Remember that as you read this:
"About New York: An Inspiration to Serve America, and Regret for Having Done It in Iraq"
"by JIM DWYER
His first visit to New York was during the transit strike of December 2005, when the city was in the grip of a traffic snarl for the ages, but there was one spot in Lower Manhattan that Tomas Young, of Kansas City, Mo., had to see. It was the place where George W. Bush, standing atop a pile of broken concrete on Sept. 14, 2001, vowed into a bullhorn to get the people who had brought down the World Trade Center.
“I was leading the glamorous life of a Kmart employee, but like everyone else, I was glued to the TV,” Mr. Young said. “That was the day I called my recruiter.” He was 22 years old. He had been in the Army once but was discharged because tendinitis in his shoulder had stopped him from getting past the push-up requirements.
He did not have that problem on his second enlistment. “I was able to pass mostly because of my mouth,” Mr. Young said. “The Army uses the push-up as a form of correction. I was allowed to develop very strong push-up muscles.”
As he went through basic training at Fort Hood, he expected that he would be in Afghanistan before long, chasing Osama bin Laden. Instead, he arrived in Iraq at the end of March 2004. Less than a week later, in the back of an open truck rolling through the Sadr City section of Baghdad, he was shot in the spine. He is paralyzed below the nipples.
Mr. Young was back in New York last week to talk about “Body of War,” a documentary that opens in the city on Wednesday. He is the subject. Actually, it is his voice — intelligent and funny and blunt — that is the true subject, and not any physical limitation. Between scenes of his life, the film presents the Congressional debate over the resolution giving President Bush the authority to invade Iraq. The elected officials recite identical talking points about Saddam Hussein and his supposed weapons of mass destruction.
Mr. Young gets by on his wits: no one has a script for what turns out to be real life. At the time he was shot, he had plans to marry, and “Body of War” — made by Phil Donahue, the talk show host, and Ellen Spiro, a director of documentary films — follows the wedding preparations, including his anxiety about getting through the ceremony without an accidental bowel movement. As he and his bride, Brie, move down the white carpet, a wheel on his chair catches the train of her dress. “Damn your big dress,” he stage whispers.
With Mr. Young’s encouragement, the film pulls open the curtain on private matters. He takes 35 pills a day to control spasms, pain and depression. He is taped as he gets counseling on the mechanical and pharmaceutical aides that could help him perform sexually. On Tuesday, Mr. Young said that the story needed those truths.
“Everybody goes to war and thinks they could die,” he said. “No guy expects to come home and won’t be able to satisfy his wife, his girlfriend — and still have the same internal thoughts and feelings, and just no external way to express them. I wanted people to see the personal cost.”
On their honeymoon, the newlyweds went to Crawford, Tex., to join the antiwar protest near President Bush’s ranch being led by Cindy Sheehan, whose son, Casey, was killed on the same day Mr. Young was shot. “I hope my fellow soldiers are starting to realize that supporting President Bush is a little like chickens voting for Colonel Sanders,” he says.
Gee, I don't know.
See: Occupation Iraq: The Troops Want to Stay
During his 2005 visit to Lower Manhattan, Mr. Young was filmed as he wheeled himself to a spot overlooking the trade center site. True, he said, he had rejoined the Army the day he saw President Bush speaking, winding up in Iraq, a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 and where he never fired a round before he was shot. “But if it weren’t for this, I wouldn’t have joined the Army, which means I wouldn’t have gone home on Christmas leave to go to a bar to meet Brie,” he says in the film.
The marriage does not survive the span of the documentary.
In one segment, he talks his mother through the task of inserting a catheter into his penis. “I think that helps guys understand what this is about,” he said. (One of his brothers, Nathan Young, is now in Iraq with the 101st Airborne; he has a copy of the film with him.)
Mr. Young has been to New York a half-dozen times since his 2005 visit: it is the place that launched his adult life.
“If I had been shot and hurt in Afghanistan, I’d have been upset about what I have to go through, but there would not be a ‘Body of War’ film,” Mr. Young said. “I’d take my government check and sit home. I would not have felt my wounds were received in an invalid war.”
Yeah, a war and OCCUPATION the garbage New York Times helped push and was all for!!!!
They will NEVER BE ABSOLVED in my mind, readers!
Not for this!!!
How many more veterans like Mr. Young are out there, readers?
