you are absolutely right. You have just described the foundation of the KARL ROVE/BUSH DOCTRINE. THEY USED 9\11 as an excuse to lead us into the greatest catastrophe of this century so FAR. IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN. LOOK AT THE MESS WE HAVE MADE IN THE MIDDLE EAST. THOSE PEOPLE HATE US and we have killed Hundreds of thousands. WORST OF ALL WE SENT OUR YOUNG TO DIE FOR WHAT SO IRAQ CAN HAVE A CORRUPT REGIME UNDER THE NAME OF DEMOCRACY. LOOK AT AFGHANISTAN. THe GOVERNMENT THERE IS SO CORRUPT and so inefficient that we are now in a greater mess than we were before. IT IS JUST ALL WRONG. YOUNG AMERICANS ARE DYING SO HALLIBURTON COULD PROSPER AND MAKE BILLIONS. CHENEY ROVE RUMSFIELD; THESE GUYS ARE SO EVIL AND SO TWISTED; USING BIBLE QUOTES in the name of war. THE CLOSEST THING TO NAZI'S a NAzi regime we have ever seen.
Love Is a Battlefield
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Sergeant McBride and his wife know he has some PTSD-like symptoms. It's always tough when he first comes home from overseas. After his last deployment, she recalls, she suddenly dropped a laundry basket. He started screaming at her never to do that again. "He was about ready to hit the floor," she says—as if he were taking cover from an incoming round. "After three months, he gets normal again."
Star understands what bugs him about home life. "There are bills; you're getting nickeled-and-dimed all the time here," she says. "Everyday life, errands and all that." She handles the mundane duties—including the phone calls to banks or the cable-TV service. "He's kind of antisocial," she says. "It's a hassle for him." The sergeant objects: "I'm not antisocial, I just don't like dealing with strangers."
He may always have been a bit that way. McBride joined the Army in 1996, when he was just 18. That was after he'd dropped out of high school and his mother had kicked him out of the house, he says. Mom was glad when he signed up: she thought he could use the discipline. He did an early stint in Korea and had a child with his first wife. But he was back in the United States on 9/11, taking his wife for surgery that day. He dropped her at the clinic and went to breakfast at a McDonald's, where he saw the towers falling on television. He then picked up his wife, dropped her at home and said, "Sorry, I'm going to work." At the base, everyone was buzzing. "We all knew we were going to war," he says. "We were all excited about it."
Now he's in his fifth year of marriage to Star, and headed into his fifth deployment. Star knows how to handle his moods, and tries not to surprise him with much. She likes that he's an authority figure who can tell her "no," which she "missed out on growing up." When she bought a puppy during one deployment, and it chewed up a carpet, Star e-mailed a photo with a caption: "Don't kill the dog." Shaun says he was "pissed," but he's come to love the dog.
Star knows her husband is less warm than other men, those who show lots of affection to their wives. "I meet them all the time and I'm like—you exist?" she says. "He's kind of emotionally closed. Sometimes it's lonelier when he's here than when he's gone."
Over several interviews with NEWSWEEK, there were two moments when Sergeant McBride let down his tough-guy guard. The first was when he teared up recalling 9/11. The second came when he mentioned that on his upcoming tour he'd be in a desk job, orchestrating the positions of soldiers "outside the wire." To the pleasant surprise of his wife, he offered that he was "ready to take a break" from the real action.
Still, McBride insists the deployments don't wear him down psychologically. "If you want help, you can go and get help," he says. "We do -suicide-prevention briefings every two months or so." But he scoffs at the suicides: "It's just a bunch of weak people." Has he ever been to a psychologist? "No. Never seen a psychologist one-on-one," he says. Star intervenes, in her usual plain-spoken manner. "He needs to. Write that down." Shaun laughs: "Whatever."
With Larry Kaplow in Baghdad
© 2009
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