Home
Ilona Meagher's Library tagged → View Popular
GOOD | The Memory War
We might be on our way out of Iraq but things are just starting to pick up in Afghanistan. With record-high number of veteran suicides and rising rates of post-traumatic stress disorder and clinical depression in every branch of the armed forces, is the nation headed for a mental-healthcare crisis?
Pentagon to phase out unpopular 'stop-loss' program - CNN.com
The military will phase out its "stop-loss" program, the contentious practice of holding troops beyond the end of their enlistments, for all but extraordinary situations, Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced Wednesday. Instead, the military will use incentives programs to encourage personnel to extend their service. Starting this month, the department will provide "special compensation of $500 per month" to troops whose tour has been extended, Gates said. "This special compensation will be applied retroactively to October 1, 2008, the date when Congress first made it available."
WBEZ | New Art Project Hopes to Help Vets Talk
A lot of soldiers say war is hell, and then, they won't say anything else. That wasn't good enough for one west suburban playwright. She's created a new collaboration called the Vet Art Project. It brings veterans and artists together to make art out of war. The group's vision is a big one: it aims to be a national model for how veterans can tell their stories and get the public to listen.
-
A lot of soldiers say war is hell, and then, they won't say anything else. That wasn’t good enough for one west suburban playwright. She’s created a new collaboration called the Vet Art Project. It brings veterans and artists together to make art out of war. The group's vision is a big one: it aims to be a national model for how veterans can tell their stories and get the public to listen.
-
Matt Ping sits across the circle from Crist. He’s a young vet who served in Afghanistan.
PING: That transition from 16 months of isolation on the side of a mountain, and being secluded from American society and American people and then coming back and trying to be the same person you were before, it's really -- I don’t know if it’s even possible.
A recent study by the Rand Corporation found that nearly 20 percent of soldiers who served in Iraq and Afghanistan have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or depression. Only half, seek treatment.
Ping says part of the problem is Americans don’t seem to know or care about the war or its soldiers. He recalls being in Afghanistan, in the thick of it, and soldiers not being able to reach anxious family members.
PING: And that’s probably why the suicide rates are so high, because that’s the easiest out. I mean, I'm not gonna lie. I sat there with a barrel of a gun in my mouth, thinking about pulling the trigger more than once. And you know I’m glad I didn’t because I was just in an altered state at the time.
The Providence Journal | Afghanistan battle haunts Rhode Islander Craig Mullaney
Deploying to Afghanistan, Craig Mullaney writes, “was a slow immersion, like Dante’s descent into the Inferno.”
One moment, Mullaney and his Army Ranger platoon waited in an airport terminal at Fort Drum, N.Y. Televisions were tuned to Major League Baseball games. The soldiers ate what one jokingly called their “Last Supper” — rubbery T-bone steaks with Mexican rice.
They received an intelligence briefing warning them of the dangers awaiting them in Afghanistan, including ticks, cobras and camel spiders that can run more than 30 mph. Then they marched onto a cavernous cargo plane. Two flights and 7,000 miles later, Mullaney and his men stepped out into the dusty, baking heat of an airbase in Kandahar. It was 128 degrees, in the shade.
In that summer of 2003, Afghanistan had fallen off the front page. Attention had shifted to the war in Iraq. Meanwhile, the Taliban regime that had been toppled by the U.S. invasion following 9/11 was resurgent. Operating from across the border in Pakistan, where Osama bin Laden was suspected to be hiding, Taliban and al-Qaida fighters harassed local villages and Western occupiers.
Mullaney’s Army Ranger training did not cover desert warfare, which had been dropped in 1995. Studying modern military history at West Point, he took just one paragraph of notes on Afghanistan, involving the Russians’ failed experience there in the 1980s.
edmontonsun.com - Alberta - War may hit home harder
-
Vancouver-based Dr. Greg Passey, who diagnosed a local soldier with PTSD in 2001 and served 22 years in the military himself, said he expects 12% to 24% of Afghanistan vets to suffer lingering psychological effects from what they've seen.
Cost of Iraq war could surpass $1 trillion - Martin Wolk: Eye on the Economy - MSNBC.com
-
The most current estimates of the war's cost generally start with figures from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, which as of January 2006 counted $323 billion in expenditures for the war on terrorism, including military action in Iraq and Afghanistan.
National Initiatives: Operation Homecoming - Sample Submissions
-
As of February 1, 2005, more than 800 submissions have been made to Operation
Homecoming by military personnel, their immediate adult family members,
and other eligible program participants. The National Endowment for the
Arts is pleased to present representative submissions in various genres
to demonstrate the nature and quality of their writing.
War experiences to be detailed at Encinitas reading | The San Diego Union-Tribune
-
“I think this book will be the book of a generation,” said Jon Peede, director for Operation Homecoming, a National Endowment for the Arts program aimed at getting U.S. troops and their families to write about their war experiences.
SignOnSanDiego > News > North County > Logan Jenkins -- Ready handkerchiefs for collection of writings on war
-
These hundred or so personal narratives, e-mails, poems and short stories are the distilled result of some 50 workshops conducted by authors the likes of Mark Bowden (“Black Hawk Down”), Tom Clancy (“Clear and Present Danger”), Victor Davis Hanson (“Why the West Has Won”), Bobbie Ann Mason (“In Country”), Tobias Wolff (“In Pharaoh's Army”) and editor Andrew Carroll (“War Letters”), who edited “Operation Homecoming.”
Soldiers who went to build bridges fight for their lives - World - Times Online
-
The Taleban is back – and its bloody return has left British mission in almost daily gun battles
Hidden Combat Wounds: Extensive, Deadly, Costly
-
There have been 53
suicides among service members fighting in Iraq and nine among those fighting
in Afghanistan, as reported in a review of suicide data from 2003 to July 19,
2005
Selected Tags
Related Tags
Sponsored Links
Top Contributors
Groups interested in afghanis...
-
Afghanistan -- Pakistan
This listing will track 'im...
Items: 10 | Visits: 147
Created by: liveinfreedom .
-
Afghanistan: Occupation and Resistance
The continued Western occup...
Items: 697 | Visits: 33
Created by: Max Forte
Diigo is about better ways to research, share and collaborate on information. Learn more »
Join Diigo