I am Not Opposed to War.
Instead I am Opposed to Unnecessary Wars. i.e., Iraq & Afghanistan, Vietnam, Bay of Pigs.
Staff Sgt. Robert Bales served in Iraq & Afghanistan. He Suffered from Severe PTSD as a Result of 4 Deployments, Brain & Foot Injuries. Part of his foot had to be amputated.
It is believed Bales recently Killed 16 Afghan Civilians while on Duty at an Outpost Base in Afghanistan.
Abel Gutierrez was also an Iraq War Veteran. He also Suffered from Severe PTSD.
Gutierrez recently Murdered his 11-Yr old Sister, Mother than Committed Suicide.
After Selfless Sacrifice & laying their lives on the line for ALL American Citizens, Men like Staff Sgt. Robert Bales & Abel Gutierrez are now being Unfairly Judged by people in the Media who NEVER served one day in the U.S. Military or in a Combat Zone.
Whatever happened to Patriotism?
Where is the Gratitude for our Men & Women who Serve in the U.S. Military?
I believe Bales is being Unfairly Judged because some people within the Federal Gov't want to use him as an Example to prove something to Afghanistan President Karzai.
Gutierrez is being Unfairly Judged because he's Hispanic, plain & simple.
This Troubles Me Immensely!
Its another Vietnam all over again.
After Drafting American Males ages 17 to 35, then Sending them to War to Vietnam & Cuba, upon their return they were treated like DIRT!
Although the Men & Women serving in the 21st Century U.S. Military were NOT Drafted they still served their Country.
Yet they are being treated like DIRT!
Thousands of Men & Women are returning home from Iraq & Afghanistan, Suffering from PTSD, yet the Federal Gov’t is Refusing to Treat them or Give them Disability Benefits.
This is NOT right!
Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome is NOT some Phony Illness Human Beings can just make up out of the blue to receive Government Checks.
Its a REAL Mental & Physical Disease caused by Shock & Trauma.
PTSD is Not a New Mental Disease.
The Federal Gov't (Pentagon, CIA) has known about PTSD & and it affects on Soldiers for decades.
Men who served in World War 2, Vietnam & in the Bay Of Pig Wars All Suffered from PTSD.
So why is the Military & Federal Gov't choosing NOT to provide Proper Treatment & Counseling for Men & Women Suffering from this Illness?
Is it about Money or Saving Human Lives from Suicide?
What's worth more?
Providing Proper Treatment & Disability Checks until these Soldiers are Well enough to continue living Normal Lives or....
Suicide???
In fact, whenever a Service Member Suffering from PTSD Commits Suicide, the Federal Gov’t does NOT want to give their Survivors Life Insurance Money.
This is NOT right either.
As the 2012 Elections approach, Our Service Members are even being used as Pawns to help win those Elections.
Let's Please Continue Praying For Our Men & Women Serving In The U.S. Military.
Friends praise Sgt. Bales, but his past is dark
Bypassed for a promotion and struggling to pay for his house, Robert Bales was eyeing a way out of his job at a Washington state military base months before he allegedly gunned down 16 civilians in an Afghan war zone, records and interviews showed as a deeper picture emerged Saturday of the Army sergeant's financial troubles and brushes with the law.
While Bales, 38, sat in an isolated cell at Fort Leavenworth, Kan.'s military prison Saturday, classmates and neighbors from suburban Cincinnati, Ohio, remembered him as a "happy-go-lucky" high school football player who took care of a special needs child and watched out for troublemakers in the neighborhood.
CBS News correspondent White Johnson reports that, in Lake Tapps, Wash., where he and his family have a home, neighbors still can't believe the 11-year veteran is accused of mass murder.
"I'm shocked. I'm completely shocked," said Kassie Holland. "He was always happy. Happy guy, full of life. I really wouldn't expect it."
"A good guy, got put in the wrong place at the wrong time," said Paul Wohlberg.
But court records and interviews show that the Army veteran -- with a string of commendations for good conduct after four tours in Iraq and Afghanistan -- had joined the Army after a Florida investment job went sour, had a Seattle-area home condemned, struggled to make payments on another and failed to get a promotion or a transfer a year ago.
His legal troubles included charges that he assaulted a girlfriend and, in a hit-and run accident, ran bleeding in military clothes into the woods, court records show. He told police he fell asleep at the wheel and paid a fine to get the charges dismissed, the records show.
Military officials say that after drinking on a southern Afghanistan base, Bales crept away on March 11 to two slumbering villages overnight, shooting his victims and setting many of them on fire. Nine of the 16 killed were children and 11 belonged to one family.
"This is some crazy stuff if it's true," Steve Berling, a high school classmate, said of the revelations about the father of two known as "Bobby" in his hometown of Norwood, Ohio.
Bales hasn't been charged yet in the shootings, which have endangered complicated relations between the U.S. and Afghanistan and threatened to upend U.S. policy over the decade-old war.
His former platoon leader said Saturday Bales was a model soldier inspired by 9/11 to serve who saved lives in firefights on his second of three Iraq missions.
"He's one of the best guys I ever worked with," said Army Capt. Chris Alexander, who led Bales on a 15-month deployment in Iraq.
"He is not some psychopath. He's an outstanding soldier who has given a lot for this country."
But pressing family troubles were hinted at by his wife, Kari, on multiple blogs posted with names like The Bales Family Adventures and BabyBales. A year ago, she wrote that Bales was hoping for a promotion or a transfer after nine years stationed at Joint Base Lewis-McChord outside Tacoma, Wash.
"We are hoping to have as much control as possible" over the future, Kari Bales wrote last March 25. "Who knows where we will end up. I just hope that we are able to rent our house so that we can keep it. I think we are both still in shock."
After Bales lost out on a promotion to E7 -- a first-class sergeant -- the family hoped to go to either Germany, Italy or Hawaii for an "adventure," she said. They hoped to move by last summer; instead the Army redeployed his unit -- the 2nd Infantry Division of the 3rd Stryker Brigade, named after armored Stryker vehicles -- to Afghanistan.
It would be Bales' fourth tour in a war zone. He joined the military two months after 9/11 and spent more than three years in Iraq during three separate assignments since 2003. His attorney said he was injured twice in Iraq -- once losing part of his foot -- but his 20 or so commendations do not include the Purple Heart, given to soldiers wounded in combat.
Alexander said Bales wasn't injured while he oversaw him during their deployment -- Bales' second in Iraq. He called Bales a "very solid" officer who didn't have more difficulty than his fellow soldiers with battlefield stress. Bales shot at a man aiming a rocket-propelled grenade at his platoon's vehicle in Mosul, Iraq, sending the grenade flying over the vehicle.
"There's no doubt he saved lives that day," Alexander said. The charges he killed civilians is "100 percent out of character for him," he said.
Bales always loved the military and war history, even as a teenager, said Berling, who played football with him in the early 1990s on a team that included Marc Edwards, a future NFL player and Super Bowl champion with the New England Patriots.
"I remember him and the teacher just going back and forth on something like talking about the details of the Battle of Bunker Hill," he said. "He knew history, all the wars."
Bales exulted in the role once he finally achieved it. Plunged into battle in Iraq, he told an interviewer for a Fort Lewis base newspaper in 2009 that he and his comrades proved "the real difference between being an American as opposed to being a bad guy."
Bales joined the Army, Berling said, after studying business at Ohio State University -- he attended three years but didn't graduate -- and handled investments before the market downturn pushed him out of the business. Florida records show that Bales was a director at an inactive company called Spartina Investments Inc. in Doral, Fla.; his brother, Mark Bales, and a Mark Edwards were also listed as directors.
"I guess he didn't like it when people lost money," Berling said.
He was struggling to keep payments on his own home in Lake Tapps, a rural reservoir community about 35 miles south of Seattle; his wife asked to put the house on the market three days before the shootings, real estate Philip Rodocker said.
"She told him she was behind in our payments," Rodocker told The New York Times. "She said he was on his fourth tour and it was getting kind of old and they needed to stabilize their finances."
The house was not officially put on the market until Monday; on Tuesday, Rodocker said, Bales' wife called and asked to take the house off the market, talking of a family emergency.
Bales and his wife bought the Lake Tapps home in 2005, according to records, for $280,000; it was listed this week at $229,000. Overflowing boxes were piled on the front porch, and a U.S. flag leaned against the siding.
The sale may have been a sign of financial troubles. Bales and his wife also own a home in Auburn, about 10 miles north, according to county records, but abandoned it about two years ago, homeowners' association president Bob Baggett said. Now signs posted on the front door and window by the city warn against occupying the house.
"It was ramshackled," Baggett said. "They were not dependable. When they left there were vehicles parts left on the front yard...we'd given up on the owners."
The diverging portrait of the sergeant rippled across the country on Saturday.
"It's our Bobby. He was the local hero," said Michael Blevins, who grew up down the street from him in Norwood, Ohio. The youngest of five boys respected older residents, admonished troublemakers and loved children, even helping another boy in the area who had special needs.
In Washington state, court records showed a 2002 arrest for assault on a girlfriend. Bales pleaded not guilty and was required to undergo 20 hours of anger management counseling, after which the case was dismissed.
A separate hit-and-run charge was dismissed in Sumner, Wash.'s municipal court three years ago, according to records. It isn't clear from court documents what Bales hit; witnesses saw a man in a military-style uniform, with a shaved head and bleeding, running away.
When deputies found him in the woods, Bales told them he fell asleep at the wheel. He paid about $1,000 in fines and restitution and the case was dismissed in October 2009.
Dan Conway, a military attorney who represented one of four Lewis-McChord soldiers convicted in the deliberate killings of three Afghan civilians in 2010, said whether legal scrapes affect a soldier's career depends in part on whether they prompt the Army to issue administrative penalties. The punishments are typically recorded in official personnel files.
Over the past decade, Conway said, the military has sometimes been lax in administering such punishments. As a result, soldiers who might be bad apples sometimes remain in service longer than they otherwise might have.
"It's something you want to note," Conway said. "The best predictor of future violence is past violence."
Bales' lawyer, John Henry Browne of Seattle, said he didn't know if his client had been suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder at the time of the shootings, but said it could be an issue at trial if experts believe it's relevant.
He also said Friday he didn't know if his client had been drinking the night of the massacre. Browne didn't return telephone calls on Saturday. His legal team has said Browne will be meeting with Bales at Fort Leavenworth next week.
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Sources: AP, ABC News, CBS News, Daily Mail, Google Maps
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