Here we go again! The arrogance and incompetence of the Bush administration is about to be demonstrated clearly and tragically.

I don't believe Al Sadr will continue his cease fire when it expires the end of this month. "Georgie" and his minions are, once again, underestimating the enemy!. It is just one more error in judgment from our illustrious "Idiot In Chief" who was born on third base and thinks he hit a triple.

As usual, our troops and the American people will have to pay the price for his arrogance and incompetence.

General Motors announced today a 2007 loss of around 39 BILLION dollars! Solution? Fire, lay off and offer buy outs to current long-time employees to cut costs. Perfect!

I wonder if GM CEO Rick Wagoner will give back some of his salary, bonuses or stock options in order to help the struggling auto maker recover. Yeah, right!

Current auto worker contracts allow those who are let go for all of the above reasons to be replaced with lower payed, untrained, less competent personnel. That should help quality of product which, by the way, may be the REAL reason for the obscene losses.

What happened, GM? Couldn't corporate greed move enough of the manufacturing process out of the country quickly enough? Can't you find anyone in Mexico or other countries to work for $5 per hour. It's difficult to understand how Michigan stayed afloat through these years of reconfiguring cost/profit structures.

Oh, that's right... Michigan sometimes votes Democrat! Working people who fought and died to build and support unions for decades didn't plan for the long term. Then again, it was inconceivable back when they were being beaten on the picket lines to contemplate our current administration's “corporate” mind set. Who could have imagined such greed, arrogance and incompetence?

And the beat goes on...

As part of my ongoing research into the tragedy of PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder), I spoke with a therapist with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs last Wednesday. We discussed many cases without getting into specific names or incidents. One common thread seems to connect all veterans with PTSD: depression.

Different avenues are explored in each individual case but thoughts of suicide, violent thoughts, divorce and withdrawal from contact with others are almost always present.

Lewis, the therapist, told me the Veterans Administration and other federal agencies are doing “better” with today's veterans than they did with those of us who served in Vietnam. That may be true but there will be a price to pay for decades to come and that price will have more of an effect than just monetary consequences for treatment and increased demands on law enforcement. He told me all returning vets are “debriefed” now which helps them adjust more easily to the “normal” civilian environment.

One problem with that theory is this: Many returning veterans don't even realize how deeply they've been affected. Many of the Vietnam vets I've interviewed managed to appear to live “normal” civilian lives. Some were successful in business although many more have told me stories about their inability to cope with life. Many Vietnam veterans have been deeply affected by the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Emotions and traumatic memories which have been buried for years have resurfaced. There has been an increase in claims at the VA for Vietnam era veterans.

PTSD is a festering wound which is invisible until some “event” scrapes the scab away and reveals the infection which in some cases, has been held deeply inside for forty years or more.

Here is a poem I wrote about fifteen years ago:

Vietnam Vet

If you haven’t held
The brains of a friend
In the palm of your hand...
Then you may be sane.

If you haven’t seen
Your leg hanging on
By a thin thread of skin...
Then you may be sane.

If you haven’t smelled
Napalm singed flesh
Or white phosphorous burning within...
Then you may be sane.

If you haven’t killed
A grenade wielding child
Or yourself with different skin...
Then you may be sane.

If you haven’t tried
To explain your brain
To a spouse who won’t understand...
Then you may be sane.

If you haven’t heard
“He was so different
Before he went over there!”
Then you may be sane.

If you haven’t sat
Straight up in bed
At a startling sound in the night...
Then you may be sane.

If you haven’t touched
A name on The Wall
And remembered a face and a scream...
Then you may be sane.

If you haven’t been
So scared that you cried
And begged God to make it stop...
Then you may be sane.

If you haven’t lived
For twenty five years
With all this inside...
Then you may be sane.

But you’re not us!

I hope I'm wrong about the price our country will pay for what this administration has done to this generation's veterans. It becomes more and more evident every day that the arrogance, incompetence and greed which led us into the quagmire in Iraq was all based on lies and manufactured, false or faulty intelligence. Meanwhile the Taliban has reconstituted itself in Afghanistan and Pakistan and is stronger and more dangerous today than they were when George W. Bush abandoned that effort and took our military into Iraq.

I know what many of today's veterans will feel in forty years. I know because I've lived with it for the past forty years. I know because I've talked to dozens who have lived it for all those years. I know because of the homeless statistics among combat veterans, the suicide statistics among combat veterans and their divorce statistics.

“We The People” can't turn back the clock and change what this administration has done. But we have no choice when it comes to dealing with the consequences.

PTSD is going to be a fact of life in our country's future.