Our Marines: Ridden Hard & Put Away Wet
Now here’s a touchy subject — recently there’s been spate of suicides by Marines who have just returned home from Iraq and Afghanistan. But here’s the really touchy part: These suicides have all taken place on stateside Marine bases. One Marine recently escaped from a hospital at Camp Lejeune, got hold of a gun somehow and shot himself right there on the base. And another Marine at Quantico jumped in front of a train.
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Now here’s a touchy subject — recently there’s been spate of suicides by Marines who have just returned home from Iraq and Afghanistan. But here’s the really touchy part: These suicides have all taken place on stateside Marine bases. One Marine recently escaped from a hospital at Camp Lejeune, got hold of a gun somehow and shot himself right there on the base. And another Marine at Quantico jumped in front of a train.
However, the Marine high command at these bases is fully aware of this problem and is doing something about it. According to one official Marine publication, “Suicide is the second leading cause of death in the Marine Corps. Even one death by suicide is too many. It is a tragic and preventable loss, causing untold grief to loved ones and units, and is of highest concern to the public, legislators, the Commandant, and all Marines. In addition, suicide and suicidal behavior at all levels can take a tremendous toll on the readiness and resources of the unit involved. For all these reasons, suicide awareness, prevention, and intervention must be of highest priority to all Marines, and especially Marine leaders.”
Returning troops at the major stateside Marine bases are now being routinely shown training films and PowerPoint presentations regarding how to deal with suicidal tenancies — but still. You gotta be pretty damn desperate to jump in front of a train. How many more of our Marines are that desperate? And if so, how did they get that way?
Here’s my personal opinion, based on time spent in Iraq embedded with the Marines. I may be wrong about this, but here it is. “American Marines compose the finest fighting force EVER. Forget about Romans and Spartans. Our guys are the best.” So what happened? Why all the suicides? “Because our Marines are being stretched far too thin. American Marines are being asked to defend the interests of an international corporate structure that has its octopus-like tentacles spread out all over the entire globe. That’s far too much territory to expect even our fabulous Marines to defend.”
But what inflames me even more is that the international corporate structures that our Marines are so gallantly defending aren’t even American corporations! Perhaps one day long ago they USED to be American corporations — but that was back in the days before outsourcing.
Our Marines are being asked to stick their fingers in [dams] all over the world so that wealthy international corporations all over the world can reap the profits. It’s not even Americans who are reaping the profits any more. No wonder our Marines are so stretched. They are daily and constantly fighting the never-ending battles of Endless War so that men who owe NO allegiance to America — or American workers or American Marines either — can make grossly disproportional profits off of others’ pain.
Our Marines are being ridden hard and put away wet so that corporations who don’t even pay taxes in America can still have their billionaire bottom lines protected.
And our Marines do this, day after day, year after year, serving hard time in places like Iraq and Afghanistan and Kenya. And WHY do they keep doing it? Because they are Marines — the best fighting force EVER. And our Marines’ abilities are not only being wasted by being spread too thin throughout the world to the point that when (not if) we will someday need them here at home, there may well be too few of them left to defend America proper and it will be too late.
The international corporations benefit from our Marines’ presence. And the Marine Corps pays the price. And, apparently, individual Marines are paying an even greater price. This fractured practice of using and misusing our Marines has just got to stop.
PS: According to the Jacksonville Daily News, “Camp Lejeune Marines…in the aftermath of the death of a colleague who shot himself during a police chase aboard base Monday said instead of the needed psychiatric treatment they sought they were given a cocktail of antidepressants and sent back to work.” Yes, nine long years of constant war does have a tendency to grind our troops down. Even World War II didn’t last that long.
And we may have unearthed just the tip of the iceberg here. According to Jacksonville’s <www.jdnews.com>, “A total of 48,086 mental health related visits for all Naval Hospital clinics aboard Camp Lejeune were recorded in fiscal year 2009. In fiscal year 2010, there have been 26,609 mental health related visits through March 31, said Lt.j.g. Tony Skrypek, department head for TRICARE Operations at Naval Hospital.”
Also, according to Salon magazine, PTSDs may still not be getting properly treated at Camp Lejuene — despite all the recent PowerPoint presentations going on. “Internal documents and e-mails show that Navy officials unfavorably doctored a psychiatrist’s performance record after he blew the whistle on what he said was dangerously inept management of care for Marines suffering combat stress at Camp Lejeune, N.C.” <http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2010/01/31/camp_lejeune>
PSS: And here’s a quote from my usually reliable Marine Mom source: “I’ve heard several Marines say that Afghanistan is the ‘Worst place on earth’. So instead of sending our Marines out to fight in the countryside over there, let’s start sending out the Afghan Army and Afghan police troops that we have been training for approximately 10 years — and leave the U.S. troops back on base.”
Washington Wheeler-Dealer Cut His Teeth On Corruption
The nation hardly notice when Bobby Baker, the poster boy for political corruption, got out of prison on June 2, 1972.
The nation hardly notice when Bobby Baker, the poster boy for political corruption, got out of prison on June 2, 1972.
The Washington insider the press nicknamed “Lyndon’s boy” did not hail from Texas, as many misinformed Americans presumed, but from South Carolina. Sent to Capitol Hill as a senate page at the impressionable age of 14, the ambitious errand boy cut his teeth on corruption.
When Lyndon Johnson moved up a congressional rung in 1949, Baker already was a smooth operator with seven years experience at satisfying senators’ every need. “Bobby was the man you called,” a contemporary remembered candidly. “He had the head count. He knew who was drunk, who was out of town and who was unreachable. He knew who was against a bill and why. Bobby was it.”
Hitching his star to LBJ’s, Baker rose to prominence right alongside the powerful Texan. The selection of Johnson in 1955 as majority leader by senate Democrats automatically landed the plum post of majority secretary for his subordinate.
After LBJ traded his senate seat for the vice-presidency six years later, Baker reported to his reclusive replacement. Unlike Johnson, who always kept the wheeler-dealer on a short leash and out of serious trouble, Sen. Mike Mansfield gave him free rein to do as he pleased.
For Baker that meant drinking his fill at the public trough. By the fall of 1963, he had his sticky fingers in a score of lucrative pies that included a law firm, travel agency, housing developments and a Maryland resort which catered to the Potomac power brokers.
Baker bought a townhouse for his mistress, who doubled as his secretary, and a $124,000 mansion for his wife and five children. Not bad for a government worker with a modest annual income of $19,612.
The bubble finally burst in October 1963. A disgruntled business partner sued the influence peddler for reneging on a promise to install thousands of vending machines in defense installations. Baker quickly resigned in the faint hope of staying out of the slammer.
But a squeaky clean senator insisted upon putting his crooked affairs under the microscope. A subsequent investigation complete with sensational disclosures coincided with the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the elevation to the Oval Office of Lyndon Baines Johnson.
At a January 1964 press conference, LBJ admitted receiving a six hundred-dollar stereo from Baker but characterized the gift as an innocent exchange of presents. Later that month, he emphatically denied the ex-aide was ever his “protégé” and added, “He was there before I came to the senate for ten years, doing substantially the same job. He was elected by all the senators.”
But past statements that hinted at a much closer relationship came back to haunt the president. “If I’d had a son, Bobby, I would want him to be just like you,” was undoubtedly the most damaging quotation dug up by reporters. A glowing tribute to Baker on the senate floor in August 1957, during which the Texan ranked him as “one of my most trusted, most loyal and most competent friends,” also proved embarrassing.
The Republican challenger tried hard to make a campaign issue out of the incumbent’s ties with Baker, but voters could not have cared less. Seventy-three percent interviewed for an April 1964 poll said the scandal had not tarnished their opinion of the president, and three percent even indicated they thought more highly of him.
LBJ rode out the storm and buried Barry Goldwater at the polls in November. For Baker, however, the worst was yet to come. A federal grand jury indicted him in January 1966 on nine felonies ranging from theft to income tax evasion.
A year later almost to the day, the balding boy wonder went on trial. Even though he faced a maximum punishment of 48 years behind bars and $47,000 in fines, he loved the limelight. When a stranger asked for directions to the highly publicized proceedings, Baker bubbled, “Right in there!”
At the heart of the government’s case was a six-figure bribe the defendant solicited in 1962. California savings and loan executives owned up to the illegal $100,000 “contribution,” and Baker admitted taking the money. The question for the jury to decide was whether he pocketed the cash, as the prosecutor claimed, or delivered the bundle to Sen. Robert Kerr of Oklahoma.
The wealthy Sooner had since gone to this reward. So it was Baker’s word against the reputation of a dead politician staunchly defended by family, friends and senate colleagues. To no one’s surprise, the verdict was a clean sweep for the prosecution.
In spite of his conviction on all counts, the judge gave the white-collar criminal the customary slap on the wrist. After serving 17 months of a three-year sentence, Bobby Baker faded into richly deserved obscurity where he remains today at the age of 81.
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