MinMon interview: Tomas Young of ‘Body of War’ continues his fight

The critically acclaimed documentary Body of War, a film co-directed by Ellen Spiro and Phil Donahue, opens Friday at the Lagoon Cinema. The film contains moments that are profound and heartbreaking, not only because of the compelling subject matter — an injured soldier’s struggle — but also because Iraq veteran Tomas Young (pictured) allows us to see him at his most bare and vulnerable.

There are no pundits in the film. No analysts. No talking heads, save for the footage from the House and Senate floors during the 2002 Iraq War Resolution. In speech after speech, the same sentiment first drafted by Bush is parroted: Saddam Hussein is “a smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.”

Two years after the Resolution, Tomas Young of Kansas City, Mo., then 25, was being sent to Iraq after training in the woods at Fort Hood. Five days after arriving in the desert, he was shot above the collar bone by an AK-47 and paralyzed from the chest down.

The film follows Young’s rise as a spokesperson for the anti-war movement and his slow recovery from his serious injury. We watch his mom place a catheter in him. His then-wife clean buckets of vomit. We listen to his tales of erectile dysfunction and his feelings of inadequacy.

Young gives viewers such an intimate glimpse of his life, he tells MinMon, “Because I want to show people what it’s like to make a hasty decision of any kind. I signed up right after September 11. I never thought I’d end up in Iraq. And I never imagined I could come back so damaged.”

Young talks to Minnesota Monitor about his life after the filming, his experience with the VA, and the reasons he believes that now is the time to stand up.

Minnesota Monitor: I recently learned you sustained a head injury since the filming ended. What happened?

Tomas Young: I fell out of my chair last summer and hit my head on the concrete floor. I had some bleeding on the brain that has caused concentration and memory problems.

Are you being treated at the VA for that?

There’s nothing I can really do for this. They have an occupational therapist that has a memory program. But the test she administered to me, she didn’t seem to think I had any problems. There are obviously some problems, but apparently nothing that can be detected in a test.

Continued: Click “Read more”And your experience at that VA after you were shot, what was your total rehabilitation time then?

I spent a total of two and half months separated among three hospitals, including in Germany for about three and a half weeks. I went to Walter Reed for about three and half weeks, and then about a month and a half at a rehab facility in St. Louis.

The Vietnam vet in the film with a similar injury was shocked at how little time you spent in rehab. Do you feel the rehabilitation time was adequate?

No. I don’t really feel that it was. There were so many things I wasn’t prepared for. It took me a good six months to a year to learn on my own. Even to this day, in smaller versions, I find myself facing things that I wasn’t taught or prepared for in rehab.

Recently my care has improved, I don’t know if it has anything to do with a little something that’s playing in theaters right now. But I hope that they are treating all vets with the same kind of care.

In the film, your brother really wanted to go to Iraq despite what happened to you. Is he still there? What has his experience been like?

The first time he went, I think he might’ve been more revenge-minded. But he’s back for a second time and is now looking forward to being able to get out of the military altogether. And he has told me his primary incentive for wanting to get out is not going back to Iraq. He wants out.

In the beginning, he honestly considered himself a career military guy. And the military is a very valiant and noble thing to do. But only when they’re used properly to defend the country or the Constitution. Not to be used as arbitrary gunboat diplomats.

In the beginning of the film, it’s said that your life lacked a sense of purpose. But you seemed to really find it speaking out against the war. What are you focusing on now during the elections?

I hear references in the political campaigns to the two wars we’re fighting. We’re really fighting one and a quarter. The only Middle East action American military personnel should be seeing is in Afghanistan and Pakistan looking for the people responsible for 9/11.

Now we have people saying, “Iraq is the central front of the war on terror.” Not really. We made it the central front. A heavy majority of the foreign fighters are coming from Saudi Arabia. And a lot of the hijackers from 9/11 were from Saudi Arabia, because they were tired of our influence in the Middle East.

Now I know John McCain has said we could potentially be over there for 100 years. And he’s said that’s an American presence, not necessarily American casualties. But you don’t announce a potential long-term presence or occupation in a country while we are still taking casualties there, and when the people in that country don’t want us there to begin with.

But the campaign rhetoric would have people assume that McCain is a decorated war hero; he’s a vets’ vet who has war and military experience.

Let’s dispense with that theory right now. The Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of American graded all three candidates on their voting record on veterans’ issues. Hillary Clinton got an A-, Barack Obama got a B+. The veteran in that group has a D. Now, I don’t know how they grade at Annapolis, but when I was in school, D’s are not the best grade to get.

And his campaign has said hardly a word about his need for better veterans’ care. Of course, if I had spent 20-plus years under the Senate health plan instead of having to go to the VA and experiencing that firsthand, I might forget where I came from as well.

For a decorated veteran to oppose the GI Bill, the new GI Bill proposed by Senator Webb (D-Va.), with the same White House talking point that we can’t allow military-service personnel anymore incentive to get out of the military because we’re already having a retention problem, is asinine. These are men and women who have volunteered to sacrifice their lives for an unjust war. They should be given the best medical care and the things they were promised, like money for school, when they started.

It is just ridiculous to have your campaign ads featuring you lying in a bed in the “Hanoi Hilton” and talk about your service record. But nobody points out the fact that he has done all sorts of things to help screw the American veteran.

So have you been busy with speaking out against McCain and his opposition to the GI Bill?

I am part of a group that is forming up right now called Veterans for Obama. And I am certainly hoping we can get these issues brought out in the open. If Sen. McCain gets elected because he is a war hero and because he cares about vets, we are being sold a bill of goods.

The group is just starting up right now. When he becomes the nominee — OK, I guess we still have to say “if” — we plan to bring these issues to the forefront. I don’t want to just preach to the choir. I want the military-aged youth to get involved. I went them to stand up against an unjust war. That’s the only way we can stop it.

In the film, you and your mom joked about the fact that you weren’t diagnosed with PTSD. Is that still the case, or have you since been diagnosed?

Let’s imagine that as a pinball machine. The first psychiatrist I went through at the VA said I had very severe PTSD. He is in the National Guard and was deployed, so I couldn’t see him, obviously. It took the VA a very long time to find me a replacement therapist. It took until I finally called with some issues and needed somebody to talk to. They were finally forced to find me one.

And the new therapist said I had “sub-clinical” PTSD, very mild. I started talking to a therapist outside the VA, who made the diagnosis that I have a fairly significant case of PTSD. I am going to say “yes,” but the VA might have a difference of opinion.

So are you going to continue to seek therapy outside the VA?

There have been ideas about finding a doctor here in Kansas City who can do EMDR therapy [Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing]. The VA provides a therapist for me to talk to. But I’ve been talking to a therapist in New York, who is friends with the director, Ellen Spiro, about EMDR. EMDR is supposedly good for PTSD. The VA gave me conflicting information about my diagnosis, so I went and sought care on my own.

There seems to be so much attention being paid to the elections, and the economy has become the central focus. The Iraq War is nowhere to be found in the media these days.

The problem is, we have less than five percent of the American population serving in the military. But we have a large percentage of the population with the yellow “Support our Troops” magnets on the back of their trucks. On the back of their gas-guzzling SUVs.

And now we have Sen. McCain saying, “My friends…” (I hate the way he starts everything with “my friends.” I am not his friend.) But he says, “My friends, I plan to have an energy policy that will make it so that we never have to send young men and women into combat in the Middle East for oil ever again.”

So now it seems that all the things that were said at the beginning, the people who were against the war and treated as unpatriotic pariahs, are the same reasons that are now being used by the Republicans and the neo-cons as to why we’re staying in. Oil is the reason we’re still there.

Right, now they’re saying that pulling out now would cause oil prices to spike. So we’re there for oil.

Right. The anti-war protesters said it was a war for oil. They said the reasons for being there were not geo-political, but petroleum-related, and they were considered unpatriotic and crazy. Now, Karl Rove [on Fox News, March 2] has said we have to stay there so that Al-Qaida doesn’t gain control of the oil supplies and drive the price of oil way up.

Well, “my friends,” the price of oil is way up. It boggles the mind that when George Bush took the oath of office in 2000, the price of a gallon of gas was $1.60.

All I’m saying is, George Bush is an oil man. The price of gas has almost tripled since he took the oath of office. I’m not saying there’s a conspiracy there. But if Colonel Sanders were elected president, and the price of chicken tripled in the last six years? I think there might be a problem.