Broken Soldiers

Remember a year or so ago and more, before the Surge, when some people were talking about a Broken Army. They were talking then about breakdowns in combat readiness, training schedules, and equipment maintenance. There is something far more breakable than machines and drill practices - human beings.

Suicides and attempted suicides have skyrocketed in the military since the beginning of the Iraq War. Successful suicides have increased by 20%, 'o6 to '07, while attempted suicides by military personnel have increased seven-fold since the beginning of the Iraq War. Depression, domestic abuse, and drug addiction are all the price the humans in our military are paying for being thrown, again and again and again, into the hell of Iraq.

The bureaucratic shorthand (PTSD) fails to express the horrible effect the war has had on the minds and spirits of tens of thousands of servicemembers. Good, decent people, chewed up and spit out by the US war machine, struggle every day to battle the demons implanted in them by this war. The story of this one returned vet in the International Herald Tribune is heartbreaking.

The probable Republican nominee (John McCain) is promising many "other wars" and wants to build new hospitals to hold the scores of thousands of new fractured pawns his recreational conflicts will create. I guess that is supposed to resemble compassion.