Distress signals.

Terri Jones lost her son Jason Cooper just over a year ago. He was an Army Reservist in the Iraq War. On July 14, 2005, four months after returning home to Iowa, he hanged himself. He was twenty-three.

Jones says Jason wasn't the same when he got back from Iraq.

"He was a really upbeat, happy, funny kid" before he left, she says. "You could tell his smile was gone when he came home."

He also had a hard time paying attention, and the reaction of some of his friends caught him by surprise.

"He was excited to see them," she says, "and he thought they would be, 'Hey, Coop, good to see you.' But instead, the first thing that would come out was, 'Jas, you shoot anybody?' He was so taken aback he didn't know how to answer. He'd just say, 'I don't want to talk about it.'"

Jason was having a lot of nightmares and flashbacks, his mother says. "His girlfriend said he'd wake up in night sweats, and she had to take him out for a walk at three in the morning."

Jones says her son "knew he needed help, but he didn't want to go to the VA." She says he'd gone there the month before, after he hurt his wrist in a motorcycle fall. "When he went to the VA, they didn't have room to treat him that day," she says.

Jones says the military isn't doing enough for soldiers suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. "They are not being taken care of," she says.

The VA denies this.

"We're out there in their faces.... We're all there for them," Victor Tare, a VA outreach specialist in Iowa, told the Des Moines Register, which wrote a long story on Jones. "At no time in the history of America has more attention been paid to veterans."

Now a member of Gold Star Families for Peace, Jones says she's "forming a subchapter support group to help with military families who've had a suicide" after their loved one returned home.

"So far we know of about seventy" such tragedies, she says.

Recently, Jones wrote a letter to Jason. "Jas, Mother's Day came and went, and it was so hard not to hear from you," she wrote. "I still have petals from the pink roses you sent while still in training or all the drawings you loved to make. I carried your military boots in a Mother's Day march in Washington, D.C., to bring our troops home now.... I realized then that I did spend time with you on Mother's Day and even though it wasn't in a way that I would prefer, you will never be gone from me.... I hope you are in a sea of flowers now, honey. No worries, no pain, just happy and enjoying the beauty of heaven. I miss you, buddy! I still wait for a phone call, I still long to hear 'love you, Mama.'"

Jones flies the American flag upside down, which was her boyfriend Vince's idea at first. One day early this March, Jones says someone turned their flag rightside up. "It happened between the time we went to the grocery store and the time we came back. We were gone only half an hour," she says. "I was kind of shocked. We live on a five-acre piece of land on a really long driveway, and the flag is on the house. They had to be watching us leave. That's kind of weird, someone sitting out in a corner watching us somewhere."

About a week later, she got an unsigned letter, postmarked March 13.

"I've noticed for quite some time now that you fly your American flag

upside down.... Please don't disrespect those who have fought and died on our soil preserving your very freedom and mine.... Let's rally behind our troops and if they don't believe in what they're doing, let them voice it. Every single person in the Armed Forces today signed on the dotted line."

It was signed, "An extremely sincere fellow American citizen and proud of it."

In response, Jones wrote a letter to the editor of her local newspaper, the Chariton Leader.

"To the Person Who Didn't Sign Their Letter," Jones began. She explained that "flying our flag upside down in no way shows disrespect for our country. Flying the flag upside down is a sign of distress, as stated in the United States Code of Flag Rules and Regulations." She told of how her son was proud to be an American soldier, and even wanted to go back to Iraq. "But somehow, in four short months after returning home, his belief, pride, and willingness was eroded away by the invisible wounds of war."

She discussed his suicide: "On July 14, after weeks of flashbacks and nightmares and having no medical help (yes, the VA turns them away) he took off his dog tags, walked to the basement of his home, and wrapped a rope around his neck. And at 5 p.m., my precious son and proud warrior stepped off the chair."

She asked for some understanding.

"Try explaining to Jason's thirteen-year-old brother who planned on following Jason's footsteps what went wrong," she wrote. "Try explaining to the Eighth Grade Confirmation Class who Jason had just personally thanked for their support during his deployment what went wrong. And most of all, try seeing the fear in Jason's Brother in Arms eyes as their trembling hands pull the American flag from his coffin and neatly fold it and present it to his family. Fearing their own future. So you ask why our flag is flying upside down. Because our soldiers are in distress and because of that very contract you talked about that they signed, they are not allowed to voice their opinion, so they rely on us to do so."

Shortly after her letter appeared in the paper, her flag was stolen in the middle of the night. "They took the whole flagpole and everything right out of the holder," she says.

"I just went and got another one and put it back up." Upside down.

Dale Klyn raises beef cows in Corydon, Iowa. For the past six years, he has been flying an American flag on his property. But since May 21, that flag has been upside down.

He gives two reasons.

First, he's angry at a judge for "allowing a debtor of his to declare bankruptcy. The debtor, who had bought a business from Klyn on a contract and still owed him $282,000, now only has to "pay me six cents on the dollar," says Klyn.

Second, he wants to show solidarity for Terri Jones. "When I got the Des Moines Register and read the article about Terri Jones and how her son didn't get the medical attention he needed, I decided I'm going to support her and oppose what the judge had done and fly my flag upside down," he says.

It got a reaction.

"I went to the local Case equipment dealer and bought some parts, and the salesman come out and he asked me why I was flying the flag upside down," Klyn says. "So I explained it to him."

But the salesman wasn't sold, telling Klyn, "I've lost all respect for you. I'll buy you a one-way ticket anywhere you want to go out of the country," Klyn recalls.

A local TV news reporter then came out and did a story on him.

"The next thing I knew I'd been charged with disorderly conduct," he says. "I was surprised. I have the right and the freedom to do that."

On July 6, Klyn, represented by the Iowa ACLU, met with a magistrate.

"I pied not guilty," Klyn says. "No trial date has been set." Terri Jones, by the way, went to court that day to support him. "She came to my hearing," he says. "It was very kind of her."

Alan Wilson, the county attorney who is prosecuting the case, did not return several calls for comment.

But Klyn's troubles go beyond this court case. He faces death threats from a forum on a Marine vets' website, http://www.leatherneck.com/ forums/showthread.php?t=31729. The website, leatherneck.com, calls itself the "Marine Corps Community for USMC Veterans." That forum contained the following remarks from four different Marines:

"Any scout snipers live in Corydon, Iowa???"

"Corn hole 'm."

"Fly him under it upside down."

"If the flag is flying upside down, it means he is in trouble, right? I think we Marines should show up and get him 'out' of trouble."

Says Klyn: "I view it as a threat."

Matthew Rothschild is the editor of The Progressive. For a compendium of McCarthyism Watch stories, go to www.progressive.org.