In my ongoing exposing of the Code Pink organization, I again stood outside Walter Reed Friday night and engaged the faithful followers of irony.

I’m not going to go into detail because not much of what we talked about was anything I haven’t spoken of before. However, a few things struck me as interesting and odd during my conversation with Allison Yorra. It’s these contradictions that I’d like to speak about.

The first and most glaring was a comment Allison made that the insurgents/terrorists were “justified in attacking Americans”. Immediately, my face became contorted and I realized what kind of person I was dealing with. She must have noticed my look because she immediately tried to qualify her statement. She called them freedom fighters. She said they are simply defending their country.

I asked her what they are defending their country from. They had lost the war. Why not just accept that fact like Germany and Japan before them. When I mentioned that if it were true that they are freedom fighters defending their country against our “occupation”, why were they killing each other. Blank stare and shoulder shrug. Exactly, because they’re not freedom fighters. There is no justification in fighting us except that we are Americans and “infidels”. Still, Allison Yorra, Code Pink spokeswoman, said that in effect that it’s okay to kill Americans.

During the course of this conversation another confusing comment was made by this self-described “pacifist”. She asked me to imagine if Washington, D.C. were invaded. Wouldn’t we do the same thing and take up arms and defend ourselves? “I know I would,” she added. Let me repeat that comment because I don’t want anyone to think that I misspoke: “I know I would.” So, the great pacifist spokeswoman of Code Pink would fight to repel an invading force?! I always thought the idea of pacifism was that tie-dye shirts, peace signs, and lack of grooming standards were all that was needed to defeat violence. For the record, Allison didn’t fit that last description Friday night. She was actually dressed quite well in pink and her hair seemed washed and conditioned.

Later, she brought up, seemingly out of the blue, the issue of DU (depleted uranium). She found it hard to believe that we are no longer using the armor piercing rounds. “What are we using then?” Mostly HE (high explosives) I told her. “And white phosphorus,” she quickly added. Notice how the DU comment kind of goes away when confronted with a truth she doesn’t want to admit? I gave her my card and told her to type “white phosphorus” into my search engine and read what I’ve written about white phosphorus. The only thing she even knew about white phosphorus was that it burns skin. Interesting enough, I was frying bacon the other night and some grease jumped up and landed on my forearm. It burnt as well and I’m writing a letter to the UN to ban cooking grease. She just couldn’t believe that white phosphorus was “only” used as an illuminator and smoke screen.

The last comment I want to bring up was her mention of the “phenomenom” of PTSD in our troops and how we’re ruining the futures of these soldiers. I’m going to admit something here for the first time ever, except to handful of people: I suspect I’ve got some form of PTSD myself. It’s very difficult to not see the things we see and do the things we do without it affecting us. However, I have a strong family support structure and faith that I can rely on when I need it and I’m fine. My PTSD is limited to bad dreams every now and then and reacting to loud noises.

For example, as I was driving home from work on my motorcycle Thursday, some mechanics at a garage were playing with Black Cat-type fireworks. They had thrown lit firecrackers into a barrel and they went off as I passed. The sound of the firecrackers mimmicked exactly the sounds of AK-47s during an ambush. I reacted by ducking on my motorcycle and almost swerved before I regained composure. I was instantly angry and wanted to go back and “respond” to the “threat”. However, those guys didn’t know who I was and didn’t do it intentionally so I continued home.

PTSD is not limited to war, however. Survivors of Hurricanes Katrina, Andrew, and other serious storms suffer the effects of PTSD. Rape victims, auto accident victims, 9/11 survivors and family members, and other victims of serious trauma also suffer from PTSD.
According to National Center for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, the most frequently experienced traumas were:

· Witnessing someone being badly injured or killed
· Being involved in a fire, flood, or natural disaster
· Being involved in a life-threatening accident
· Combat exposure

A national study of American civilians conducted in 1995 estimated that the lifetime prevalence of PTSD was 5% in men and 10% in women. A revision of this study done in 2005, reports that PTSD occurs in about 8% of all Americans. The current number of confirmed cases of PTSD in soldiers stands at about 4% for OIF vets. This number comes from the 15,927 of 433,398 soldiers returning from combat that have received a provisional diagnosis for PTSD. To be fair, a total of 36, 893 soldiers have been seen at the Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Centers for mental health conditions, most of which were not classified PTSD. Granted, some soldiers, like myself, prefer to get help through other channels than through the military and therefore don’t report it. Therefore, I’m part of that “30%”.

From the time of Homer’s ancient story of the battle between the Trojans and the Greeks, and the times of the Bible and Shakespeare, military personnel have been confronted by the trauma of war.

Their psychological difficulties have been described as “soldier’s heart” (in the Civil War), “shell shock” (in World War I), or “combat fatigue” (in World War II).

A smaller number, probably about one in twenty World War II veterans, had so much war trauma and so many readjustment difficulties that they now suffer from PTSD.

Numbers seem higher today than in previous wars because “today’s combat veterans face a different situation than veterans of previous wars. The current conflicts mark the FIRST TIME large groups of people have returned from war to find VA and the Defense Department have proven diagnostic and treatment approaches in place.” Still, it is estimated that approximately 30% of soldiers will experience some level of PTSD in their lives.

What this proves is that PTSD is not a good enough reason for Code Pink to be “supporting” me. It does not justify their hatred of President Bush. She tried to bring up the Zogby poll about the 72% of soldiers that polled we should leave Iraq within a year. I told it was wrong – 100% of us want to leave.

There were other similar conversation points she tried to make that I “clarified” for her. The results were always the same. When I struck down her points of contention, she simply moved somewhere else she thought I’d fold. The only thing we agreed on was our foreign policy with regard to Saudi Arabia (16 of 19 9/11 hijackers were Saudi) and Israel. However, she conceded much more than I did.

Oh, and they still don’t have any “Stop The Jihad” signs that I recommended the last time I debated them. As a matter of fact, I had to argue the fact that the jihad is war…war that they don’t condone supposedly. The result of this argument was another, “hmm…I haven’t thought about that.” Of course, you’re too busy finding people who will call soldiers murderers. That’s soldier support for ya [sarcasm]. Maybe next time I go down there, I’ll have some “Stop The Jihad” signs made for them and personally present them to their vigil.