THE TRUE SHAME OF THE IRAQ WAR
By Richard Reeves
Fri May 23, 1:12 AM ET

WASHINGTON -- This is what I thought was the American social contract
when I was growing up in the land of the free and the home of the brave:
You could work your way through college, and if you got a decent job,
you could buy a house within a few years.

And, you deserved a bit more if you served in the military: money or
loans for college and something of a break on mortgage loans. The point
goes beyond the danger of military service; the important fact is that
you deserve something more than being underpaid if you give up two or
more years of your life while your peers are working on careers,
beginning families, or getting educations that will pay dividends for
life.

That's the way it was for me, and I think kids today deserve the same. I
could earn enough for college working summers and part-time; the
military (Air Force ROTC) paid some of the bills. I got a job as an
engineer for Ingersoll-Rand, and six years after graduation, with a
little help from my parents, I was able to buy a small house on a lake
in New Jersey.

Now, of course, college is more expensive -- as a father of five I have
seen those costs rise faster than the cost of oil -- and houses in
metropolitan areas are often more than young families can afford. That
bothers me, a lot; it is a failure of the American way. But that bother
is nothing compared with the screwing the government is giving to the
young men and women serving in harm's way in Iraq.

Whatever one thinks of the war and the officials who planned it, those
soldiers and reservists out there deserve more than moral support. My
stomach literally turned when I read this paragraph in The New York
Times last Thursday morning:

"President Bush is threatening to veto a bill that would pay tuition and
other expenses at a four-year public university for anyone who has
served in the military for three years since the attacks of Sept. 11,
2001. A main reason is that it would hasten an exodus from the ranks."

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates put it this way: "Serious retention
issues could arise."

I bet they could. And should. The war is being fought by a tiny
percentage of the American people, and many of their lives are being
ruined. You want a war, Mr. President? Then ask Congress to declare one.
You want soldiers to be retained? Then ask for a draft. You want to
support our boys and girls? Then support their education as other
presidents and Congresses have done since the passage of the great GI
Bill of Rights during World War II -- legislation that is still
benefiting this country.

What is being done to our troops in Iraq is more than a failure of
political leadership; it is an outrage. Forget the fact that we never
declared war, or that we never had a real plan about what to do in Iraq,
or that we are fighting on credit, leaving the bills for our children
and grandchildren. Remember that only a small number are involved in
this -- the same people, professionals and reservists, are being called
back into harm's way again and again.

Those young men and women, serving a government without the guts to even
talk about a draft, are essentially indentured servants. Worse. At least
indentured servants knew when their obligation would be over. This is
more than unfair; it is shameful, a stain on the democracy and its
leaders. And now the president is considering depriving them of a reward
they deserve because some of them might actually take it and not
re-enlist.

This is a professional army? There was a time when troops treated that
way, no matter how well-trained or equipped, were called cannon fodder.
We owe them. The president whose ignorance put them in the Middle East
owes them. The Congress, which is ever looking the other way and has not
declared war on anyone since 1941, owes them.

And unless we do something for the young people bravely taking the
punishment for the failings of their elders, we have no right to claim
this is a land of the free.

Copyright (c) 2008 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved

HealthDay
Wednesday, January 30, 2008

WEDNESDAY, Jan. 30 (HealthDay News) -- Researchers report that soldiers
who have suffered concussions during their time in Iraq are more likely
to experience post-traumatic stress disorder and other physical health
problems.

"There was indeed a higher rate of PTSD and/or health problems among
those who had concussions versus those with other injuries," said study
author Dr. Christopher Hoge, director of psychiatry and neuroscience at
Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, in Washington, D.C. His study is
published in the Jan. 31 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

"This is probably one of a very few studies which has begun to enumerate
the incidence of mild traumatic brain injury [i.e. concussion] in
returning veterans," said David Hovda, director of the Brain Injury
Research Center at UCLA's Geffen School of Medicine, in Los Angeles.

According to background information in the study, more than 1.5 million
U.S. military personnel have been deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan since
2001. Thanks to better protective gear, many of these men and women are
surviving injuries that before would have killed them.

Head and neck injuries have been reported in one quarter of troops
evacuated from these areas. The proportion of soldiers with concussion
may be as high as 18 percent.

Hoge and his colleagues surveyed 2,525 U.S. Army infantry soldiers three
to four months after they had returned home a yearlong deployment in
Iraq. Soldiers reporting concussion (defined as an injury with loss of
consciousness or altered mental status such as being dazed or confused)
were compared with soldiers reporting other injuries. The soldiers were
from two brigades only.

Almost 44 percent of soldiers reporting an injury involving loss of
consciousness met the criteria for PTSD versus only 27.3 percent of
those reporting an injury involving altered mental status, 16.2 percent
of those with other injuries and 9.1 percent of those with no injury.

Soldiers who had suffered concussion, and especially those who had
suffered concussion with loss of consciousness, were significantly more
likely to report poor general health, missed workdays, visits to
health-care providers and sleep problems.

After adjustments, PTSD and depression appeared to be the primary
problem. This makes a certain amount of sense as concussion often occurs
in the context of a traumatic event involving psychological stress,
pointed out an accompanying commentary.

"This has implications for treatment, because obviously there's a big
difference in how we treat someone if they're labeled as brain-injured
versus identifying that they, in fact, have PTSD," Hoge said.

It's also critical that soldiers be properly evaluated in the combat
theater at the time of injury, Hoge added.

The findings should help raise awareness for a generally
underappreciated condition, Hovda said. "There's no face for that
injury, so it really is a silent epidemic," he said. "And these military
individuals are extremely dedicated and want to get back to service so
they [may be playing down their injuries]."

A second study in the same issue of the journal confirmed that violence
has been a major cause of death for Iraqis, and the main cause of death
for Iraqi men aged 15 to 59 during the first three years following the
2003 invasion.

This is lower than previous estimates, said the authors, from Children's
Hospital Boston, but still constitutes a huge death toll.

HealthDay
Copyright (c) 2008 ScoutNews, LLC. All rights reserved.