"Brains are not only washed but spin-dried. Soldiers become murder machines or pro-fessional killers..The Bush cavemen are convinced that they liberate their victims. Hitler was also convinced he had liberated Czechoslovakia.."
WHJITE HOUSE AS MADHOUSE
Payday: Mentality and Mental Disturbance in the US
By Peter Paul Zahl, Rose Hill and Long Bay
[This short article published in: Junge Welt, 8/20/2005 is translated from the German on the World Wide Web, www.jungeweltwelt.de/2005/08-20/023.php.]
Several weeks ago the first results of a worldwide study were published in the US. A team led by professor Ronald Kessler who chairs the mental health department at Harvard University carried out the study. Kessler said: “We are leading in the world in many things including one area where we would rather not be leading.” He was referring to mental diseases. The study did not include the most serious cases like schizophrenia and autism. Half of all Americans will develop a mental disturbance some time in their lives. The majority develops the first symptoms between ages 14 and 24. “Mental disturbances are really the most important chronic diseases of youth in the US. Regrettably, these prove serious since they are not treated but mostly ignored. Less than half of those needing treatment receive help.”
Who serves in the volunteer US army? The poor, people who otherwise can’t get a job, white trash, Chicanos, blacks, usually minorities but here the majority. A documentary film on training recruits shocks all viewers. Soldiers are given a complete roasting here. Brains are not only washed but also spin-dried. They become murder machines or professional killers. If we enrich this with their mental history, it becomes very understandable that violence and torture are as American as apple pie. We know the pictures from Vietnam, Laos, Korea and Cambodia. We know their camps, their jails (not only in Baghdad and Guatanamo Bay) and their “warehouses” for special treatment.
However the Pentagon and the CIA have learned lessons. The body count is no longer shown on television as in the 1960s or 1970s but rather the virtual sterile war without blood, sweat and slime. Otherwise “women’s groups would not be supportive” (Duncan). The Bush cavemen in the White House, the Pentagon, Defense-, Interior- and State departments liberate their victims. They are firmly convinced of this. However Hitler was also convinced he had “liberated” Czechoslovakia and General Rommel, a favorite of the western allies, told his wife by postcard “Warsaw was finally liberated. 50,000 run around in the forests.”
Quite strikingly, wars since 1945 are only waged against “people of color.” They are only the lice in the fur of the Bush cavemen. Ceterum censeo Pentagonem esse delendam.
Original: White House as Madhouse