Daily Kos

n/t

...thoughts racing, heart beating, words fail...

Little Black Tattoos

and go straight for the Nobel.

and too many other words

Because I identify myself deep down as an American, I feel responsible for this.  I hate myself.

the invisible disabilities.  Reports project an incredible number of neurological injuries from this war, the kind of injuries that used to kill but now leave them walking wounded in the brain.

Reports project incredible learning problems for these vets -- and so many of them were in the Guard or reserves not to go to war but to go to college.  And the campuses are not ready for this, and it will take a lot of funding to help them and help us learn how to help them, and this war already is bankrupting us, and state budgets already are so bankrupt that the cutbacks at public universities are bad, bad, bad.

Without going into details, I know of what I speak when it comes to neurological injuries (TBA) and the impact on learning.  I know of what I speak when it comes to how campuses already deal -- or don't -- with this.  And I fear that we are going to really let these vets down, unless we all get ready for their return now.

Has about 100 untold victims.

If this person has a child, for example, they will also be affected.  And maybe the grand-child as well, etc. etc.

This is why war is such a bad thing.

Not only does it kill people and destroy things that have taken a lot of people a lot of time to build/make/create, but it harms people's psyches, and those people then go out and harm other people, and so on.  It's something insidious and very hard to make right again.  It takes a lot more effort to fix it, and very few people are aware of how to do the fixing.  

I know, because my mother and father were in the Second World War, and have yet to recover from it.  

that do not listen to Amy Goodman's show, please check out the website, find a local station that broadcasts it or stream online. By mid afternoon there is typically a transcript to forward along to others.

And please donate what monies you can.

I don't know what to say.  I had an older friend who  was a helicopter door gunner in Viet Nam.  He came back and became a Minister.  My mother's interpretation at the time was that he came back screwed up.  She's an atheist.  For a long time I thought she was right.
But just now, your diary has caused me to understand that he was one of the lucky ones.

I watched a girl shoot up in the back of a San Francisco cafe once.  Not a common sight in this city and fairly shocking to me that someone would do it so openly.  The thing that got me most though, was what this young woman had done to her face.  From ear to ear, over her cheekbones and the bridge of her nose was a black, one-inch wide band of tatoo.  I thought to myself that this woman wanted to die, to x herself out.  It's the same feeling of nihilism that comes from hearing Hersch's report.

I'm sitting here shaking in my office.

War is not healthy for people and other living things. I also cry... for the soldiers who pose like ghouls with dead bodies, for the faceless Iraqi children who now know the heartless truth of war and death, for the families who welcome home their soldiers only to find a disturbed stranger. Most of all, I cry for my country that has lost it's capacity to feel, to care... America has lost it's heart and I'm afraid that it is loosing it's soul.

is a behavior throughout history done by those who believe they must atone for sin, an act they committed, or feelings of guilt -- whether or not they personally have any reason to feel that way.

It can be an outward expression of disgust with the self, or self-loathing.

Not all of the time, of course.  But difficult to believe that this woman is happily engaging in a bit of body decorating to enhance her identity image.  Tragic.

My husband told me that one of his friends has stopped listening to NPR on the way to work in the morning.  I asked why.  He said his friend was tired of hearing bad news about Iraq.

When I heard this, my outrage meter went absolutely over the top.  This is a man who not only voted for Bush but has been a loyal supporter of our military approach in the mideast. This is also a man who went through a period of anxiety while his son was stationed in Kuwait.  Now he's turning off NPR because he doesn't want to hear the bad news.

The point here, however, is that his friend never used the phrase "bad news."  His reasons for turn off the news were entirely vague and non-specific.  This fine hawk can't even admit to himself that things are not going well;  that admission would clearly bring him face to face with the fiction created around this war.

So, he's turned off one of the few sources we have left of honest (or at least not dishonest) coverage of the situation in Iraq.

Our miserable press is allowing the citizens of this nation to hid from this war and its devastation.  As Hersh suggests, one of these days we will have to deal with the truth and it won't be pleasant -- it won't be something my husband's friend can simply turn off.

by the time i was done reading, i didnt realize that my mouth had dropped. literally gaping wide open. this is insane.

yesterday...and while I agree it IS an amazing statement...I just wish he had some documentation to back it up.

that I have heard Hersh tell the black tattoo story, and one other time it was on Democracy Now, in a direct interview with Goodman.  It was in the Progressive recently.  He retells this in speeches all the time.

Why this has not already been ground into the American conscience I do not know.

What the hell is happening to us?

The depth of that sorrow and pain is unfathomable.  This administration is doing a huge injustice to our servicepeople.

"War can't give life, it can only take it away."

I feel so lucky that my husband got out of the Army when he did, so that he did not have to go to Iraq-who knows what would have happened then.

I too, feel so guilty about what is being done in our name in Iraq.  We have to keep having these conversations so that others realize how bad things are in Iraq.

Our soldiers who were directed to take part in torture also suffer incredibly.

I am so glad you did this story, and so well.

I could listen to Seymour Hersh anytime, anywhere.  

angry
angry

I had a comment, but I decided to just delete it all and say that I'm angry.

for sharing this. It is incredibly tragic...

...has always been Flannery O'Connor's "Parker's Back," about a tortured soul who has a tattoos covering every inch of his body except his back.  It made me cry when I read it all those years ago in high school, and the same tears are welling up right now.

From The R. Crumb Handbook:

Pardon me if this is duped.

Link is here from Democracy Now, January 2005 via Andymatic.

Kos has something of the same thing in the archives.

that woman just peformed the Harrow on herself.
gads...

several times, and I am thankful, it is powerful metaphor.

May every budding freak of a baby neo con, every wishful lustful "Liberal" hawk, and without a doubt, every single god damed congress person, R and D alike, who voted for that war be forced to hear and read this horrifying story.  

That young woman stands as symbol for the war and America.  We are obliterating ourselves thru war, led there by Bush.  ANd so many happily enabled him.  Took decades to bring us to enabling the likes of Bush, but the nation did it, and continues.

FOR SHAME AMERICA.

I was in Florida for a friend's wedding.  She was marrying a retired Marine, so many of the groomsmen were also ex-military, though most got out just before the Iraq war started.

There was, however, one young man there who did go to Iraq...twice.  Over the course of the week I stayed there, my pregnancy insomnia and refusal to adjust to the time change and his absolute refusal to sleep made us pretty regualr nighttime companions... talking mostly about the war, about all the things that went wrong.

Growing up with military parents, this young man always wanted to give back to his country, to join the Marines and help make the world a better place.  Going in, he earned the distinction of the one guy in his platoon to answer "no" to a disturbing psych test question : "Would you be willing to take the life of a child if children had previously posed a threat to your life?"

He went in a good, solid kid.  Now he's killed... "7 people in self defence," he told me, "1 in what the Marines call a 'fatal error' (the man wouldn't respond to calls to halt, freeze, or desist, and ran upon the Marines)."  Then he paused, and added quietly "and 438 kids."

I didn't ask (how could I?) so I just waited.  Eventually the story unraveled.  An insugent had been firing on them all day and all night, and eventually ran into a building for shelter.  As the guy firing the rockets that day, he was told to take the building down around the guy's ears.  "What's in the building?" he asked over and over, only to be repeatedly told that it was abandoned and empty.  The man shot at them from the building again, so my young Marine took the building down.

Walking past it later, he'd had to be removed by the medic as he knelt in the rubble inconsolable.  It had been a children's hospital, and his CO had known that.

This young man has been so disillusioned, so betrayed, so angered, that he just sort of drifts, now.  It isn't just the horror of what goes on over there, as the diary points out, but what it does to our guys and girls...the permanent physical and psychiatric scars that they'll never get away from.

How do we stop this?

I certainly don't want to make light of the subject but I wouldn't necessarily correlate the tattoos to the psychological trauma this soldier has experienced.  I have a daughter who has never seen war, torture or abuse but for some reason, she feels she must cover herself with tattoos.  She is an middle class spoiled white kid from the 'burbs.  For her it's an obsession.  It gives her a strange pleasure that I can not comprehend.  The tattoos are colorful and artistic but they cover the most flawless, translucent, ivory skin.  It's heartbreaking.  I worry day and night and wonder where I went wrong but the simple truth is that tattoos are more than a trend or fad.  They are part of some people's lifestyles these days.  I recently met with a couple her age who were all excited when I told them about her sleeves.  They think that's the coolest thing in the world.  
The good news is that lasers are improving all of the time and there is research that will someday make tattoos just a fond memory of reckless youth.  The bad news is that it is still very expensive and imperfect.  In the meantime, I wouldn't say that tattooing oneself to death is the worst thing in the world.  If the work is done well, the effect can be quite stunning.  It's just something most of us wouldn't choose for ourselves because we are older and we know that our personalities change but our skins generally don't.  

Time to rewatch the movie for an example of the damage war can do to the human mind, especially with the aid of military experiments.

Of a red om sign, representing my hindu upbringing, on my left bicep. It looks hardcore, and I love it.
I feel bad for this person who is tattoing their whole body.
Fuck Bush for pushing this war on our generation of soldiers.

And, Seymour Hersh should release all abuse/torture photos in his possession.  Bombard the American public with too many photos to ignore.  Rumsfield was running scared(of worse images to follow) when this story broke but Hersh never followed through.

From personal experience I can tell you that sometimes the only way to break through shock and mental anguish is through physical pain.

The physical pain shocks you back into your body and clears the fog of horror.

That she chose black boxes that eventually covered her body is even more telling.  

Since she can't erase the mental pain she's tried to move the darkness in her mind outside of herself.

My heart breaks for her.

May she find peace.

It can't be good for it all to be tattooed solid black - that just doesn't sound at all healthy.  Skin is our largest organ.  

Just sounds like it would lead to medical problems on top of all the rest.

Tattoo artists are supposed to be licensed, aren't they?

If this can be confirmed, I'd be seriously interested in putting up a Web site where, week by week, a photograph of Bush is obliterated as this young woman has been. Once Bush is totally tatooed over, we can start on Cheney, then Rumsfeld, etc.

The hope would be to send a collective shiver down people's spines and call attention to the toll the war is taking on our troops. (Of course, the actual result is more likely to be a visit from the Secret Service. Oh well, maybe it would bump me to the top of the line to Canada if that time comes.)

with you and a lot more  frequently lately.  I weep for our country.  The way it was; what it has become now in 5 years.  I  shudder to think of the next 3 1/2.  Will anything be salvagable then, even assuming that we get our power back?  And will we (dems) make a change? Seems like far too many dems vote in lock step with the repugs.  I am beginning to believe, with few exceptions, that both parties are corrupt.  

is the pain the PTSD'd vet will inflict on the  spouses and sadly the kids, who will be the hidden casualties of this conflict.

My 3 tour vietnam conflict combat vet dad gave me a childhood that would make a lot of you shit your pants.

what a shame that we don't learn from history, but i suppose you'd actually have to study it to do any type of learning from it.

after 3 tours of duty in Vietnam.  It didn't happen all at once, but he built it up incrementally and steadily over about 10 years or so.  Flowers and treads and designs.  Anthropomorphized skulls around his neck.  A huge Jesus and crown of thorns on his back.  

He was raised Jewish.  

Post traumatic stress disorder. And a lot of soldiers have it. A lot of people coming straight out of basic (where the real point is to train people to function under extreme stress) do. A lot of nonsoldiers have it. It's a horrible horrible disease. Its a horrible hallmark of a society that hasnt the slightest interest in mental health or even advancing the psuedoscience of psychology into a real one.

The little stories touch us. Or the stories that fit our ideological needs. Or the stories that are unusual.. or unusually tragic.

The real tragedy is much bigger. The real tragedy is much older. The real tragedy will slip quietly back under the carpet once this minicycle of history is over. Its' signs are abundant. The viet nam vets living in alleys we still ignore. The world war two vets who never recovered and died as the town drunk.. or lived out their lives in now-nonexistant mental institutions. Or who snapped and went wild.. or committed violence on others or themselves.

We're creating more of them. And not just the right. Or the generals. Or the politicians. Americans have a larger appetite for third person violence than any other people on earth. We love sending the poor and the nonwhite off to live our hollywood created fantasies. To fund covert armies based on the same. To find new enemies of all that is white and upperclass and send the poor and the "other" off to die killing it. The thing we never understand is that they come back. That they arent all the same as when they left. That a lot of them are no longer healthy and will spend their lives fighting the disease service to us inflicted on them.

We must take mental health seirously in this country. As something more than a means of selling (prescription) product. As something more than a means of playing legal games. As something more than a way to demonise. As something more than a way to create a new guild for the 'professional class'. A good place to start would be with the victims who are coming home. We know america will never admit fault, much less attempt to heal the foreign victims of our ego. But at least maybe we can for once begin to heal the ones we sent. Physically, mentally and even financially. Just this once.

They really arent disposable.

I don't know what else to say.