It has been many years since the attack on the USS Cole took place, yet another Navy person will soon join the others killed that long ago day in Yemen. The October 2000 terrorist assault on the USS Cole killed 17 sailors and injured 39, among them Petty Officer 3rd Class Johann Gokool of Homestead, an electronic warfare technician who lost his left leg.
The victims of the attack on the Cole are buried together in Arlington National Cemetary, and Johann Gokool who lost his leg that day so long ago, will now be laid to rest with his fallen shipmates. He has lived with the results of that attack for the past decade, at a high cost to him and his family, his life has never been the same since his amputation.
He has been disabled since then, and has lived in Florida with a brother, and existed with PTSD among his issues.
From McClatchy news organization the story of Johann Gokool is being told finally, nine years later. Given that the USS Cole was one of the first Al Qaida attacks and the December 25 Detroit plane incident is being tied to Yemen, and the same organization Al Qaida of the Arabian Peninsula is claiming it caused the new "underwear bomber" to attack the US in retaliation which is bogus as their time line does not add up, they have claimed it is due to the air raids on Dec 17 and others since that have killed approximately 60 Al Qaida leaders at meeting places, one of the targets was the Imam that Major Hasan was in contact with, and is supposed to be one of the deceased.
The proof shows that the failed bomber bought his ticket for cash on Dec 15, for 3000 dollars in Nigeria 2 days before the first air strike in yemen, so retalition does not even make sense. How do you plan an operation in advance of an act? Payback operations are usually planned after an attack not before. So Al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula seems to be using this failed attempt to make it a propaganda action, which makes me question their intelligence.
But there is no doubt that yemen is a center for Al Qaida and has been for more than a decade so yes we need to help the Yemeni government take out any Al Qaida operations and safe houses that we can, either obvertly or openly, I quite frankly could care less, but we should NOT invade Yemen, there is nothing to be gained by it, you can't use an entire Army to stomp out a few hundred people, it hasn't worked anywhere else we have tried it.
Last Wednesday, a week after his 31st birthday, Gokool transitioned from survivor to victim. Relatives say he died in his bed, apparently during one of the violent panic attacks that had plagued him since the incident.
His younger brother found Gokool about 7 p.m. Dec. 23 in the house they shared. Medical examiners still haven't said what killed him, but relatives believe that a deadly attack stopped his heart.
The U.S. Navy classified Gokool 100 percent disabled due to post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The attacks came without warning, lasting from a few minutes to hours, and because of them, Gokool couldn't work, drive or even bowl -- his favorite pastime.
I feel for the family of Johann Gokool, the stress of living with a PTSD veteran, especially one rated at the 100% disability level is stressful for everyone involved, family, friends, loved ones, destroyed relationships. The past nine years can not have pleasant for anyone in this family, I am saddened by the entire affair, as I am by all PTSD veterans, that cause stress and pain to their families.
The incident on the USS Cole did not kill Johann Gokool in October 2000, but it was the reason he died in December 2009, he was a victim of war. His death was set into motion the day the explosion took place, the actual death took time.
This is how he will be buried and remembered by his family and other naval veterans, back with his crew members that died in October 2000
A Naval honor guard will participate in funeral services after the 9-to-11 a.m. visitation Saturday at Branam Funeral Home, 809 N. Krome Ave., Homestead.
The family plans to take his ashes to Arlington National Cemetery, where the Cole dead lie in a special section.
``He always said he wanted to be interred with his buddies up there,'' his father said.
The numbers of the men who have died from PTSD since the end of Vietnam probably exceed the 58,000 names on the "WALL" but deaths that take place decades later and unless the cause of death can be linked distinctly linked to wounds suffered in the war, then the names and numbers will not be counted to that war. They do not end up in the database as linked to the war, like suicides are not counted towards the Iraq and Afghanistan war dead, the Vietnam PTSD suicides are not counted in the total of the war dead.
In Johann Gokool's case unless the doctors can attribute his cardiac failure last week to his SC PTSD, then his death will not be counted towards the victim list of the Cole bombing regardless of the fact that it is related no matter how you look at it, that bombing set in motion what happened last week, nine years later Johann Gokool died from the bombing of the USS Cole.
I SALUTE Johann Gokool and pray he finds the peace in death that has eluded him for the past 9 years, and he finds the rest he so desperately deserves by being laid to rest with his shipmates.