What is Wounded Times?

What is Wounded Times?
by Kathie Costos
Wounded Times Blog
March 2, 2013

Yesterday I had an interesting conversation with a lawyer looking for some more information on a story he found on Wounded Times. I told him what he wanted to know and when I thought he was ready to hang up, he asked me what this blog was all about. I figured it was a good time to remind people in case they forgot.

Everyone knows about Stars and Stripes, Army Times, Marine Corps Times, Navy Times, Air Force Times and Military.com but while these sites are really great, they don't cover everything and too many news reports end up getting lost under the big news stories. That's just the way it is.

When I started out in the 90's working online, I had to search for too many hours doing research on PTSD but these searches ended up linking me to story after story about veterans I wouldn't have known otherwise. I decided to do something about it. Wounded Times is the latest in a series of blogs and websites I started but this one is the most successful.

This one started out because I received an email from a Marine telling me he was always in my old blog because he wanted to know about PTSD but didn't want to read my "political crap" looking for reports. I was a hothead back then. Couldn't help it. While today we're reading that the Iraq War ended up benefitting Iran, most of the people I know knew that already. To me, sending the troops into combat demanded our attention but too few were thinking beyond the rhetoric. Anyway, the Marine was in Iraq and I shamefully defended my right to use my free speech and post what I wanted. Yep, I hit the roof on him. He responded back with a very short question. "Are you doing this for yourself or us?" I cried. He was right. I started out wanting to do something for them and ended up doing it for my own ego. I fell into the same political minefield everyone else was in. I promised him that I would start another blog that would not be political. I kept that promise.

There is enough publications online with an agenda owing something to some company for financial support. I owe nothing to no one except the men and women serving this country today and those who came before them. Plain and simple, they are my agenda.

I am independent of corporations and politicians so that I can post what is real. Democrats think I am a Republican because of all the posts about how much Washington is doing wrong and Republicans think I'm a Democrat because most of the time I complain about the same thing, but the truth is still the truth and the shameful fact is, the troops and our veterans deserve so much more than what they are getting.

They deserve the truth from us and to know what is going on. When you read their stories as much as I do it is obvious they don't think much about the politics behind what got them deployed into combat. They have a lot more important things on their minds like staying alive and making sure their buddies get home too. None of them ask "are you a Democrat or Republican" before they will use their own bodies to shield another soldier or pull them to safety.

Wounded Times is about the troops and veterans, especially those wounded by Combat and PTSD. Families don't know what to do to help and the troops get the wrong messages from their leaders because they get bamboozled by corporations and researchers giving them the wrong information. Most mainstream reporters are just as culpable. They fail to learn the facts so when they get assigned a story, they believe whatever they are told with absolutely no follow-up questions. That's how we ended up with the wrong information on military suicides from 2012 and worse, no one being held accountable for them.

They have the power of well funded publicity but while that power came with the obligation to report facts, they didn't even hold themselves accountable.

In 1982 when I started out researching PTSD I thought all that had to be done was to get this secret inner combat out in the open, never once thinking 30 years later I'd still be trying to do that.

I told a friend the other day that I was tired of feeling ashamed. He couldn't believe I said that. When you consider how long I've been doing this people finding my work by the accident of a Google search is pretty pitiful. When you factor in 12-14 hours days 7 days a week without a paycheck, that is about as bad as it gets.

The ads you see on here are from Google and I don't owe them anything. Honestly considering how little I make off them, I rather see them gone but in order to do that, readers have to kick in some funds and then I'd know if what I do is of value to them or not. So far that hasn't happened and even begging didn't work. The more time I spent asking for money the less time I had to do this work and the less time I had to help families get through this.