IVAW in your hometown

Yesterday, a young soldier home on leave to his hometown for the holiday season found this article in his local newspaper;

Iraq War veterans Aaron Hughes of Chicago, Scott Kimble of Champaign, and Brock McIntosh of Normal spoke about Operation Recovery, which opposes sending troops with PTSD, Traumatic Brain Injury, and Military Sexual Trauma back into battle. Operation Recovery insists that traumatized veterans have the right to heal.

“I think it’s morally abhorrent to send mentally traumatized soldiers back to battle where they use heavy weapons and armor,” McIntosh said. “Many of these soldiers are on psychotropic drugs and are a danger to themselves, to fellow soldiers and everyone else.”

Twenty percent of troops deployed repeatedly have PTSD, Hughes said. Suicide rates among active-duty troops are twice as high as that of the civilian population, and veterans with PTSD are six times more likely to attempt suicide, according to the IVAW.

Hughes said that Military Sexual Trauma is a major problem for female soldiers, one third of them suffering sexual assault. Ninety percent of women soldiers seeking help from the Veterans Administration report sexual assault from fellow soldiers, he said.

“Women have to go to their commander to prove their case first,” Hughes explained, and often their complaints are dismissed. “Women are expected to return and serve with the same soldiers who assaulted them,” he said. The actual number of cases of MST is difficult to verify, as many sexual assaults go unreported. According to a 2004 study cited by the Service Women’s Action Network, 71 percent of women veterans seeking help from the VA had been sexually assaulted.

The young trooper, after writing to Blackfive (who forwarded the email to us) fired off this letter to the author of the article;

I hope this email finds you well. I just finished reading your article on the IVAW members who recently visited Springfield. I’m currently serving on active duty in the US Army, and from their description of my Army I would hardly recognize it. I noticed you did attempt to do a little fact checking in the article, but if you did more you would note some more inconsistencies between statements made by Hughes, Kimble, and McIntosh, and actual facts. I think I’m most disturbed by Mr. Hughes unchallenged assertion that sexual assault victims have to go to their commanders first to prove their case, and they are usually brushed off at that level. If you consult the Army’s Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Program information at www.sexualassault.army.mil you would realize this is not the case at all. To allow his assertion to make it to publication, and as a result painting our military as a group that is focused on sweeping rape under the rug, is just plain irresponsible reporting. Another statistic stated by Mr. Hughes is that the suicide rate among the military is twice that of the general population. 2009 was the worst year recorded for suicides in the Army. Unfortunately in 2009 we lost 160 Soldiers to suicide. That is 160 Soldiers out of an Army force of 1,156,616 which translates into a rate of 13.8 per every 100,000. In 2007 according to the National Institute of Mental Health the general population suicide rate was 11.3 per every 100,000. In our worst year on record, we came nowhere close to having a rate double that of the general public, and yet again his false claim goes unresearched, unchallenged, and even worse, published. There are more things in there claims that don’t pass the smell test, but these two are the easiest to show to you this morning. Please, in the future, be a responsible journalist and check claims, facts, and statistics before publishing them.

The author wrote back;

Woops. I will pass this on to my editor. Thanks for responding with this information. Where are you stationed?I appreciate your email.

Ginny

Whoops, indeed Ginny. Her editor responded;

Ginny Lee forwarded to me your letter to her regarding the Veterans Against the War article. We would like to publish this or a similar letter in our print edition next week. To do so we need your town or city, as well as any other credentials you may want to list. I look forward to hearing from you.

Fletcher Farrar

A letter? Really? Do more people read the letter section than the features?

Aaron Hughes has been around IVAW a long time. He served in the Illinois National Guard and he was deployed at one point. However, he’s been back to Iraq twice (once with TJ “Stolen Diploma” Buonomo and once with Geoff “Stolen Valor” Millard) sponsored by US Labor Against War.

Sarah Lazare, who organized the event in her parents’ home, has been beating the same drum for over a year, evidenced by the article she wrote for al Jazeera last year. She’s a project coordinator for Courage to Resist, and organization that helps military members desert and abscond to Canada – so you really have to wonder why she’s so interested in a mental health program. Lazare has never been in the military, but she sure acts like she knows what’s going on, doesn’t she?

I also noticed that IVAW membership is up to 2000 despite the precipitous decline we’ve watched over the last year. I guess it’s harder to quit IVAW than it is to quit the mafia.

Good on this young trooper for embarrassing the author with her editor, shame on the author for not doing her research. I guess it’s up to us veterans to police our local media.

Category: Antiwar crowd, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Media, Military issues, Veterans Issues