Psycho mil blogger?

May 21, 2005 5:52 PM

WarIsRealAmazing reading from a fellow millitary blogger who is currently undergoing some high stress as a result of PTSD and is blogging his prescriptions and counseling sessions.
posted by JJBotter (33 comments total)

Hmm... I'm not sure this is real. This sounds like something a lefty highschool freshman wrote for a creative writing class.
posted by phrontist at 7:08 PM on May 21, 2005

Don't know if it's real. Don't thinks it's a high school freshman. Agree with him regarding Ambien. Blackouts without the hangover.
posted by Carbolic at 7:18 PM on May 21, 2005

Odd. The ambien does it just fine for me, never had a problem. (Except that I fell asleep once with the light on and the glasses on my nose.) Trazadon on the other hand gives me the trouble you are describing.
posted by nostrada at 7:54 PM on May 21, 2005

"lefty highschool freshman" - gee, what a shame if you're wrong.

Front line soldiers tend to be pretty young.
posted by troutfishing at 8:12 PM on May 21, 2005

"Hmm... I'm not sure this is real."

It sounds legit to me. I know several soldiers who have gone through exactly the same thing in their deployments to Iraq... this soldier, for instance.

Soldiers there see horrible things that nobody should have to see and do horrible things nobody should have to do. Baghdad has had carbombs occuring on a daily basis. Ever arrived at the scene of a VBIED and been tasked to help clean up the mess? That's enough to traumatize you for life.

I've seen pictures that my friends in the military have taken of what happens when a car is speeding home at night, trying to make curfew, only to round the corner and find that they're a bit too close to a U.S. vehicle. Not pretty... at all.

Trust me... you're being spared some of the worst of what goes on there.
posted by insomnia_lj at 8:25 PM on May 21, 2005

I was going to go back to lurking but those links just pulled me out. Insomnia_lj, what's going on in the second link (the first picture)? Is that a tumor or something? Is there something on the camera lens?
posted by schroedinger at 9:06 PM on May 21, 2005

Jeremy, the guy who posted this, was in the shit last year, so I'll take his word for this that it's real.
posted by mathowie at 9:06 PM on May 21, 2005

insomnia_lj, I removed the links to the pictures of brains and nearly severed heads you linked to. They were disgusting and grisly, without any shred of warning.
posted by mathowie at 9:07 PM on May 21, 2005

That was the person?!
posted by schroedinger at 9:11 PM on May 21, 2005

warisreal

warisrael
posted by telstar at 9:27 PM on May 21, 2005

That is a picture of an Iraqi driver in his car who didn't see the American patrol ahead of him in time. Nothing on the camera lens, but they riddled the car with so many bullets that his torso and head were literally ripped open. The last picture was a large part of the driver's brain, which landed on the back seat of the car.

It's awful to look at, but imagine the effect it would have on you if you were one of the soldiers on the scene at the time. You fired your rifle like everyone else because it was what you were trained to do, but the driver was unarmed... and you get to help clean up the mess.

Since Matt removed the direct link to the pictures, if you really want to see them, you can go to this directory and view them. They are called speeding1, 2, 3, and 4.

According to Matt, they were "disgusting and grisly, without any shred of warning". Obviously, such a traumatic, unexpected experience is only suitable for our teenaged recruits to experience firsthand. After all, they're better prepared to deal with the trauma than a fully grown adult. My apologies for not protecting the delicate sensibilities of MeFites.

Fortunately for us, we're safe at home, emotionally distant from those acts which are routinely and righteously done in the name of America. Sleep well, everyone...
posted by insomnia_lj at 9:27 PM on May 21, 2005

GYOBFW
posted by Armitage Shanks at 9:39 PM on May 21, 2005

should we be prepared for another wave of veterans who can never fit back into society? all these young men and women--how can they possibly return to our complacent, passive, numb American lifestyles? how long before the tattered "Iraq Vets, homeless, please help" cardboard signs on the lap of homeless people start showing up on our streets?
posted by tarantula at 9:46 PM on May 21, 2005

IHMOBFW!

Pointing out a journal with similar issues and some of the kinds of traumatic things that soldiers have to go through over there is apparently irrelevant.

warisreal... except here, apparently.
posted by insomnia_lj at 9:47 PM on May 21, 2005

Honestly insomnia_lj, grow up a bit. Posting shocking pictures and then lecturing the audience for not being grateful that you rubbed their noses in shit isn't going to make anyone take your point seriously. You might as well post links to ogrish.com.
posted by Armitage Shanks at 9:58 PM on May 21, 2005

"should we be prepared for another wave of veterans who can never fit back into society?"

Yes. We should. The level of trauma these soldiers are facing is often as bad as Vietnam, and they're being asked to go back for multiple tours of duty between Iraq and Afghanistan, which is hardly a picnic.

The casualty rate lately in Afghanistan is higher per soldier than that of Iraq, with 18 U.S. fatalities last month spread across approximately 1/9th as many soldiers. The British government is talking about the risk of a "complete strategic failure", while a bunch of Afghani clerics recently threatened to declare a jihad if those soldiers responsible for abusing the Koran aren't turned over to another Arabic country for trial.

What this means is that soldiers will have to deal with longer deployments, followed by more longer deployments, most of them in war zones. Too bad they're closing down the VA hospitals, I guess...
posted by insomnia_lj at 10:05 PM on May 21, 2005

I ask this question not to be clever, but to get an answer: when did it become standard to treat soldiers with what may be PTSD with simple anti-depressants and anti-anxiety drugs?

I sure don't have the "Thousand-yard stare" or anything, but I can see the MeTa post coming, insomnia_lj
posted by Joybooth at 10:07 PM on May 21, 2005

Those pictures need to be seen. This is what war is all about and this is why i think it is entirely disingenuous to support a war that one is not willing to fight in. If you want war, you must be willing to kill and be killed for it. Period. We as a nation must be able to deal with the reality of that war, otherwise we should not have gone to war.

But insomnia_lj, stop trying to moderate the thread, anyone with half a heart knows what you are trying to say.
posted by Freen at 10:13 PM on May 21, 2005

Honestly Armitage Shanks, grow a pair.

I'm not lecturing my audience, I am lecturing Matt. I'm trying to make a point that he (like most of the mainstream media) is making the war a matter for theoretical discussion, rather than a horrifying, awful, emotionally damaging experience that should be absolutely the last step for resolving conflicts.

I don't consider telling people about the awful things I've seen soldiers witness and then saying/linking that they are "Not pretty... at all." to be "without any shred of warning". He does.

It's his site and he can do what he wants with it, but I absolutely disagree with him. I think it's a form of censorship, and I don't support it.
posted by insomnia_lj at 10:14 PM on May 21, 2005

I can attest that, Ambien does for me exactly how he discribed.I was prescribed for a sleep disorder, and it first off is addictive, (as in you can't get to sleep with out it) second 5 to 10mg dosage 5mg barely puts me to sleep, and 10 mg causes distortions visually, I usually became amused with the red glow of the digital clock light, or the patterns on a stucco wall moving on their own. in a whole, "mild hallucinations."

-- for what its worth -
posted by Elim at 10:25 PM on May 21, 2005

she says to me, you could always go back out there, man up and be a true soldier. bitch, i was there once and i need some FUCKING HELP before i can go back and see those things again. are you not comprehending this? do i need to spell it out for you? i fucking hate the fact that i'm required to kill evil people who are only evil because our president wills them to be.

i fucking hate the fact that i'm required to kill evil people who are only evil because our president wills them to be.

are you not comprehending this?

that about sums it up doesn't it?

without adding to the metatalk derail, i agree with insomnia_lj. the left (and what remains of the rational right) in america need to get their outrage on.

all we see from this war are images like this. (shred of warning - photo of saddam hussein's statute being pulled down.)

widely published images like this helped to turn the tide against the vietnam war. (shred of warning - nick ut's famous photo of a young phan thi kim phuc running naked down the street after her village was a napalmed.)

there is no anti-war movement to receive these soldiers, no one to validate what appears to me to be this soldier´s sanely rational response to what he has experienced, nothing other than a bunch of pointy heads whining.

we are all a disgrace.
posted by three blind mice at 10:54 PM on May 21, 2005

I think most of us understand what you're saying, insomnia_lj, and I really only took from Matt's post that a "gory images ahead" callout would have been nice. I'm glad you posted the directory location, because I went and took a look, knowing what was there.

I am so grateful to those serving in the military who are blogging about their exerperiences. "War" and "insurgency" and "fighting terrorists" are such abstract terms and concepts, and I think we sometimes forget that there are actual people serving, especially when we don't know anyone directly involved (and evidenced here, given some recent snarky threads which threw resentment towards those in the military for signing up to be killing machines).

During Vietnam, pictures of coffins and the heavy media coverage of the death rate brought the cost of war into focus. In this war, we have the soldiers themselves speaking to the world about their experiences, their losses and their inevitable pain. I think that's pretty amazing.
posted by VulcanMike at 10:55 PM on May 21, 2005

the left (and what remains of the rational right) in america need to get their outrage on.

Not to derail, but I openly wonder when Nazi Germany was at a point of no return. At some point, the rational elements must have simply given up. When a majority suffer from indifference and outrage fatigue, I'm curious what that final straw will be for this country.
posted by AlexReynolds at 11:22 PM on May 21, 2005

More and more and more of these young men and women are trickling home, their lives shattered, maimed as surely as if they had lost an arm or leg.

Some returning soldiers have told me they wish they had lost limbs, instead of having to suffer from the relentless nightmares, the flashbacks, the hypervigilance...and the loss of pride and peace within themselves.

Thanks for the links, insomnia_lj. More and more light - not the neverending, lame, prissy attempts to sanitize war's reality - will bring eventual change.
posted by fold_and_mutilate at 12:03 AM on May 22, 2005

Not to derail, but I openly wonder when Nazi Germany was at a point of no return. At some point, the rational elements must have simply given up. When a majority suffer from indifference and outrage fatigue, I'm curious what that final straw will be for this country.

AlexReynolds hyperinflation and the privations caused by the treaty of versailles affected everyone in 1930s germany. it is understandable that when hitler turned the economy around - which he undeniably did - the german population responsed positively. by the time it became clear that something was terribly wrong, it was too late. dissenters, even people listening to BBC radio broadcasts, were jailed and executed.

here we already know something is terribly wrong and the pity here is that it is far from too late. there is no risk of being thrown into the gulag or executed for political dissent, information is abundantly available, and everyone seems to have given up.

some real shocking photos that cannot be avoided might spark the outrage that is needed to get the ball rolling. what is needed is to have these images posted on a billboard so that soccer-moms in their SUVs can see what they are doing.. but the reality is that they cannot even be posted here in metafilter.

we who oppose this insanity are doing nothing for the soldiers coming back lost and bewildered. at least vietnam vets who opposed the war could see that someone in america agreed with them. there must have been some comfort in that. returning veterans from this war don't even have that.

the army, a political wing of the republican party, dopes 'em up and keeps 'em quiet.
posted by three blind mice at 1:13 AM on May 22, 2005

I'm not lecturing my audience, I am lecturing Matt.

Yuck. Don't lecture your host. This isn't your LiveJournal.

That said, those pictures were terrific. Thanks for posting them.
posted by kjh at 2:08 AM on May 22, 2005

Glad you thought the pictures were of value.

That said, I will disagree with whoever I damn well feel like disagreeing with, thanks. Plenty of people disagree with me on my site, so I think that Matt can deal with the occasional bout of dissent.
posted by insomnia_lj at 3:07 AM on May 22, 2005

I'm with insomnia_lj: Matt's a total pussy, and a heavy-handed one, for yanking the links.
posted by alumshubby at 5:25 AM on May 22, 2005

Great links, JJBotter and insomnia_lj. Depressing, but needed. Thanks.
posted by homunculus at 10:31 AM on May 22, 2005

Congratulations, insomnia_lj, you're more important than warisreal, that sorry bastard. You win. whoopee.
posted by warbaby at 11:11 AM on May 22, 2005

Don't get your hopes up about the effect of pictures of atrocities, at least among the soccer moms in my corner of suburbia.

Given that their husbands still head off to Manhattan every day, and that most every soccer league has a player or two who has been fatherless since 9/11, they're pretty much convinced that the Islamofascists have to be fought, and are just as happy that they're being fought in Baghdad and not in the skies on New York.
posted by MattD at 8:24 PM on May 22, 2005

If you have a complaint, email Matt. Don't get on your clay soapbox in here and offer some lame comments with darling passive-aggressive end words like, "I guess." and "apparently".

Sure this is Matt's web site but unlike your LiveJournal weblog, Matt acts more as a trustee than a franchise owner (which, in effect, is what LiveJournal is) so your complaints are misguided.
posted by Dagobert at 12:47 AM on May 23, 2005

Really, I don't get your point here, as it seems bass ackward.

I'm the trustee of my journal and the comments left in it, just as Matt is the trustee of the comments left in MeFi.

That said, many, many thousands of people read MetaFilter, so when he is heavyhanded, it has a more stifling effect than if I were to do something similar in my journal.

In that sense, he's a lot closer to a franchise than I, in my capacity of moderating my own journal, will ever be.
posted by insomnia_lj at 1:17 AM on May 23, 2005