{"id":5505,"date":"2009-10-06T07:00:53","date_gmt":"2009-10-06T12:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=5505"},"modified":"2009-10-06T10:30:16","modified_gmt":"2009-10-06T15:30:16","slug":"indictment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=5505","title":{"rendered":"Indictment"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over at MPR’s NewsCut, Bob Collins – who seems to have become the online conscience of Minnesota Public Radio News – ably sums up the Travis Hafterson story<\/a><\/p>\n

If the news media here had treated Pvt. Travis Hafterson like a dog, it would’ve been an improvement.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u00a0Hafterson – a 21 year old Marine from Circle Pines – came to Minnesota to seek treatment for crippling post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) contracted, the story goes, while on one of his two tours of duty in Iraq.\u00a0 Unfortunately, he doesn’t seem to have included the Corps in his plans – and so after a crew of volunteer mental health professionals and lawyers got him certified for commitment, a group of Marine Military Police caught up with Hafterson virtually at the door to the treatment center, arresting him for desertion.<\/p>\n

The alternative online news sources around here who fancy themselves the future of journalism — MinnPost, The Uptake, and City Pages, for example — proved that they can shrug their shoulders as well as the big boys. Of all alternative online sources of news, only Rick Kupchella’s new Bring Me the News<\/a> “covered” the story.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Kupchella – a former Channel 11 anchor – has indeed covered the story (Here,<\/a>\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0and here<\/a>).<\/p>\n

And there’s a lot to cover, if you are indeed a discerning, curious news organization.<\/p>\n

PTSD is not something the services like to talk about – especially combat-focused, infantry-heavy services like the Marines.\u00a0 But PTSD and warfare go hand in hand – and the services have always had a hard time walking the line between denial and treatment; George Patton’s infamous slapping incident<\/a> first illustrated the military’s schizophrenia on the subject; in the great scheme of things, it’s hard to tell how much the military has improved its approach (UPDATE:\u00a0 Although, as noted in the comments, they certainly have <\/em>improved it).<\/p>\n

Beyond the obvious?\u00a0 One factor of PTSD is that it seems to occur far less often in troops that see themselves as being in control of their situations.\u00a0 Highly-trained elite troops – like SEALS, Deltas, SAS\/SBS troopers and the like – that tend to be in situations where they control the initiative of their battles, who tend to be “in control” of their combat situations, are observed to be less prone to PTSD than regular troops.\u00a0 On the other hand, troops whose situations don’t <\/em>ooze control have been observed to be more susceptible to PTSD; American “replacement” infantrymen in World War 2, who joined their units alone, usually in the dead of night with no orientation to combat, had frighteningly high psychological as well as physical casualty rates (which was a big part of the reason the US Army dispensed with that system of replacing casualties).<\/p>\n

Given that – does it say something about the nature of the war we’re fighting today?\u00a0 That perhaps just “sending more troops” isn’t the whole answer to Obama’s gathering quagmire in Afghanistan?<\/p>\n

Much more later.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over at MPR’s NewsCut, Bob Collins – who seems to have become the online conscience of Minnesota Public Radio News – ably sums up the Travis Hafterson story If the news media here had treated Pvt. Travis Hafterson like a dog, it would’ve been an improvement. \u00a0Hafterson – a 21 year old Marine from Circle […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-war-on-terror"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5505"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5505\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}