SERE Turned my Boyfriend from Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde

The price of torture and permanent war disintegration

Have you ever read a daily newspaper story, something the whole world is screaming about — and realized you were a tiny cog in its wheel?

One Memorial weekend, 15 years ago, I woke up to a NYT story, "Adopting Harsh Tactics, No Inquiry Into Their Past Use.”

Two reporters looked into the American SERE training (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape) of US soldiers which directly led to the famous torture practices of the "War on Terror." Yes, the Abu Ghraib tortures, the sins of Guantanamo, all the sick little secrets. It continues to this very day, bigger than ever.

SERE was the big military expert training craze following the Vietnam war, when I was in high school in the 1970s. It started all the way back then.

This is my story, the “girlfriend.”

In 1974, I had a high school boyfriend named “Randall” who was accepted into the Air Force Academy when he was 18. He left immediately after graduation, despite all our friends begging him to reconsider. Nixon still had us in Cambodia!