Terrible things happen in war. It is easy to ask for one behind a computer screen

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/12/02/a-new-theory-of-ptsd-and-veterans-moral-injury.html

And for many veterans, the resulting treatments—a pill, a course of talk therapy—work just fine. But despite three decades of research and billions of dollars in government funding, America’s servicemen and -women are not getting better. They are getting worse. Self-harm is now the leading cause of death for members of the Army, which has seen its suicide rate double since 2004, peaking this past summer with 38 in July alone. But the risk to discharged veterans may be even greater. Every month nearly 1,000 of them attempt to take their own lives. That’s more than three attempts every 90 minutes, at least one of them successful. Every time the credits roll in a movie, or the postgame show begins, another veteran is dead. “It’s an epidemic,” Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta admitted to Congress this summer. “Something is wrong.”


They arrived in Baghdad a day before Iraqis danced on a fallen statue of Saddam Hussein, and as they walked deeper into the city, they accepted flowers from women and patted children on the crown. Then their radio operator fell backward, shot in the head.

Perhaps 5,000 rounds followed in an undulating crosscurrent of gunfire and rocket-propelled grenades. At a five-point intersection near the headquarters of the Republican Guard and Defense Ministry, the men of Fox Company—Second Battalion, 23rd Marine Regiment—dug in. They aimed at everything, because everything seemed to be aiming at them. From second-story windows and around corners, they fired into the road. Their bullets broke windshields, pierced soft flesh, and exited into seat cushions. At least three enemy vehicles broke through the American barricade. The company’s radio failed, cutting them off from reinforcements, and a grenade bounced behind their line—a dud, or the casualties might have been even worse.

Although all the men in the unit came home alive, many came home changed. Within five years, one in four had been diagnosed with posttraumatic stress disorder

To an audience of mostly civilians in business casual, he revived his memories of that battle in Baghdad. By way of introduction, the moderator, Wolf Blitzer, said that Fox Company had killed three civilians in the crossfire. “Well,” said Lobello, “first off, there were about 20 innocent civilians, not three.” He then limned the rest of the raw story: many of the cars in the intersection held families, not fighters. When the Marines realized this, they tried to help, but often it was too late. Another car would come, and they would shoot it, because what if this one was the enemy. “We were shooting at civilians,” his superior officer explained to a reporter in 2008. “We were taking out women and children because it was us or them.” The image that stays with Lobello is one of the first from that day, of a fellow Marine walking in tight circles, talking to himself. “We shot a baby!” he screamed, turning to Lobello. “Lobello, we shot a baby!”

Poor dudes, went to war all because of a lie and now they still suffer from it!