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Wartime and Our Soldiers
House of Representatives - June 7, 2007

Mr. Speaker, a lot of political figures, myself included, have talked about the Iraq war. Tonight I want to share the words expressed by people in this and other wars. They come from a new book called "Voices in Wartime." It contains profoundly moving and often poetic thoughts from brave U.S. soldiers, loved ones and Iraqis.

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This is from John Henry Parker, a Marine Corps veteran and Executive Director of Veterans and Families. "My son is a sergeant in the 10th Mountain Division. He was a squad leader, and his job was to go into the border towns and into the different mountain areas around the Pakistan border to seek out and find the enemy, the Taliban, al Qaeda, and whoever else might be hiding in the hills resisting.

"He had been witnessing a lot of really horrific things, and his main concern was, can I come back and just get past all of this and be a dad, a husband, and just a family guy? How do you do that?"

Dr. Enas Mohamed is an Iraqi doctor now living in Seattle, my Congressional district. She lived in Baghdad during the First Gulf War and said this in the book: "The children were really scared and kept yelling. It was winter, and so, at 5 a.m., there wasn't much sunlight. It was dark, and the bombing continued. Everybody felt a deep fear in their bones.

"You can't imagine the amount of disease that has spread since the war. One of the largest issues is polluted water. It causes dysentery, cholera, typhoid, and there's a deficiency of water, so we don't have enough water to wash our hands every time they get dirty.

"Children play together all the time, and they don't take the precautions like adults do. Plus, they have weaker immune systems and malnutrition or not enough food to fill their needs as growing kids.

"With the low level of hygiene and the high level of malnutrition, any infection will start to grow and transmit very quickly.

"One of the victims was a very, very hard case for me. He was 10 or 11 years old. I talked to his mom and learned his history. He left school to support his family, so he was on his way to sell some cigarettes near the street where a car bomb exploded. This little child got broken hands and broken legs.

"The doctor told me they might have to amputate one of his legs, and I can't imagine what it means for a 10-year-old boy to live with one limb. He didn't even get enough time to finish school or to play soccer or to do all the activities like little boys do.

"I think it's time to stop it and do something really positive for these innocent people. If we think about the new generation, starting with the boy I mentioned before, you can imagine a whole generation of disabled people. They have and been punished for doing nothing. They're innocent civilians who are just hoping to live like any other human being on earth."

Sheila Sebron is a disabled African American Air Force veteran. She wrote this. "PTSD is not to be taken lightly. It's a devastating illness that robs its victims of free will and imposes a slow death sentence that kills the human spirit.

"I get caught in these loops in my mind and get stuck thinking about part of a thought without being able to finish the thought. Thanks to finally getting the treatment I needed for my PTSD, I can now break the cycle of being trapped in my mind and can communicate verbally."

She also writes, "War harms everyone it touches: soldiers, civilians, refugees, family members and friends. No one escapes the trauma."

Personally, I was a medical doctor, a psychiatrist and a Navy veteran who treated combat soldiers returning from Vietnam. Sheila Sebron is right. No one escapes without trauma. But there is hope, and treatment is available for PTSD.

I've never met Sheila Sebron, but I'm very proud of her. She's a brave U.S. soldier who put her life on the line twice for her country, once in uniform, and now in print as she tries to tell others and save them by telling her story.

PTSD harmed many serving in Vietnam and in the First Gulf War. But as many as 50,000 soldiers serving in the Iraq war will come home with PTSD.

PTSD is a mental wound as real and as serious as a shrapnel wound from an IED. Soldiers need and deserve our help and support.

The book is called, Voices in Wartime. I urge every American to pick up a copy and read it.