08-10-22: i haven't read the details of the 'veterans bill' that brandon signed today at the end of his liberal love-fest on TV... if it's really focused on aiding veterans that developed respiratory deterioration due to toxin exposure, then GOOD... it may sound silly, or overly dramatic, and not really founded on solid logic or reasoning, but one of the so-called 'moral injury' triggers that i deal with from time to time is that i contributed to toxin exposure, maybe not to the degree of regular burn-pit and oil-well fire exposure, but as combat engineers at the end of gulf war one i can tell you that we blew the sh1t out of tons of munitions and ordnance that were discovered throughout a big chunk of the theater, if i knew that every piece of ordnance that we blew-up was not cleared to be free of toxins--or things that become toxic when they explode--then maybe it wouldn't bug me so much some times, but the short OJT that i had with the local EOD company (when i was hoping to attend their training program), well there were a shit-ton of things that we had to learn about NBC warfare/weapons, more than we had to learn as the e-4 12b that i was, and every detail learned about such weapons is scarier then a stephen king binge watch, times ten... all creative ways to mame or kill people in different lengths of time... different toxins require different delivery systems and methods of intake, explosions/fires of various temps can render certain/some toxins safe, and some of those render little-to-no toxic residue, and some others become air-borne delivered like vapors/gases/micro/nano-particulates... i can tell you that destroying the dictator's military weapons at the end of the war was a fvcking dream come true to combat engineers, we were finally allowed to use our knowledge and creativity with small simple things like c-4, tnt, det-cord and triggering devices... finally!, we weren't just stuck practicing laying out fake mine-fields, we got to use the ordnance that we were familiar with to accomplish a mission of making sure that the back-country was free of fighters and their weapons... if you like lighting-off fireworks you would have loved the opportunity to have participated... it was mostly bunkers full of mines and some of the smaller munitions used in battlefield warfare in the 60's--even though it was the nineties, the iraqi army wasn't armed with very current/sophisticated equipment, and the navy had already softened major targets with cruise missiles, and the pilots already softened just about everything else, so we were more of a clean-up crew really, we met very little resistance riding cross-country in our canvas-covered dump trucks, and our only actually 'fire-fight' was against someone (it only sounded like one individual actually shooting at us) shooting an AK at our convoy when we were supposed to blow a tank-ditch on a border road, just one or two knuckleheads that didn't get the memo that their country lost in zero-minutes flat shooting at us in our ordnance-filled five-ton, those knuckleheads prevented us from executing a real-life battlefield tank ditch with the shape charges and all of the other ordnance that we were sitting on top of in the back of the construction vehicle/dump-truck... anyways, the story is about releasing toxins into the air and knowing that a shit-ton of folks that spent time in the back-country of iraq developed respiratory issues, eye issues, nasal issues... i knew better, but the idea was that most of the bunkers were assumed to be 'booby-trapped', so you can't really inspect the contents of every bunker that was full of weapons, so you 'blow in place', it's sort of fun to blow stuff up like that, but not really the safest thing you could be doing, and especially if you have no background in safety measures and why they are used... the benefit of experience and time says that we would have been better off staying in our masks while we were in the desert, not mop-one or two, or whatever it was... wearing a charcoal-lined suit for such a length of time as to render them useless for their intended use in a very hot part of the world was the wrong kind of over-kill, but keeping the masks on would have been the more logical over-kill if there were to have to be only one... wearing those damn suits for so long really sucked, wearing the masks for that same duration would have equally sucked, but would have protected our eyes and respiratory systems from the toxins and severe amounts of particulates that we breathed-in from just driving around, most of the time it was dusty, and other times the visibility was like a blizzard... anyhow, i'm sure you get the point, i hope so because i have to run. -- ct
08-10-22 later:
so to pick back up on the story of above, small-arms fire was enough to cancel our mission to blow the tank ditch, unless (perhaps) there were more folks around that we couldn't see, but an Apache helicopter sent a rocket or two in their direction, so returning fire was probably futile, but just a reaction, we certainly couldn't do what the Apache did, and frankly, none of our guns worked the first shot returning fire, pretty much all of them had a nasty CPL-desert dust type of residue to deal with, running them dry might have been better since we only used them the one occasion, hindsight... so the good news for our squad was that the shot-ton of ordnance that we were sitting on top of for that particular mission was later used to have fun blowing-up the bunkers and the hanger and that one airfield... the airfield thing was literally and figuratively speaking 'a blast' , there wee four hangers, and each squad in our platoon got one hanger to deal with, we got to use the ordnance that we had to render anything in the hanger useless, with a couple of rules though, 1 - we couldn't blow-up the MIG directly, but if suffered any collateral damage from the main blasts then it was OK... and 2 - we couldn't put a charge directly on the 6 - 8 foot bomb that was on the side of the hanger, it was one that would have been dropped by the mig... they let me get creative with some of the principles that i learned from the EOD folks back in CO, we rolled a 55-gal drum full of some fluid directly under the cockpit, and aimed two opposing shape-charges aimed at it's center... i never heard what kind of damage that the mig suffered, on the squad leader was allowed to go back and look at the damage... i don't remember how we resolved the issue of the huge bomb, i sort of recall that they didn't want to blow from the fuse-well, so i don't know if it actually detonated or not, but what i do remember is that when the brass set-off each hanger one at a time, our's made the biggest boom, not that i'm competitive or anything, but it clearly made the others sound like a fourth of july backyard show, our's shook everything and you could feel it in your soul... i can't even imagine veterans that endured warfare where explosions were going on like that with any regularity, even once is too much for some folks, even the survivors... so the combined stories from both posts are just my way of communicating that i appreciate the government making a concerted effort to help Veterans that developed respiratory issues from toxin exposure, many places didn't have much toxic environment, other places it was probably inescapable... i don't want to come across as a know-it-all, or an expert, but experience and time shape my perspective on this matter... our government sends me letters every so often tell me that they appreciate my service, they show their appreciation by sending me a little bit of money every month, they know that parts of me broke while i was working for them and they take some responsibility for it, many folks have suffered much more devastating injuries than i have while working for 'uncle sam'... i give zero political points for the brandon administration for getting this latest veteran's package together, but i'm glad that the folks who deal with pro-longed and chronic respiratory issues due to toxin exposure during their time of military service, some folks got it pretty bad, i only have the asthma-cough thing, and occasional flare-ups that are related to current environmental irritants, but some guys need steroids and oxygen to function... if you are one of those folks and your served in GW1 then you have my apologies if i contributed to your condition in anyway, i certainly didn't mean to, or try to, but i've dealt with guilt to the degree that it's important for me to write about it... so that's sort of what 'impacted moral grief/injury' sort of sounds like, it's different for individuals that are affected by it... but for those that do, please do yourself a favor and take the time to consider the Christian principle of God forgiving sins, a pretty horrific act of brutality happened to a historical person to help facilitate/illustrate forgiveness... even if you were a complete asshole there is forgiveness for those who recognize that they require it, and have repented... the sacrifice of a proverbial 'unblemished lamb' was instrumental in facilitating the concept of 'forgiveness'... much of today's culture isn't interested in redemption and forgiveness, they would rather use the worse thing that folks might have ever done to dismiss/dissolve any good act or memory of them instead... discerning right from wrong isn't always the easiest thing to do, we all get fooled/burned at some point in our lives, or a couple few times might be more like it... blessings -- ct
08-10-22 later than before: i remember interviewing for one job, they put my in a big fancy office, and i don't know if they forgot about me, or were testing my irritability and patience spectrum... but the thing/vibe that i sort of missed, it was a vibe that i picked-up on after it was waaay too late, one guy that i met with, and i think one other too/two, gave subtle hints which suggested that i turn back, run-away, and never look back over my shoulder... a couple of years and hundreds of bottles of wine utilized for self-medication later, and then i started to get it, it became more clear that those folks weren't threatened by me, they were looking out for my welfare... that's a lesson learned a bit late, but the job was an awesome experience, i learned a bunch about GIS software (geo-spacial analytics), and utilization of the technology/software combined with overlapping demographic information for specific geographies... i know right... very cool... i dunno, i think the learning experience was good, i think i taught the cult-leaders how regular people think, but i could have avoided spending a lot of money on vino if i had only picked-up more on their warning signs, and had run and never looked back... it's a good memory for my resume... small businesses run by families can be pretty weird sometimes, and some more than others, and some for entirely too long... my advice to the reader, try to pick-up on warning signs from folks that interview you as a prospective employee, sometimes you might have to run... i'll have to see/check-in on them and see if they are still in business (UPDATE: they are still in business), they were a command-line product living in a GUI world, such a dilemma... they seemed to purposely keep their technology difficult enough that most folks have to pay for tutoring and processes that include more than one variable, i probably should have run and not looked back over my shoulder, but i met and worked with some very respectable people, but 'the family' didn't appreciate harsh reality and push-back, i really began to understand how big of a mouth and attitude that i have when i realize that i'm dealing with unrealistic/blind fools, i forget where i've come from, and the fact that i still have some ignorant blind-spots in my current state... i should just give my notice or quit when i realize that i'm working for folks that are hypocritical and/or unsustainable and would rather stay in their version of reality than humble a tad and accept truthful criticism... i've required much truthful criticism and beneficial education from being dumm/ignorant/blind/naive/rebellious etc, so i certainly don't present myself as any sort of a know-it-all, i'm far from it and i know/understand that, so, i don't fit in very well with some organizations, the one's with the biggest ignorant spoiled egos, those types of organizations don't really want to improve themselves at all, they just want to grow. -- ct