The impact of all stops removed violence on returning military

from the colorado springs gazette via atrios...

stories from the 4th Infantry Division’s 4th Brigade Combat Team, the "Lethal Warriors"...

[T]he time bomb exploded when [Teresa Hernandez'] son [Anthony Marquez] used a stun gun to repeatedly shock a small-time drug dealer in Widefield [Colorado] over an ounce of marijuana, then shot him through the heart.

Marquez was the first infantry soldier in his brigade to murder someone after returning from Iraq. But he wasn’t the last.

[...]

In December 2007, Bressler and fellow soldiers Bruce Bastien Jr., 21, and Kenneth Eastridge, 24, left the bullet-riddled body of a soldier from their unit on a west-side street.

kenneth eastridge speaks...

“The Army trains you to be this way. In bayonet training, the sergeant would yell, ‘What makes the grass grow?’ and we would yell, ‘Blood! Blood! Blood!’ as we stabbed the dummy. The Army pounds it into your head until it is instinct: Kill everybody, kill everybody. And you do. Then they just think you can just come home and turn it off. ... If they don’t figure out how to take care of the soldiers they trained to kill, this is just going to keep happening.”

and then there's this fine litany...

In August 2007, Louis Bressler, 24, robbed and shot a soldier he picked up on a street in Colorado Springs.

[...]

In May and June 2008, police say Rudolfo Torres-Gandarilla, 20, and Jomar Falu-Vives, 23, drove around with an assault rifle, randomly shooting people.

In September 2008, police say John Needham, 25, beat a former girlfriend to death.

it's an extremely sobering read but one that shouldn't be all that surprising... these are the natural consequences of a society based on violence and the denial of its impact by our all-too-removed-from-the-stark-reality-of-violence-and-death leaders who like to pretend it simply doesn't exist...

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