Times v. WaPo on the Personal Cost of War

So on the same Saturday, the NYT features the psychological impact of war, even on people who don't get shot, while the WaPo touts a veteran who lost his leg and feels better for it. Lately the Times has become contrite over shilling the war and then Judy Miller covering up for the Administration's campaign of character attack on Joe Wilson. Meanwhile, the WaPo, which was cleaner running up to the war, shows no contrition about Woodward covering up his part in the access journalist's circle.

So the Times covers the costs, and the WaPo the benefits.

BrooklynDodger in another context reads the public health literature. Whether it's called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or something else, it's clear that some variety of depression becomes fixed among combat veterans. It's inevitable, and should be factored into costs of going to war the same as using up the bullets.

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New York Times:

Coping With Combat

The Struggle to Gauge a War's Psychological Cost

By BENEDICT CAREY

Published: November 26, 2005

It was hardly a traditional therapist's office. The mortar fire was relentless, head-splitting, so close that it raised layers of rubble high off the floor of the bombed-out room.

Since returning home to Madison, Wis., after a tour in Iraq, Abbie Pickett has struggled with symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Abbie Pickett, of the Wisconsin National Guard, served as a medic. Stationed near Tikrit, Iraq, she treated heavy combat casualties in October 2003.

Capt. William Nash, a Navy psychiatrist, sat on an overturned box of ready-made meals for the troops. He was in Iraq to try to short-circuit combat stress on the spot, before it became disabling, as part of the military's most determined effort yet to bring therapy to the front lines.

His clients, about a dozen young men desperate for help after weeks of living and fighting in Falluja, sat opposite him and told their stories.

One had been spattered with his best friend's blood and blamed himself for the death.

Another was also filled with guilt. He had hesitated while scouting an alley and had seen the man in front of him shot to death.

"They were so young," Captain Nash recalled.

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WaPo:

From Wounds, Inner Strength

Some Veterans Feel Lives Enlarged by Wartime Suffering

By Michael E. Ruane

Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 26, 2005; Page A01

As Hilbert Caesar told his harrowing war story one night recently in the living room of his apartment, he patted the artificial limb sticking from a leg of his business suit. "This, right here," he said, "this is a minor setback."

Eighteen months after Caesar's right leg was mangled by a roadside bomb near Baghdad, and after weeks of coming to terms with what he thought was the end of his life, the former Army staff sergeant believes he has emerged a richer person -- wiser, more compassionate and more appreciative of life.