Another Cost in Bush's War

From today's P-G:

More than a third of the soldiers and Marines returning from Iraq received outpatient mental health care within a year of ending their deployment, according to a large new screening study.

The next paragraph is just as chilling:

Nearly 6 percent were hospitalized for psychiatric conditions during that one-year period, researchers found in a study published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association.[Emphasis added]

Let's look at the numbers:

The study involved assessments obtained from more than 300,000 soldiers and Marines from May 2003 to April 2004. More than 222,000 of the respondents were returning from Iraq.

220,000 is the number we start with as I want to concentrate on only those returning from Iraq.

If I am reading this right, 77,000 (35% of 220,000) soldiers and Marines returning from Iraq received outpatient mental health care and about 13,000 (6% of 220,000) were so traumatized that they required some sort of hospitalization.

And since "inpatient" and "outpatient" seem to me to be two descriptions that don't overlap, I think it safe to assume that we're talking about about 90,000 soldiers and Marines upon returning from Bush's war who required some sort of mental health care (either in- or out- patient). But let's give dubya the benefit of the doubt and say the two groups completely overlap. 77,000 is still a pretty big number.

As an illustration, PNC Park (where the Pittsburgh Pirates supposedly play Major League Baseball - though I'm never quite convinced) holds about 38,000 people. So imagine a sold out PNC park. You'd have to imagine another sold out PNC park right next to it to even come close to 77,000.

That's a lot of people - and a lot of trauma.

For what, exactly? WMD? Not there. Saddam's ties to al-qaeda? Not there, either. Oh, that's right! We're there to establish peace and democracy in the region! But I am sure Bush is saying right about now, "No one could have predicted that the insurgency would be this terrible."

Guess again.

U.S. intelligence agencies repeatedly warned the White House beginning more than two years ago that the insurgency in Iraq had deep local roots, was likely to worsen and could lead to civil war, according to former senior intelligence officials who helped craft the reports.

Among the warnings, Knight Ridder has learned, was a major study, called a National Intelligence Estimate, completed in October 2003 that concluded that the insurgency was fueled by local conditions - not foreign terrorists- and drew strength from deep grievances, including the presence of U.S. troops.

Worst. President. Ever.

IMPEACH