten their families, they don’t make a big deal about “things they saw” or “things they did”. They don’t use their experiences as an excuse to cop out on their families and become a bigger name in death than they were in their lives. <\/p>\n

Of course, the Left is desperately clinging to this<\/a> as proof that, yeah their guy is bad, but Bush was worse. <\/p>\n

While you may disagree with the war in Iraq, I’ve yet to see anyone offer a different solution to the Hussein’s Iraq problem. Is anyone going to say that the world would have been a better place if only Hussein was still alive? He’d been dealt more than a decade of Euro-wienie sanctions which only entrenched him more in power. Bill Clinton did his best to ignore Hussein, but every time Hussein farted, the US was sending thousands of troops to Kuwait to protect against the next invasion. Did I mention that Hussein was shooting at our pilots several times every month. <\/p>\n

You can disagree with the way the war was conducted, but no rational person can say that it wasn’t necessary. And some dead guy who killed himself can’t point fingers to besmirch the character of everyone who served there without specifics. Yes, it’s too damn bad that he made the choice to end his life, but screw him if he thinks he can blame every soldier who served with him for his decision.<\/p>\n

And screw all of you hippies who think this is going to change anything about the reasons we went to war. The war made you feel bad. Tough. It made you feel inadequate. Tough. Don’t start calling the people who did go there “war criminals” and blame them for the death of one guy who says that they made him do stuff he didn’t like without being specific. <\/p>\n

In fact, I think we can reasonably make the case that Somers killed himself because of the way the hippies made him feel about his service.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Several of you have been sending me this link over the past couple of days about … Daniel Somers: I am sorry it has come to this<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[118],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-veterans-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36407"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36407\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}