Morale Problem in the Military

Nothing in this article by Tim Harper is all that surprising, although this statement stands out:

The National Coalition for Homeless Veterans reported this week that Iraqi war veterans are beginning to show up at shelters in California, raising fears of a repeat of the generation of homeless Vietnam vets.

And another study released in the New England Journal of Medicine this week showed medical advances have saved the lives of many soldiers in Iraq who would have died in previous wars. However, many of the 10,300 soldiers wounded so far are attempting to re-integrate into their country with much more horrific and debilitating injuries than veterans of any other previous war.

Those figures are probably far too low, but in any case the message is that we are lucky the death rate isn't far higher.

I strongly doubt that if The Terrorists (who were not Iraqi anyway) had the run of America over the past three years - carbombs, hostage-taking, etc - that the number of attacks, even if they averaged one a week, would have killed 1300 Americans and wounded 10,000 others. Most people would, just as in Israel, still have gotten up in the morning and gone to work. The chances of a terror strike would have been too remote to worry about.

The War on Terror, of which Iraq was supposed to be the centerpiece, is the most expensive, destructive, and unjustifiable policy in our history.