… yeah, in LaLaLazyLandia, the endless stream of wannabe tin soldiers, or Audie Murphy’s or, fuck, just strapping on an automatic, a uniform, living see the world life, fuck them ALL!
A Veterans Trust Fund would only begin the process of setting aside money for the long-term costs of war, but it would establish the right framework. It would also begin to introduce better financial management into the system. Finally, this paper reminds us of the raw toll of this conflict. Millions of Americans who fought over the past two decades in Iraq and Afghanistan have returned home with disabilities, many of them severe. As the U.S. tries to close this chapter in its military history, an entire generation of veterans and families will not be able to do so. The cost of these wars in blood, toil and treasure will endure for the next half-century. “The Long-Term Costs of United States Care for Veterans of the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars” Linda J. Bilmes
This is it, man, what the boot camp does, the induction, even in the cradle, the poor sops believe in the brainwash, and it is a PSYOPS of media and military, the schools, the ether, man, believing that jumping up for Uncle Sam is a heroes delight. Fucking war, war game, drone war games, all the thunder and bluster, those poor sops are ruined BEFORE they hit the training camp.
In an article in The New York Times, “Please Don’t Thank Me for My Service,” journalist Matt Richtel, who interviews several veterans, says:
To some recent vets—by no stretch all of them—the thanks comes across as shallow, disconnected, a reflexive offering from people who, while meaning well, have no clue what soldiers did over there or what motivated them to go, and who would never have gone themselves nor sent their own sons and daughters. To these vets, thanking soldiers for their service symbolizes the ease of sending a volunteer army to wage war at great distance—physically, spiritually, economically.
Veterans often return only to feel disconnected from the society they served. Unemployment among veterans is decreasing, but it is still higher than the national average. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is common: Between 10 percent to 30 percent of veterans develop PTSD after returning home. According to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, as many as 20 veterans take their own life each day.
The word “hero” after the atrocities veterans have witnessed is sometimes unwelcome. Other veterans, like Jarrod Chlapowski, say they feel undeserving of thanks. Writing in The Huffington Post, he says:
The ‘thank yous’ [have become] less awkward, though I have never felt like I deserved them. My service completed roughly as expected, experiencing nothing more dangerous than the plane ride home on leave.
Do not believe the fucking hype, all those war movies, all those fucking Born on the Fourth of July movies, or those Toro Toro Toro hate flicks. Don’t believe the new shit storm movie, Oppenheimer, none of it. And, that harangued and over-taxed taxpayer footing the bill for Raytheon, et al, for that Nazi ZioAzovLensky, all the new shit we are cooking up in Taiwan and China, this is how the military gets Johnny and Juanita, man, all LGBT and heterodox, the Incels, the lot of them — raped by Uncle Sam, and the military is one giant rape of the mind academy, and physically, too: Here’s the fucking claim sheet, and a friend just stopped by, after his hell, his psychiatric hell, all the PTSD, a la C, complex, and, sure, his big brother, all those people in his life who abused him — he’s gay — all of that got him somehow wrangled into the fucking No Thank You for Your Fucking Big Boy, Big Gun, Big Swining Dicks (now swinging labias) MILITARY — disservice!
And you can’t even build housing for people about to be homeless, those sleeping with families in vans, in hotel rooms, and, sure, rough sleepers, who are just the tip of the iceberg of homelessness. This is what Raytheon and DoD produce, to the “socialism for the war machine” just comes out of our poor sad sacks every tax time:
The most common mental health disorders impacting veterans are PTSD, depression, and traumatic brain injury. However, many more mental health conditions can qualify a veteran for a VA disability rating.
Here is a list of all VA-eligible mental health conditions:
- Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
- Depression
- Major depressive disorder
- Persistent depressive disorder (dysthymia)
- Schizophrenia, delusional disorder, and other psychotic disorders
- Schizoaffective disorder
- Delirium
- Major or mild neurocognitive disorder due to:
- Traumatic brain injury (TBI)
- HIV
- Infection
- Alzheimer’s disease
- Substance/medication-induced
- Unspecified neurocognitive disorder
- Another medical condition
- Major or mild vascular neurocognitive disorder
- Anxiety
- Generalized anxiety disorder
- Other specified or unspecified anxiety disorder
- Social anxiety disorder (social phobia)
- Illness anxiety disorder
- Specific phobia
- Obsessive-compulsive disorder
- Panic disorder or agoraphobia
- Dissociative amnesia
- Dissociative identity disorder
- Depersonalization/Derealization disorder
- Somatic symptom disorder and related disorders
- Conversion disorder (functional neurological symptom disorder)
- Cyclothymic disorder
- Bipolar disorder
- Chronic adjustment disorder
Personality disorders and substance abuse generally can’t be service connected. Although, substance abuse can be granted a rating secondary to another mental health condition.
It’s all on the ledger, on the spectrum, on the continuing criminal enterprise of paying out for Thanks for your Fucking Service:
You go from one VA board hearing, to the next social worker, to the next MD, to the next head shrinker, and you smoke like a chimney and self-medicate and isolate and then become this person whose life — if you still have gas in your tank — is about getting the Benjamins.
The actual numbers, the actual monthly checks paid out to the Thanks but No Thanks for Your Service dudes and gals is a tough number indeed.
Here, generally, mixing civilian with military:
Published: April 25, 2022 — ABSTRACT
Objective: To estimate the economic burden of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in the United States civilian and military populations from a societal perspective.
Methods: A prevalence-based and human capital approach was used to estimate the total excess costs of PTSD in 2018 from insurance claims data, academic literature, and governmental publications. Excess direct health care costs (pharmacy, medical), direct non–health care costs (research and training, substance use, psychotherapy, homelessness, disability), and indirect costs (unemployment, productivity loss, caregiving, premature mortality) associated with PTSD were compared between adults with PTSD and adults without PTSD, or the general population if information was not available for adults without PTSD.
Results: The total excess economic burden of PTSD in the US was estimated at $232.2 billion for 2018 ($19,630 per individual with PTSD). Total excess costs were $189.5 billion (81.6%) in the civilian population and $42.7 billion (18.4%) in the military population, corresponding to $18,640 and $25,684 per individual with PTSD in the civilian and military populations, respectively.
In the civilian population, the excess burden was driven by direct health care ($66.0 billion) and unemployment ($42.7 billion) costs.
In the military population, the excess burden was driven by disability ($17.8 billion) and direct health care ($10.1 billion) costs.
Conclusions: The economic burden of PTSD goes beyond direct health care costs and has been found to rival costs for other costly mental health conditions. Increased awareness of PTSD, development of more effective therapies, and expansion of evidence-based interventions may be warranted to reduce the large clinical and economic burden of PTSD.
++—++
Then you have the fucking PSYOPS RAND — gets those oh-so smart graduate students and PhDs and the like to come up with global war plan a or z, but then they do this “study”: Invisible Wounds: Mental Health and Cognitive Care Needs of America’s Returning Veterans.
This is for ONE fucking illegal attack and occupation continuing criminal proving grounds for the rich and the MIC and the like:
Oh, man, chart after chart after chart:
And this war mongering shit research outfit recommends what? End the military budgets for drones, bombs, nukes, air craft carriers, all the rotten and broken and cost-overrun pieces of military hardware? Turn the military into public service outfits, supporting old and young, fire-drenched and heat-soaked, all the bad transportation in the USA, potholes, all the mutual aid we need? Nope:
Recommendations and Conclusions
Looking across all the dimensions of our analysis, we offer four main recommendations for improving the understanding and treatment of PTSD, major depression, and TBI among military veterans:
- Increase and improve the capacity of the mental health care system to deliver evidence-based care. There is substantial unmet need among returning servicemembers for care of PTSD and major depression. DoD, the VA, and providers in the civilian sector need greater capacity to provide treatment, which will require new programs to recruit and train more providers throughout the U.S. health care system.
- Change policies to encourage more servicemembers and veterans to seek needed care. Many who need care are reluctant to seek it. Servicemembers and veterans need ways to obtain confidential services without fear of adverse consequences.
- Deliver evidence-based care in all settings. Providers in all settings should be trained and required to deliver evidence-based care. This change will require implementing systems to ensure sustained quality and coordination of care and to aid quality improvement across all settings in which servicemembers and veterans are served.
- Invest in research to close knowledge gaps and plan effectively. Medical science would benefit from a deeper understanding of how these conditions evolve over time among veterans as well as of the effect of treatment and rehabilitation on outcomes. The United States needs a national strategy to support an aggressive research agenda across all medical service sectors for this population.
Then, the 20 Years of War project:
Between 2001 and 2050, the total costs of caring for veterans of the post-9/11 wars are estimated to reach between $2.2 and $2.5 trillion. This includes the amount already paid in disability and related benefits and medical care, as well as the projected future cost of lifetime disability benefits and health care for those who have served in the military during these wars. 2 This estimate is double the author’s previous projections in 2011 and 2013. 3 Several factors account for this dramatic increase. These include: extraordinarily high rates of disabilities among this cohort of veterans, greater outreach by the federal government to inform veterans of their eligibility for benefits, more generous eligibility and benefit compensation, as well as more advanced and expensive medical care, and substantial investment by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to process and administer claims and benefit programs and deliver health care. Federal expenditures to care for veterans doubled from 2.4 percent of the U.S. budget in FY 2001 to 4.9 percent in FY 2020, even as the total number of living veterans from all U.S. wars declined from 25.3 million to 18.5 million.
Yet the majority of the costs associated with caring for post-9/11 veterans has not yet been paid and will continue to accrue long into the future. As in earlier U.S. wars, the costs of care and benefits for post-9/11 veterans will not reach their peak until
Sir! No Sir! Full viewing on Facebook
A trust fund? For GIs? And, so, all those countries that have been straffed, despoiled, destroyed, dirtied, divested, drones, all the people there, the schools stunted, the babies miscarried, the grandpa’s left to suffer with no social services, all the gut bugs in destroyed water systems, generation after generation. HOW many hundreds of trillions of dollars for those funds? For those people, then and now and in the future? How many countries have we fucked up with No Thanks for YOUR fucking SERVICE?
How Many Countries has the US Invaded
Infographic: US military presence around the world — The US controls about 750 bases in at least 80 countries worldwide and spends more on its military than the next 10 countries combined.
The USA is the TYRANT of the world, and No Thanks for your Fucking Service:
And, my friend, my wife’s friend, originally, he went into the Navy in the 1980s because he feared the shit storm economic freefall, and he wanted to see the world. He then, wanted to be a journalist (he puts that in air quotes), but it was a long wait, and he needed to eat, in his own words, so he went into the assisting chaplain corp.
Eventually he did do public service at small navy stations, and wrote “news” and did radio, and he tells me his proudest moment was helping write a grant while stationed in Vermont (during the base closure time where some money went to hearts and minds) to support visual and performance arts and arts education. The non-profit is way far from any government funding, and is still kicking.
My friend will be hitting the road, and he is visiting folk he cares about, those of us in the USA. He wants to get the fuck out of the USA. His next adventure is Europe, and then settling in Greece, where he was stationed, and he does know the language. He wants to take his $5 K a month in PTSD/MST/SS benefits and live his life writing poetry, starting a poetry YouTube channel, and be in some form of quietude and quality of relationships.
His story is his to tell, and he is wanting to write that memoir, and alas, he will be out of the USA by next year, early.
What does that presence of US pukes, the DoD, the contractors, all of them, for the Empires spread of filth, DO to the local populations?
Goddamn, don’t let the fucking evac plane’s door hit your ass on your way out:
[Photo: American troops board a US Air Force jet during a test withdrawal at Tan Son Nhut Air Base while Vietcong and North Vietnamese officers take photographs near Saigon, Vietnam, 27 March, 1975 (Getty Images)]
[Photo: US military spending since 1950]
2001-2021
The period following the 9/11 attacks, and the declaration of war on both Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, saw a large spike in troops abroad. At least 800,000 Americans served in Afghanistan and more than 1.5 million in Iraq over the past 20 years.
The human cost of the wars is estimated to have killed more than 900,000 people – mostly civilians.
Fucking lazy, arrogant, messed up Americanos, and these navy guys and gals, yep, never had a peace studies class in K12, never had historylessons, never heard of fucking General Smedley Butler.
Fuck you and Fuck Your Disservice to the World.
Smedley Butler on Interventionism
— Excerpt from a speech delivered in 1933, by Major General Smedley Butler, USMC.
War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses.
I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else. If a nation comes over here to fight, then we’ll fight. The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag.
I wouldn’t go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket.
There isn’t a trick in the racketeering bag that the military gang is blind to. It has its “finger men” to point out enemies, its “muscle men” to destroy enemies, its “brain men” to plan war preparations, and a “Big Boss” Super-Nationalistic-Capitalism.
It may seem odd for me, a military man to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty- three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country’s most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle- man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.
I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service.
I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912 (where have I heard that name before?). I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.
During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.
Read his fucking short but oh-so-clear War is a Racket to understand there are no THANK YOU’s deserved for your bombs busting in air, on the ground, in bunkers, on crops, onto wedding parties.
Fucking hell.
Fucking today: A Reporter at Large, Hiroshima, By John Hersey, August 23, 1946
That dirty country, USA!
“On August 6, 1945, the United States US Army Air Forces dropped the atomic bomb “Little Boy” on Hiroshima, killing over 70,000 citizens and leaving at least as many ill from radiation sickness. It was the beginning of a horrible madness that seized the American soul.
The United States government dismissed all reports from Japan of radiation sickness, and other conditions, in the months that followed that bombing, claiming that such reports were just conspiracy theories. It would take enormous battles within the US, and around the world, to finally get the US to admit that this atomic weapon was different from a conventional weapon.
But everyone in the War Department knew exactly what sort of a bomb had been dropped and what it did to people. The Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb had undertaken horrible human experiments to determine the influence of radiation on the body, after all. “ — “Apology to the Japanese people and the world on the 78th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima” by Emanuel Pastreich
Fuck everything about the Military Industrial Complex (complex that is made up of Eichmann men and women in medicine, education, media, mining, energy, ag, entertainment, AR-VR-AI, banking, real estate, insurance, private prisons, pharma, higher education, retail, food, surveillence, NASA, space, you name the career or field, and it is one with blood-drenched hands, whether they are the nerds at MIT, or the poor economic draftees from the Appalachia community college peddling drone courses).
Paul Haeder, Author 