Marine’s Open Letter to Sarah Palin-Authorship Confirmed!

Marine’s Open Letter to Sarah Palin-Authorship Confirmed!

Summary of eRumor:
A former Marine called out Sarah Palin for blaming her son, Trek Palin’s, arrest for domestic violence and weapons violations on post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in an open letter.
The Truth:
We can confirm that a former Marine wrote an open letter to Sarah Palin in which he said she had used PTSD to “divert blame from her family’s abhorrent, violent behavior.”
The open letter surfaced days after Sarah Palin said Trek Palin’s arrest for domestic violence was linked to PTSD, and more specifically, to President Obama for not doing more to help veterans. Palin delivered the remarks in a January XX campaign stop with Donald Trump in Kentucky, the Daily Mail reports:

‘I guess it’s kind of the elephant in the room – because my own family, going through what we’re going through today with my son, a combat vet having served in a Stryker brigade, fighting for you all, America, in the war zone. But my son, like so many others, they come back a bit different. They come back hardened,’ Palin said at the Wednesday rally.

‘They come back wondering if there is that respect for what their fellow soldiers and airmen and every other member of the military have given so sacrificially to this country, and that starts at the top,’ Palin said.

She continued to say it’s a ‘shame’ that military personnel come home and ‘have to wonder if they’re respected anymore’.

‘So when my own son is going through what he goes through coming back, I can certainly relate with other families who kind of feel these ramifications of PTSD and some of the woundedness that our soldiers do return with, and it makes me realize more than ever, it is now or never for the sake of America’s finest that we’ll have that commander in chief who will respect them and honor them,’ she said.

In response, former Marine and Navy Officer Chris Marks wrote the open letter. The open letter, which was published on Marks’ personal blog site, begins:

I am a former US Marine and US Navy Officer with a Combat Action Ribbon as well as service connected disabilities. I am also a Republican.  I have also served with, and am friends with, dozens of combat veterans who suffer daily from various injuries and wounds to include PTSD.  I recently read your comments related to PTSD in which you attempted to excuse your son’s arrest on domestic abuse charges and firearm charges by referencing his supposed PTSD.   Based upon your previous comments I am not surprised that you would choose to use this very serious condition as a political football and, once again, attempt to divert blame from your own family’s abhorrent, violent behavior.

Marks also called for Palin to use her “celebrity status” to help veterans in a more productive, less political manner.
And Marks wasn’t the only veteran that took exception with Palin’s comments. Other veterans who spoke out in the media said Palin had used “dangerous stereotyping” about PTSTD and veterans in her remarks, the Boston Globe reports,