Sadly, the lessons of Vietnam are not being applied to the new wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the scientific chicanery and the refusal to undertake the necessary research continue. In the same way as combat stress was inexplicably dropped as a diagnostic category from the DSM-II at the height of the war in Vietnam, as suicide was erased from the National Vietnam Veterans Readjustment Study in 1980, and as the effects of Agent Orange poisoning were stonewalled for a decade, bogus ideas about PTSD are now being peddled in the hopes that they will defuse what is already an explosive topic, one that promises to be politically destabilizing, monumentally expensive, and very bad for recruiting.

Given that we now seem to have embarked on a vaguely defined war-without-end, it is hardly surprising that the architects of current U.S. military adventurism are attempting to spin the issue of PTSD. Acknowledging the psychic costs of combat in the service of one's country implies an ethical responsibility to those affected. The connection between combat and PTSD has been firmly established over time. The connection between PTSD and suicide has been established, if not by our own government then by experts in other countries, as "the most severe short-and-long-term consequence" of military service. Yet this administration has instead repeatedly slashed veterans’ health care benefits, challenged established diagnostic criteria, and made use of non-peer reviewed "science" to manipulate Congressional directives and public perception.

As I write, there is a growing concern that Iraq may prove to be an even more devastating experience for American soldiers than Vietnam. And once again, many will be twice wounded: once by their combat experiences and a second time by the country, the citizens in whose name they fought. Flashback is an attempt to counter some of the unscientific disinformation that dishonors our soldiers and veterans, betrays their families, disrupts their communities and eats away at the traditional values and beliefs on which patriotism finally depends.

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