In Only We Could Vote Out the Devastating Effects of Bush

As seen in this 15-minute or so PBS NewsHour piece, the effects of Bush and his crew's war in Iraq will not soon diminish (as unfortunately is the case with too many of the problems they put into place while in office--the destructive, unregulated financial industry; inhumane budget priorities; unjust tax policy; etc., etc.). The focus of the piece is on suicide rates among war veterans, and in it James Peake, the Secretary of Veterans Affairs (V.A.), has the gall to claim that the increase in suicide rates may not be due to the effects of war (I sent in a question to the V.A. through an online forum the NewsHour is hosting on the subject, so I'll be interested to see if they respond; answers are supposed to be posted here this Friday the 14th of Nov.).

A veteran who committed suicide, along with his family, are spotlighted in the piece (he's pictured above); the V.A. actually turned him down for the full extent of support he could have received because he could not remember "dates and names" of the casualties in Iraq that were haunting him. His wife says at one point in the piece, something to the effect of how her now-dead husband didn't remember names and dates, he just would just have faces and horrible scenes flash through his mind from his time in Iraq. He had been "fun and caring and giving" beforehand she said, but came home angry--consistently angry to the point that his children became scared of him; this is what war can do to men and women, and woe unto anyone who would so cavalierly send our people into it--and then on top of that, not provide proper benefits afterwards. I could see myself changing in the same ways if I was sent into war, particularly with the multiple deployments that have now become commonplace (the piece notes that those who have gone on three or more deployments have over double the risk of suicide as those who don't). The video of the piece and the transcript are available here.