Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for February 08, 2010

Be very, very careful…you might get fragged…

God, Sergeant Mike! I haven’t thought of that cartoon in ages.

Mid tour is when you start thinking some pretty in-pure toughts.

Most soldiers male and female learn to handle it. Those who dont should be strung up by their (you chose)

petards!

Sex, consensual or otherwise, has become so common in deployment now that the “Morning after pill” has been ordered available to all females by the Army. I look for an outcry from some in Congress to ban it.

Did you hear of the politico whom last week decried that if gays are allowed to come out, there will be rampant sex and rock & roll in the armed forces? What a prude! What’s next? Sailors getting tattoos also?

@ Radish, I suspect that is the reason for many pregnancies.

Susan,

I don’t know if you’ve noticed the demographics of our military in the Gulf region… They are barely men… The majority of them are still horndog kids amped up on testosterone. But as I see it, women pissed and moaned to be up on the front lines, now they need to deal with it and fend for themselves.

Oh, before they even start, I don’t care what anyone thinks of my chauvinistic point of view. Your opinions of my opinion mean nothing to me. Your flames will be ignored.

@ Justice - One of my female friends in high school enlisted in the Air Force a week after graduation. After going through AF boot, she “accidentally” became pregnant and was bounced out. I guess she didn’t realize that that sweet advance they gave her would have to be paid back… Oops!

We need our best to do their best. Many redeploy after mental or physical therapy. I just hope she doesn’t run into her former tormenter. She doesn’t deserve the brig time.

Yeh- as far as ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’; we’ve had about ten percent since Alexander went over the Alps (there’s that darned ten percent again). And of course, we start with fit, horny - and bulletproof - nineteen-year-old kids, or there wouldn’t be any recruits. Ike was right, and we’ve been paying for it ever since.

@piratePTG, you are saying? that men shouldn’t fight in wars? so then if the sexes are to be equal, neither should women.

not sure what else your post could possibly mean.

or that the men are too young? so they shouldn’t be fighting till they are older?

@joe, you say “there is no cure for war-zone-related PTSD”. excuse me, but how do you know? how can you be sure? Shouldn’t you better say, “At the present time, there is no known cure….”?

Just because no one has found one yet, doesn’t mean none exists.

@pbarnrob, what did ike say? These posts often confuse me, because I’m not that familiar with recent American history.

I think the only cure for PTSD would be amnesia or dementia. You can never get those memories erased. My dad fought in WW2. He rarely talked about the horrors like being buried alive but slept with the lights on until the day he died. Luckily these days there is therapy. At his time the sentiment was the war is over, be happy and get on with it.