The Men Who Stare at Goats Read Online Free PDF Page A

of their dead children. It was during these long drives that Jim replayed in his mind the moments that had led to the death of Private First Class Shaw.
    Jim had yelled for his soldiers to kill the sniper, and they had all, as one, and with every shot, fired high.
    “This came to be understood as a common reaction when fresh soldiers fire on humans,” Jim said. “It is not a natural thing to shoot people.”
    (What Jim had seen tallied with studies conducted after the Second World War by military historian General S. L. A. Marshall. He interviewed thousands of American infantrymen and concluded that only 15 to 20 percent of them had actually shot to kill. The rest had fired high or not fired at all, busying themselves however else they could.
    And 98 percent of the soldiers who
did
shoot to kill were later found to have been deeply traumatized by their actions. The other 2 percent were diagnosed as “aggressive psychopathic personalities,” who basically didn’t mind killing people under any circumstances, at home or abroad.
    The conclusion—in the words of Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman of the Killology Research Group—was that “there is something about continuous, inescapable combat which will drive 98 percent of all men insane, and the other 2 percent were crazy when they got there.”)
    For a while after Vietnam, Jim suffered from depression; he found he couldn’t watch his daughter being born. He couldn’t see anything that reminded him of pain. The nurses in the hospital thought he was crazy because this kind of thing hadn’t been explained in the media. It was heartbreaking for Jim to realize that Private First Class Shaw had died because his fellow soldiers were instinctively guileless and kindhearted, and not the killing machines the army wanted them to be.
    Jim took me into his house. It looked as though it belonged to some benevolent wizard from a fantasy novel; itwas full of Buddhist art, paintings of all-seeing eyes atop pyramids, and so on.
    “The kind of person attracted to military service has a great deal of difficulty being … cunning. We suffered in Vietnam from not being cunning. We just presented ourselves in our righteousness and we got our butts shot off. You might get some cunning out of other agencies in the American government, but you’d have a hard time finding it in the army.”
    And so it was, in 1977, that Jim wrote to Lieutenant General Walter T. Kerwin, the vice chief of staff for the army, at the Pentagon. He wrote that he wanted the army to learn how to be more cunning. He wanted to go on a fact-finding mission. He didn’t know where. But he wanted to be taught cunning. The Pentagon agreed to pay Jim’s salary and expenses for the duration of the journey. And Jim got into his car and began to drive.
    Steven Halpern is the composer of a series of meditation and subliminal CDs, sold over the Internet, with titles like
Achieving Your Ideal Weight
(“Play this program during mealtimes. You chew your food slowly. You love and accept your body fully”);
Nurturing Your Inner Child
(“You release any resentment or hurt toward your parents for not meeting your needs”); and
Enhancing Intimacy
(“Your body knows just where to touch me. You love holding and cuddling me”).
     
    “For over twenty-five years,” reads Steven’s web site, “his music has touched the lives of millions, and is used in homes,yoga and massage centers, hospices, and innovative business offices worldwide.”
    It was at the beginning of Steven’s career, in 1978, at a new-age conference in California, that he met Jim Channon. Jim said he wanted somehow to use Steven’s music to make the American soldier more peaceful; he also hoped to deploy Steven’s music in the battlefield to make the enemy feel more peaceful too.
    Steven’s immediate thought was,
I don’t want to be on a list.
    “Sometimes you end up on a list, you see?” said Steven. “They monitor your activities. Who was this guy? Was