Each generations war gets worse on the soldiers! What the hell are we doing folks!! What the hell are we doing ? OMG- what are we allowing to happen !! I don't think medication alone is going to fix this hell for these folks.

Love Letters Just Aren’t The Same

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/repor...etters_from_u_s


WASHINGTON—According to a Pentagon report leaked to the press Monday, love letters written by U.S. troops have nearly tripled in their use of disturbing language, graphic imagery, and horrific themes since the start of the war.
The report, which studied 600 romantic notes sent over a period of two years, found a significant increase in terrifying descriptions of violence and gore, while references to beautiful flowers, singing bluebirds, and the infinite, undulating sea were seen to decrease by 93 percent.
“Not only are U.S. soldiers stationed in Iraq less likely to compare their lover’s cheeks to a blushing red rose,” the report read in part, “but most are now three times more likely to equate that same burning desire to the ’smoldering flesh of a dead Iraqi insurgent,’ and almost 10 times more likely to compare sudden bursts of passion to a ‘crowded marketplace explosion.’”
According to detailed analysis of the letters, the longer a U.S. soldier had been stationed in Iraq the more macabre the overall tone of his correspondence became. Troops who had been fighting for less than a year lapsed into frightening allegory only 15 percent of the time, while those who had been serving between two and three years described their affection for loved ones back home as more vibrant and alive than any of the children in the village of Basra.
Troops stationed in Iraq for four years or longer composed their letters entirely in blood.
“The more often U.S. soldiers are confronted with images of carnage, the more these elements become present in their subconscious and, ultimately, in their writing,” said Dr. Kendra Allen, a behavioral psychologist who reviewed the Pentagon’s findings. “This is precisely why we see so many passages like, ‘Darling, I miss the way your bright green eyes always stayed inside your skull’ and ‘Honey, how I dream of your soft, supple arms—both of them, still attached as ever, to the rest of your body.’”
Allen went on to say that many of the harrowing details found in the love letters were linked to specific events in Iraq. A bloody clash with Islamic extremists in late March resulted in more than 40 handwritten notes from a single battalion, all of which contained some version of the message “My love for you spills out of me like my lower intestine, my gallbladder, and my spleen.”
The most noticeable change came after a violent border skirmish in May that left four U.S. soldiers dead and dozens more severely injured. Since the incident, a number of letters, which had previously signed off with “Yours forever,” instead ended with “Please God, deliver me from this nightmarish hellhole! The screaming—it never stops! Christ, I beg you, make it all go away! Make the parade of blood and pain and tears go away!”
A number of wives and fiancées of servicemen in Iraq, many of whom are now unsure how to reply to their partners abroad, provided personal accounts of how the tone of their correspondence has changed.
“Getting love letters from my husband used to be my favorite part of the week. But these days, they’re almost impossible to get through,” said Sheila Miller, whose husband, Michael, has been in Iraq since 2004. “Yes, it’s still flattering to be told that you’re as beautiful as a syringe full of morphine, or that you’re as much a part of his being as the shrapnel near his spine. But I’m really starting to worry about him.”
“My husband has never really been the romantic type, but even this is strange for him,” said Margaret Baker, the wife of Sgt. Daniel Baker. “How am I supposed to react to hearing that my name is the sweetest sound in a world otherwise filled with desperate cries of anguish? I made the mistake of showing [daughter] Gracie the birthday card her father sent her from Tikrit and she hasn’t spoken for a month.”
In response to the damaging report, Defense Secretary Robert Gates spoke on behalf of the thousands of soldiers on active duty in the Middle East, saying the study’s findings were “misrepresented” and any rise in horrific metaphors and similes was in no way related to the situation in Iraq.
“I’ve been to our bases overseas and let me be the first to tell you that conditions in Iraq are the best they’ve ever been,” Gates announced at a press conference Friday. “In fact, I would go so far as to say that we’re making as much progress here as, say, an army private who accidentally falls on a land mine, and instead of choosing to die in the middle of the road like some dog, drags his bleeding trunk—inch by throbbing inch—to the side of a nearby ditch.”
Added Gates, “It’s that good.”[color="#FF0000"][/color]

Nice post yankeerose



(RE:The letter)
Just my 2 cents worth ,if you were a soldier ,the last thing in the world you would want is to be upsetting your family,so i am sorry to say it but i believe that letter is a fake,no one would send something like that to the mother of there children,no matter how bad it was in the warzone.

Yes, You are correct Sir . the first clue would be that it's from the Onion , Well known for this kind of shenanigan

Love Todays Headline.

Normally, when one peels back an onion, it may make them cry.

However, when one peels back "The Onion", laughter often ensues.

Yes, the letter is obviously mocked up. Photoshop strikes again.

How did the Pentagon come to be in possession of 600 confidential Love letteres, in the first Place?


This post has been edited by DSTM: Jun 9 2008, 11:51 PM

Uh, you aren't keeping up very well, DSTM -

it is a satire from "The Onion" website.

DSTM,
While doing my time overseas, all my letters were sensored.
Not many guys I knew ever got a letter out without someone proof reading it.
Maybe some of the guys who had been in country longer than I got to send their mail without having a platoon sargent proof read it or a company commander call you to office for something you wrote, but the U.S. Mail and the serviceman was never sent anywhere without knowing what they were going to say or do.
This then brings to question whether or not these letters were ever written and sent home with such descriptive thoughts of love.
I too must question this, but let me tell you this:
there are some guys still living in Vietnam and it's not because they got the "black syph", and they're not MIA!
If such letters were ever written, then I would bet they never got home. (though an occasional depressed letter might get through)
But yet I could believe that such letters would have found their way into the hands of the pentagon.
Now for all of you who would make light of this subject I say only this;
"You don't know a damn thing about what these guys in Iraq are going through, so on their behalf:
SHUT THE HELL UP!"
I know many of them are suffering beyond your wildest imagination and they would appreciate if you just kept your mouths shut, they don't need any of your imput about what they are saying or writing and you are not making their lives any easier by writing it off to some satire!
These are guys who are need of serious help from serious people and they don't need your joking around or your excuses.
Even if it was only one letter. As I'm sure that could have happened.

That letter was a concocted farce, pure and simple.

I'm sad to see this discussion digress to this point.

This thread is closed.