Evergreene Digest A Journal of Progress for the Rest of Us

Women in the military are at high risk for exposure to traumatic events (combat and sexual assault), especially during times of war.

Dawne Vogt, PhD, National Center for PTSD

Submitted by Evergreene Digest Contributing Editor Ken Mitchell

Trauma is common in women; five out of ten women experience a traumatic event. Women tend to experience different traumas then men. While both men and women report the same symptoms of PTSD (hyperarousal, reexperiencing, avoidance, and numbing), some symptoms are more common for women or men.

Most early information on trauma and PTSD came from studies of male veterans mostly Vietnam veterans. Researchers began to study the effects of sexual assault and found that women's reactions were similar to male combat veterans. Women's experiences of trauma can also cause PTSD. This finding led to more research on women's exposure to trauma and PTSD.

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No one who supports (The Afghan war) can be aware of any of the following six facts.
Secret files show true Afghanistan war

David Swanson, Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL)

Submitted by Evergreene Digest Contributing Editor Bob Heberle

1. For many months, probably years, at least the second largest and probably the largest source of revenue for the Taliban has been U.S. taxpayers. We are giving the Taliban our money instead of investing it in useful things at home or abroad. Warlord, Inc.: Extortion and Corruption Along the U.S. Supply Chain in Afghanistan, is a report from the Majority Staff of the Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs in the U.S. House of Representatives. The report documents payoffs to the Taliban for safe passage of U.S. goods, payoffs very likely greater than the Taliban's profits from opium, its other big money maker. And this is neither new nor unknown to top U.S. officials. But it must be unknown to Americans supporting the war. You can't support a war where you're funding both sides unless you want both sides to lose. We lock people away for giving a pair of socks to the enemy, while our own government serves as chief financial sponsor.

No one who supports (The Afghan war) can be aware of any of the following six facts.
Secret files show true Afghanistan war

David Swanson, Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL)

Submitted by Evergreene Digest Contributing Editor Bob Heberle

1. For many months, probably years, at least the second largest and probably the largest source of revenue for the Taliban has been U.S. taxpayers. We are giving the Taliban our money instead of investing it in useful things at home or abroad. Warlord, Inc.: Extortion and Corruption Along the U.S. Supply Chain in Afghanistan, is a report from the Majority Staff of the Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs in the U.S. House of Representatives. The report documents payoffs to the Taliban for safe passage of U.S. goods, payoffs very likely greater than the Taliban's profits from opium, its other big money maker. And this is neither new nor unknown to top U.S. officials. But it must be unknown to Americans supporting the war. You can't support a war where you're funding both sides unless you want both sides to lose. We lock people away for giving a pair of socks to the enemy, while our own government serves as chief financial sponsor.

By making our military a league of heroes, we ensure that the brutalizing aspects and effects of war will be played down.  In celebrating isolated heroic feats, we often forget that war is guaranteed to degrade humanity.  “War,” as writer and cultural historian Louis Menand noted, “is specially terrible not because it destroys human beings, who can be destroyed in plenty of other ways, but because it turns human beings into destroyers.”

William Astore, TomDispatch

Consider a strange aspect of our wars since October 2001: they have yet to establish a bona fide American hero, a national household name.  Two were actually “nominated” early by the Bush administration -- Jessica Lynch, a 19-year-old private and clerk captured by the Iraqis in the early days of the American invasion and later “rescued” by Army Rangers and Navy Seals, and Pat Tillman, the former NFL safety who volunteered for service in the Army Rangers eight months after 9/11 and died under “enemy” gunfire in Afghanistan.