PTSD: Brainwashing, Psychopathic Training = PTSD

Yale Law School assists PTSD Veterans.

Halls of Yale Law School photo: flickriver.com

(PORTLAND, OR) - Some will think the above is "word salad" but it isn't. I speak at high schools on Veterans Day programs and I ask three questions of the collective students:

1. How many of you want to get shot at? Most usually nobody responds.

2. Who among you wants to get wounded? Nobody responds to that either.

3. Who wants to kill a human being? The silence is deafening.

Then I point out the Veterans standing "at ease" before them. "These guys standing before you didn't want to get shot at, didn't want to get wounded, and I doubt if any wanted to kill anybody, except maybe their drill sergeants. Never-the-less, for the infantry in particular, we were brainwashed into the belief that we were invincible and it was the next guy who would be shot at and hit (wounded) and that this was noble.

We started out shooting at round, bullseye targets but soon reverted to silhouettes of a man, head and body. In other words, we were shooting at a paper silhouette even if it was really a man. In the end, we were trained to be psychopathic killers even if it were only a silhouette.

This above was only a small part of the problem. The officers and sergeants treated us like mindless robots, "Do as I order you or you will get a court's martial"!

The New York Times, on Dec 10, 2012, had an editorial about this titled, "A question of honor, fairness and PTSD". It seems that totally overwrought soldiers and Marines sometimes refused orders for suicide missions and would defy the orders, provoking a court's martial and less than honorable discharges which totally screwed up their futures with the Veterans Administration and almost anything else.

Finally and recently, a soldier, John Shepherd Jr., along with Vietnam Veterans of America, and possibly thousands more veterans, sued the Army Board of Corrections to have their dishonorable discharges reviewed and raised to Honorable on the basis that they were victims of PTSD, brought on by their military service, as I have outlined above. This Army Board of Corrections reviewed 145 PTSD applications and approved only two!

I will bet that these army board members never got even close to the actual hell of battle.

This legal action is being done by the Yale Law School Veterans Legal Clinic. They found and believe that as many as 250,000 Vietnam Veterans have been given less than Honorable discharges because of PTSD. When we think of the Veterans of our current and recent wars, this figure is probably in the millions.

Thanks to you Yale Law School, we Combat Veterans did our part. Congress what are you doing?

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