Trauma in Iraq leads to drama in Oregon

If you think for a second that soap operas are more interesting than what is happening right here in this country with our veterans, you are really missing a lot.

The audience for soap operas is
By the Numbers
Total Ratings for All Shows
16.1
+0.600 from last week
according to www.soapcentral.com

It's an easy guess that there are not 16.1 million people in this country with any kind of knowledge about what is really going on when the men and women we sent into Iraq and Afghanistan come home. So few are even interested since they have their own problems. That is a very sad statement to make. While we have our own problems, we need to remember they do too on top of leaving their families to go where we send them and do what they are told to do.

There is not a soap opera or movie out there that can come close to comparing with the drama they live with everyday. Reality TV could only dream about coming up with a show that reflects their lives. It's really doubtful there are more interesting people in this country and not many more deserving of our attention.

Read this story and the next time you turn on a soap notice what the characters lack and what you're missing from real lives.

Trauma in Iraq leads to drama in Oregon
By Julie Sullivan, The Oregonian
October 31, 2009, 3:00PM

JOHN DAY -- Later, after the defense attorney wept and the judge put away his robe and the jurors drove home in the fading light, the consequences of war hung over this town of 1,845 like wood smoke on an autumn eve.

Fourteen months earlier, a young woman lay down with a terrible burden. She was pregnant. Her fiancé, Jessie Bratcher, was so thrilled he kissed the home pregnancy test kit. He researched how a baby develops and what the mother should eat.

But Celena Davis was not sure the child was his.

As Bratcher sat on the foot of their bed, she told him that two months earlier, she had been raped.

The Iraq veteran dropped to his knees and cried. Bratcher went to the living room and put the barrel of an AK-47 in his mouth, then stopped. He grabbed scissors and cut off half of Celena's long dark hair. They stayed up all night. When she complained of cramps, he walked her to the hospital at 6 a.m., so tense that nurses shooed him away.

War has changed the Oregon Army National Guard, which has deployed troops on 8,400 tours in Iraq and Afghanistan since 9/11. It turned the state's emergency volunteers into combat veterans.

read more here

http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2009/10/post_25.html