Four Years Later, the Fallout of Iraq

Editor's Note: To mark the fifth year of the occupation of Iraq, Truthout will be profiling veterans who served in Iraq, have returned to the US and are trying to adjust to life at home. Our reporters will profile veterans over the next several months in order to put a true face on the occupation. This is an effort to step outside of the beltway coverage revolving around the policies, and focus more on the individuals who have been directly affected physically and emotionally. To date, more than 3,500 US soldiers have been killed in combat and tens of thousands more have been wounded and maimed. Additionally, tens of thousands of US soldiers are battling post-traumatic stress disorder. These are their stories. - Jason Leopold

Four Years Later, the Fallout of Iraq
By Maya Schenwar
t r u t h o u t Report

Thursday 17 January 2008

Joe Wheeler, an Iraq vet who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, says it's criminal to call war a "learning experience."

When Joe Wheeler enlisted in the military in 2000, he was thinking about student loans a whole lot more than about terrorism. He came from a poor family with six siblings and worked his way through college, graduating with about $50,000 unpaid. Two years out of college, he was drowning in expenses. In the pre-9/11 era, at the tail end of ten years of relative peace, Wheeler figured that joining the Army would be a quick route to debt relief and graduate education.

"I was in a pretty dire situation, and I felt like it called for serious action on my part," Wheeler told me in an interview. "I didn't join expecting to go to war."

The plan was to spend a year or two on base and then get on with his life. But just months after he entered basic training, the twin towers fell, and there was no way out for Wheeler. He waited for a year and a half as the fighting intensified and the anxiety built among soldiers on the home front. In that time, Wheeler got over a major case of squeamishness - "I hated the sight of blood," he says - and trained as a medic. He began working his way toward an MBA in business administration, hoping to earn a middle management position at a local company and raise a family. His wife became pregnant. But all the while, the prospect of war sat like a lump at the back of his throat.
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http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/011708J.shtml