Across America, Deadly Echoes of Foreign Battles

Across America, Deadly Echoes of Foreign Battles
By DEBORAH SONTAG and LIZETTE ALVAREZ
Published: January 13, 2008

Late one night in the summer of 2005, Matthew Sepi, a 20-year-old Iraq combat veteran, headed out to a 7-Eleven in the seedy Las Vegas neighborhood where he had settled after leaving the Army.

This particular 7-Eleven sits in the shadow of the Stratosphere casino-hotel in a section of town called the Naked City. By day, the area, littered with malt liquor cans, looks depressed but not menacing. By night, it becomes, in the words of a local homicide detective, “like Falluja.”

Mr. Sepi did not like to venture outside too late. But, plagued by nightmares about an Iraqi civilian killed by his unit, he often needed alcohol to fall asleep. And so it was that night, when, seized by a gut feeling of lurking danger, he slid a trench coat over his slight frame — and tucked an assault rifle inside it.

“Matthew knew he shouldn’t be taking his AK-47 to the 7-Eleven,” Detective Laura Andersen said, “but he was scared to death in that neighborhood, he was military trained and, in his mind, he needed the weapon to protect himself.”

~snip~

The New York Times found 121 cases in which veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan committed a killing in this country, or were charged with one, after their return from war. In many of those cases, combat trauma and the stress of deployment — along with alcohol abuse, family discord and other attendant problems — appear to have set the stage for a tragedy that was part destruction, part self-destruction.


Rest of article at: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/us/13vets.html?_r=1&hp=&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1200219165-5iCmObaHLJaOb3ly1K8ndQ

:hi:

and haven't received many responses. Hopefully, the article will get attention anyway.

"The Army has recently developed a course called “Battlemind Training,” intended to help soldiers make the psychological transition back into civilian society. 'In combat, the enemy is the target,' the course material says. 'Back home, there are no enemies.'"

That'a an intellectual approach that is not going to work.