The Toll on the Troops

There's a saying in the news business that you should always make a point of reading the Saturday paper, because the information that the government doesn't want you to know about but which they're forced to make public is usually dumped on reporters late on Friday, which means that it will only be reported in the Saturday papers, which traditionally are the least-read edition of any newspaper.

This wise old adage is proven by a story in today's Washington Post by Thomas E. Ricks and Ann Scott Tyson. It concerns a report that the Pentagon only released yesterday.

I can understand why they would want this information published in the Saturday paper, if at all. It's a pretty scathing indictment of the American military and the effect this war is having on the minds and, if I can get metaphysical for a moment, souls of our men and women in uniform.

The first two paragraphs of the article makes the point pretty starkly:

More than one-third of U.S. soldiers in Iraq surveyed by the Army said they believe torture should be allowed if it helps gather important information about insurgents, the Pentagon disclosed yesterday. Four in 10 said they approve of such illegal abuse if it would save the life of a fellow soldier.

In addition, about two-thirds of Marines and half the Army troops surveyed said they would not report a team member for mistreating a civilian or for destroying civilian property unnecessarily. "Less than half of Soldiers and Marines believed that non-combatants should be treated with dignity and respect," the Army report stated.

Keep in mind, this is an Army report. That cannot be stressed too heavily. This isn't some hotshot blowdried reporter for a news organization or a TV network looking for a news peg to garner ratings. This is the U.S. military reporting on its own people.

Further on in the same report, the Army discusses the toll this war is taking on the men and women who fight it:

The study also found that the more often soldiers are deployed, the longer they are deployed each time; and the less time they spend at home, the more likely they are to suffer mental health problems such as combat trauma, anxiety and depression. That result is particularly notable given that the Pentagon has sent soldiers and Marines to Iraq multiple times and recently extended the tours of thousands of soldiers to 15 months from 12 months.

This is what you might call Rumsfeld's Legacy: his desire to fight this war on the cheap, with inadequate forces, has resulted in the result that the same inadequate force is being sent back to Iraq again and again, because we have no one else to send, with ther result that those soldiers are being turned into emotional basket cases, who when they return home, even if they've been unmarked on the outside, are unrecognizable to their loved ones. Although these troops are being compared to the soldiers who fought in Vietnam, what they suggest to me are the men who fought the First World War, who never got over the trauma of the trenches. This is a group of men and women who have been emotionally destroyed by their service -- and we've already seen the thanks they get when they get home, thanks to the good folks at Walter Reed.

Meanwhile, we still want the president to cut taxes, and God forbid we should be asked to sacrifice anything at all during this war. As I've said many times, we want to have our cake, eat it too and lose weight -- all at the same time.

It's a national disgrace.

Tom Moran