"Former Sen. Max Cleland, who has battled bouts of depression since
losing an arm and both legs in Vietnam, is being treated for
post-traumatic stress disorder," reports the Associated Press:
Cleland, who represented Georgia in the Senate from
1997 to 2003, said he believes the condition--cases
of which are increasing rapidly among Vietnam war
veterans--was in part triggered by the ongoing
violence in Iraq.
"I realize my symptoms are avoidance, not wanting
to connect with anything dealing with the (Iraq)
war, tremendous sadness over the casualties that
are taken, a real identification with that... I've
tried to disconnect and disassociate from the media.
I don't watch it as much. I'm not engrossed in it
like I was," Cleland said in an interview with
WSB-TV in Atlanta...
A former VA administrator under President Jimmy
Carter, Cleland has been highly critical of the
Bush administration's funding for the agency.
The Democrat also is a vocal critic of the Iraq
war and is traveling the country to help Democrats
campaign for office.
How credible is Cleland as "a vocal critic of the Iraq war" when by his
own admission his approach to it is "avoidance, not wanting to connect
with anything dealing with" it, and trying "to disconnect and
disassociate" from sources of information about it? Something tells us he
was better informed in 2002, when he voted for the war--a fact the AP
inexplicably leaves out.
--
"The Democrats [...] look like they're turning into a domestic version of
the Palestinians--a group so enraged at their perceived oppressors, and
so caught up in their own victimization, that they behave in ways that
are patently not in their self-interest, and that are almost guaranteed
to perpetuate their suffering," David Brooks, "Weekly Standard"
.
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