New NYT Series: "War Torn" - Across America, Deadly Echoes Of Foreign Battles

[Hissyspit]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/us/13vets.html?ex=1357880400&en=a38b8fa258d68ade&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

A series of articles and multimedia about veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who have committed killings, or been charged with them, after coming home.

War Torn
Across America, Deadly Echoes of Foreign Battles



By DEBORAH SONTAG and LIZETTE ALVAREZ
Published: January 13, 2008
Late one night in the summer of 2005, Matthew Sepi, a 20-year-old Iraq combat veteran, headed out to a 7-Eleven in the seedy Las Vegas neighborhood where he had settled after leaving the Army.

This particular 7-Eleven sits in the shadow of the Stratosphere casino-hotel in a section of town called the Naked City. By day, the area, littered with malt liquor cans, looks depressed but not menacing. By night, it becomes, in the words of a local homicide detective, “like Falluja.”

Mr. Sepi did not like to venture outside too late. But, plagued by nightmares about an Iraqi civilian killed by his unit, he often needed alcohol to fall asleep. And so it was that night, when, seized by a gut feeling of lurking danger, he slid a trench coat over his slight frame — and tucked an assault rifle inside it.

“Matthew knew he shouldn’t be taking his AK-47 to the 7-Eleven,” Detective Laura Andersen said, “but he was scared to death in that neighborhood, he was military trained and, in his mind, he needed the weapon to protect himself.”

Head bowed, Mr. Sepi scurried down an alley, ignoring shouts about trespassing on gang turf. A battle-weary grenadier who was still legally under-age, he paid a stranger to buy him two tall cans of beer, his self-prescribed treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder.

As Mr. Sepi started home, two gang members, both large and both armed, stepped out of the darkness. Mr. Sepi said in an interview that he spied the butt of a gun, heard a boom, saw a flash and “just snapped.”

In the end, one gang member lay dead, bleeding onto the pavement. The other was wounded. And Mr. Sepi fled, “breaking contact” with the enemy, as he later described it. With his rifle raised, he crept home, loaded 180 rounds of ammunition into his car and drove until police lights flashed behind him.

“Who did I take fire from?” he asked urgently. Wearing his Army camouflage pants, the diminutive young man said he had been ambushed and then instinctively “engaged the targets.” He shook. He also cried.

“I felt very bad for him,” Detective Andersen said.

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[PDJane]

1. and now there's talk of drugging these men and women

to 'desensitise' them to the havoc they have to endure ...and create...under fire and under orders. It may be cheaper in terms of money, but it's not in terms of people and potential.

If we can't deal with the costs of war, in people, in infrastructure, in the environment, it's time to stop.

[annabanana]

2. Dear God that's a heartbreaking story. What are we doing

to these young men & women?

[Hissyspit]

3. .

[babylonsister]

4. Rec'd with horror. We should be throwing the warmongers in jail

for ruining so many lives. :grr:

[swag]

5. el kick.

[Selatius]

6. He did exactly what he was trained to do in combat. He shouldn't be blamed for that.

Those gang bangers, though, they were doing something they weren't supposed to be doing.