Disposable Cogs in the Bush War Machine

I have serious doubts that the cowards that run the war apparatus in the Bush administration (including the Chimp himself, who although he makes no real decisions owns this endeavor lock, stock, and barrel) will ever be held to account for their mismanagement and failed planning. Now we know that the planning deficiencies have created a very dangerous environment for our soldiers not just because of the lack of armored vehicles and body armor, but because the lack of sufficient numbers of troops has left them extremely vulnerable.

Last Thursday the Times ran a story about the impending train wreck related to the sheer numbers of soldiers coming home from Operation Iraqi Fiefdom with serious mental illnesses.

What was planned as a short and decisive intervention in Iraq has become a grueling counterinsurgency that has put American troops into sustained close-quarters combat on a scale not seen since the Vietnam War. Psychiatrists say the kind of fighting seen in the recent retaking of Falluja - spooky urban settings with unlimited hiding places; the impossibility of telling Iraqi friend from Iraqi foe; the knowledge that every stretch of road may conceal an explosive device - is tailored to produce the adrenaline-gone-haywire reactions that leave lasting emotional scars.

A September report by the Government Accountability Office found that officials at six of seven Veterans Affairs medical facilities surveyed said they "may not be able to meet" increased demand for treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder. Officers who served in Iraq say the unrelenting tension of the counterinsurgency will produce that demand.

It is difficult to fathom the horror some of these people deal with. Being away from family and friends is difficult enough but then they have to deal with this hell once they get home.

After he came home, he began drinking heavily and saw his marriage fall apart, Mr. Brown said. He was discharged and returned to his hometown, Peru, Ind., where he slept for two weeks in his Ford Explorer, surrounded by mementos of the war. "I just couldn't stand to be with anybody," said Mr. Brown, 35, sitting at his father's kitchen table.

Dr. Batten started him on the road to recovery by giving his torment a name, an explanation and a treatment plan. But 18 months after leaving Iraq, he takes medication for depression and anxiety and returns in dreams to the horrors of his war nearly every night.

The scenes repeat in ghastly alternation, he says: the Iraqi girl, 3 or 4 years old, her skull torn open by a stray round; the Kuwaiti man imprisoned for 13 years by Saddam Hussein, cowering in madness and covered in waste; the young American soldier, desperate to escape the fighting, who sat in the latrine and fired his M-16 through his arm; the Iraqi missile speeding in as troops scramble in the dark for cover.

"That's the one that just stops my heart," said Mr. Brown. "I'm in my rack sleeping and there's a school bus full of explosives coming down at me and there's nowhere to go."

They come back from hell then have the trauma of a system not well equipped to help them. Lovely. No doubt Bush still sleeps soundly through the night, sure enough that he is correct in his "decisions". After all there is a price for freedom and in his world no price is too much to show that freedom is on the march. Similarly Rumsfeld is assured in the knowledge that you go to war with the army you have, not the army you wish to have. They would surely mess their drawers if they saw a fraction of the nightmare they have inflicted upon our full-time warriors, national guard, and reserves (not to mention the poor people of Iraq). How nice it must be to waltz through life so charmed and assured.

Bush can afford to be like that, our Time Magazine Man of the Year, because he has always lived in a beautiful bubble. Getting in to college, no problem. Need some help avoiding real danger in Vietnam, let me show you where to line up. Getting in to graduate school to avoid miltary service, have I got a spot for you. Need money from rich benefactors to avoid standing on your own two feet, let me make a few phone calls. Need the SEC to look the other way about the little matter of insider trading, daddy can take care of that. Want to own a piece of a major league baseball team even though you don't have anything on your resume suggesting you bring any talent to the table? Oh, and want to do it with other people's money? Why not? Our bubble boy preznit should sleep well at night for all the soldiers who can't because they live the hell he committed them to in the name of failed policy and planning. And why wouldn't he sleep well at night, everything is taken care of.