Terrible stress of serving in Iraq may fuel rage, loss of judgment

From The NEWS Dept. of The Cleveland Plain Dealer exploring possible reasons for the Haditha Debacle.

Sunday, June 04, 2006
David Wood
Newhouse News Service

Washington -- While the specifics have yet to emerge in the alleged murder of 24 civilians by U.S. Marines last fall, it is clear that troops in Iraq are laboring under enormous stress that can intensify feelings of helplessness and rage and sap their ability to make moral judgments, military psychiatrists say.

Typically, there are too few Marines for the enormous job of providing security, meaning they endure long bouts of extremely high-risk operations with insufficient sleep.

They often lose buddies in ambushes or bombings by unseen insurgents, leaving them with no one to fight back.

At issue are reports that members of 3rd Battalion 1st Marine Regiment, led by an experienced staff sergeant, went on a killing spree after one of their unit was killed in a bomb blast during a routine patrol in Haditha.

More: http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/news/1149420708289000.xml&coll=2

this will continue to happen.

War is hell. How many of us function well in the "big" crises we face daily in our lives? I cannot imagine what our soldiers are dealing with and many are not much more than children. There has to be a damn good reason to go to war, imho, and there sure wasn't one when it came to Iraq.

....by and in most cases it may not be deadly but put a rifle or grenade launcher in someone's had who has just seen his/her buddy blown to pieces and you've instantly got a compounded horror.

as on both sides the anger, rage and despair fuels violence and "retribution/revenge."

I heard a conservo radio hack the other day justifying, no ... glorifying the response of the Marines (to go and dish out retribution), and it struck me that his listeners must be living on planet "no thoughts for myself" - as the obvious unsaid thing is that this is cyclical - as in the survivors/and loved ones of the murdered are likely to be gripped by those same sets of emotions - and thus more likely to abet or become insurgents in search of reaping "retribution/revenge" on US targets... which in turn fuels more of the same. But no - in conservo radio land, only Americans are justified or glorified for having such a response and there somehow never any similar emotional/violent responses.

Tragic, horrific and cyclical (as in perpetuates an endless violent cycle of action/reaction or in this case retribution/revenge).