It’s the Fourth of July and while other families are enjoying barbeques and fireworks and family together time, I’m fighting a pity party by making a "movable banner" for my dog and dragging her to a public fireworks celebration to register voters this evening.  

Don’t worry, I promise we’ll be home long before the fireworks start and make her heart pound.

I’m kidless for another fourth and if you sense a little self-pity, yeah, I’m indulging.  It’s not too often but on days like this, I think have every right...  You see, my two boys signed up to serve their country and nothing's been the same since.  

...the story of thousands of Personality Disorder Discharges from the U.S. armed services.

This is the institution I'm supposed to respect as such?

This is how the Bush Administration thanks those it chewed up and spat out in their miserable war of economic aggression? If these men aren't hauled before a court with the power to punish them, then justice will have lost the war and they'll be rounding us up for the camps.

...

From Joshua Kors:

"The show, 'Now,' is a collaboration with PBS reporter Maria Hinojosa.  We tell the story of Sgt. Chuck Luther, who was struck by mortar fire in Iraq, then jailed until he agreed to sign papers saying his wounds were pre-existing.  Luther is an eloquent speaker with a powerful story.  I hope you'll tune in--and share this message with friends and family so they can see what's happening to so many of our soldiers."

Follow below the fold for more

I received an E from Carissa, of Military Spouses For Change a couple of hours ago.

I sent her E out to a Number of People and some Groups, mostly Veterans.

I see she hasn't posted this request up yet so I'm getting this out to as many as possible as quick as possible.

I've also sent her some contact information that might Help this G.I.!

In our 6th year of the Middle Eastern wars, our military has revived and utilized a dirty trick they used  during the Vietnam War. When the soldiers and Marines returned to bases back in the states, they experienced the symptoms of PTSD, they tried drinking the nightmares away, they were late to work in the mornings due to hangovers, they became "problem soldiers" and the military had them labeled as "troublemakers" sent them to the military hospitals and their doctors gave them the diagnosis of "Personality Disorders" a condition that is attributed to their childhoods, problems with parents, siblings, school authorities, local police, etc.

A disgnosis that absolved the government from any liability for medical care or compensation due to the veterans PTSD caused by traumatic events they endured during their time in the war zone.

By Jason Miller

Thomas Paine's Corner

http://www.bestcyrano.org/...

Cluster B Personality Disorders

1776.0 Americanistic Personality Disorder

The essential features of Americanistic Personality Disorder include pervasive patterns of extreme self-absorption, profound and long-term lapses in empathy, a deep disregard for the well-being of others, a powerful aversion to intellectual honesty and reality, and a grossly exaggerated sense of the importance of one’s self and one’s nation. These patterns emerge in infancy, manifest themselves in nearly all contexts, and often become pathological.

From AP:

Frustrated by delays in health care, a coalition of injured Iraq war veterans is accusing VA Secretary Jim Nicholson of breaking the law by denying them disability pay and mental health treatment. ... The class-action lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, filed Monday in federal court in San Francisco, seeks broad change in the agency as it struggles to meet growing demands from veterans returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Suing on behalf of hundreds of thousands of veterans, it charges that the VA has failed warriors on several fronts -- from providing prompt disability benefits, to adding staff to reduce wait times for medical care to boosting services for post-traumatic stress disorder.

The lawsuit also accuses the VA of deliberately cheating some veterans by allegedly working with the Pentagon to misclassify PTSD claims as pre-existing personality disorders to avoid paying out benefits. The VA and Pentagon have generally denied such charges.

Yes sir..... who says our govt can't behave like an evil HMO/PPO when it comes to providing health care and disability benefits? This is what Defense Secretary Robert Gates and a number of political appointees (who are facilitating this disgusting behavior) are doing to veterans:

I have been writing about this issue for months now, since NPR broke the Fort Carson story of punishing soldiers for having PTSD and then diagnosing them with Personality Disorders.

Instead of getting them help for the PTSD symptoms they are suffering from going to Iraq and seeing the horrors of war, the military command of Fort Carson is pushing the soldiers out the door with no benefits, telling them they can get help when they get home and go to the Veterans Affairs Hopsital, except they are LYING to them, if you sign the quickie discharge they are offering a Chapter 5-13 you are signing away your rights to healthcare and your ability to file a claim for PTSD, because you are signing a statement saying that you came into the military with  PDO's which means the government owes you and your family nothing, it's quite possible you are going to owe them thousands.

I am a disabled veteran, and I am ashamed, for the past week this nation as the world has been focused on a dead white woman who's claim to fame was large breasts and she married a very wealthy old man, and has kept  this nation entertained for a decade as she has fought his son for the money. They are both now deceased and the money is still there, neither of them have it. Now we wonder about the dispicable attorney in her life Howard K Stern and the poor little baby, that 5 month old that everyone wants to claim, why else the money, whoever has the baby gets control of the money.

How many of you know about Iraqi war veteran Jason Schulze?

Over recent years, and especially in recent days, there has been a lot of speculation about the sanity of President George W. Bush. This goes hand in hand with speculation about his intellect.

Both traits, personality disorders and intelligence, can be objectively measured but the President will not sit for such examinations so we can only infer about both based on historic acts and observable facts.

I am really trying to understand how our country flew off the rails so easily after 9/11.  I blame all the shame on the Republican Party, of course, since they controlled, arguably, all three branches of our government.  

Yet, to see the lawbreaking and irrationality clearly, I needed to look at basic psych texts, not as an apologist, but as a prosecutor.  For what we have joined as a nation is infamy on the historic scale of the same illegitimate regimes we attack.  

With no pretense at counsel and honorable negotiation, the Republican Party has been hijacked by people who seem to be acting in pathological ways.  Neoconservatist ideology provides a rationale for the problems we face today and will face tomorrow.