Martinez off base on PTSD
Submitted by cjmalone on Wed, 08/04/2010 - 10:24pm
N&O Columist Rick Martinez is off base when he says "All veterans are not equal." That's like saying all human beings are not equal in the eyes of the law because some are richer,or smarter, or taller than other human beings.
As a Vietnam veteran I served mostly in rear guard areas as an MP, and would not dare match my experience with soldiers in the jungles. Yet, I saw war, too, and the common denominator for relief now is not the war experiences per se, but the soldiers varying abilities to tolerate whatever they went through. Be they cooks, MPs, grunts or officers, they were in a war zone on behalf of our country, and, in any of those roles, they may have been exposed to a trama that stressed them beyond their abilities to cope. Thus, any evaluation has to be on a case-by-case basis.
Let the affected veterans have a more fair chance to prove PTSD than has been the case and let them be fairly recompensed for their service. The VA will find the fakers easily enough, but let the VA work to find them under the principle of innocent until proven guilty, not the other way around.
I fear this is like wrestling with the tar baby...
The more it's argued the more convoluted it gets. I suspect if there were no lifetime monetary compensation for PTSD, there'd be far fewer claiming PTSD.
Stan Bozarth
Martinez is generally off base about everything
which is why the N&O allows him to spew on their pages. He's a source of red meat for the rabid right, which increasingly the readership they play to.
Do good. Be nice. Have fun.