Multiple Tours Linked to PTSD

Multiple Tours Linked to PTSD
April 11, 2010
Associated Press

It wasn't his first tour in Iraq, but his second and third when Joe Callan began wondering how long his luck would last - how many more months he could swerve around bombs buried in the dirt and duck mortars raining from the skies.

It was only natural, considering the horrors he'd seen: One buddy killed when a mortar engulfed his tent in flames. A fresh-faced Marine sniper dead (also a mortar) on his first day in Iraq. A 9-year-old Iraqi boy, blood trickling from his head, after he was mistakenly shot by U.S. troops. An Iraqi grandmother collapsing from a heart attack after her home was searched (she later died).

Three tours in four years and Callan wanted out. Out of Iraq, out of the Marines.

"I became numb," he says. "None of it mattered. I just wanted to be home. And that became more intense each time."

When Callan did return to New Mexico, he couldn't sleep. He drank heavily. He had a short fuse. "I knew," he now says, "I was different. But I didn't think it was going to be that bad."


Rest of article at: http://www.military.com/news/article/multiple-tours-linked-to-ptsd.html?col=1186032325324



unhappycamper comment: Will the neocons who started these wars/occupations ever see their day in court for the Weapons of Mass Deception they used on the American people? Runsfield, Feith, Wolfowitz, Cheney and bush are just a few of the nutbags who started this shit.

We've called it all sorts of names but in the end, the more often you sent a soldier to the front, the more likely he/she will have PTSD and the more severe would be the problem. They've known this since WWI.

It was the bushes who blew up the rotation schedules and pretended that Shell Shock did not exist. The President, picked by our Supreme Court and a cowardly AWOL officer with his 7 deferment chicken dick, decided our brave men and women were to be sent back to the front continuously. Easy for the cowards to send the brave into battle over and over and over again.

Sending someone repeatedly back in the meat grinder can have only one result.