Veterans deserve our love and respect for the selfless courage of their service and our country owes them full medical, educational, and social services. They deserve the truth that their service was used to plunder the oil of Iraq, not to protect America from any genuine prospect of attack. When crimes are committed, as in the torture cases at the Abu Ghraib prison, the soldiers deserve to have to top of the chain of command in the dock first, before they are prosecuted.

There is good news/bad news about military medicine and about the costs of the war. It is good that emergency medicine in the field and the speed of evacuation to excellent facilities in Germany has saved the lives of many with injuries that would have killed them in prior wars. The bad news is that more survivors carry with them traumatic brain injury (TBI) and multiple amputations than ever before. We owe them the best of medical care and social and economic support for the rest of their lives.

It is “good news” that the cost of the Iraq war, as measured by supplemental appropriations requested by the President and passed by Congress, is thus far “only” about 600 billion dollars. The bad news, as calculated by Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz, is that the cost including future commitments and loss of economic opportunity is 3,000 billion dollars (see The Three Trillion Dollar War, by Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes.)

The rest of the news is, regrettably all bad; for example:

• As reports about Walter Reed Army Hospital have shown, the care at military and VA hospitals once GIs get to the States is below the level our soldiers and veterans deserve. (See http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/02/AR200703...)
• Soldiers injured to the point that they cannot complete their term of service have been required to return portions of their signing bonuses! (See http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2008/jan/21/military-sig...)
• Soldiers seeking separation from service on account of nightmares, suicidal thoughts, and other symptoms of PTSD are “diagnosed” in 15-minute interviews with army psychologists as suffering from “pre-existing personality disorders,” discharged under less than honorable conditions and denied medical and other veterans benefits. (See http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070409/kors)
• The Secretary of the Army has ordered authorities at Fort Drum to not help veterans navigate the process to apply for benefits. If these applications are not completed within two years – for example if a medical result of the service is not recognized in that time – all benefits can be denied. (See http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18492376)

Post Traumatic Stress turns up as persistent nightmares, involuntary reliving of killing, of the dying of comrades, and of fear of personal injury. It is especially common among soldiers with extended or repeated tours of combat duty.

• PTSD is reflected daily in jumpiness at sudden explosive or shot-like sounds.
• It is reflected in elevated levels of substance abuse, domestic violence, murder rate, joblessness, and homelessness among veterans.
• It is reflected in a greatly increased rate of suicide among soldiers and veterans as compared with non-veteran suicides in equivalent the age and gender groups. Estimates of suicides among Vietnam veterans, for example, as of 1993, were as high as 200,000 and as low as 20,000 (see http://suicidewall.com/SWStats.html).
• None of this is the fault of the veterans affected. PTSD is a normal response to the humanly unnatural act of killing another human being, of being forced to do so in order to save one’s life or that of a comrade, or of witnessing the maiming or killing of one’s comrades.

When we observe the impact on our soldiers and veterans, and our country’s inability to meet their needs, we call into question the legitimacy of wars fought on foreign soils in general and the war on and occupation of Iraq in particular. At the very minimum, we demand full and generous personal and public support for the needs of veterans, including generous grants to groups of veterans helping each other.