Survey Indicates U.S. Troop Morale Problems in Iraq

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=578&ncid=578&e=6&u=/nm/20031016/ts_nm/iraq_usa_morale_dc

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon (news - web sites)'s top general expressed concern on Thursday over a survey suggesting major morale problems among the 130,000 U.S. troops in Iraq (news - web sites), saying he was sometimes allowed to talk only to "happy" troops.


Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters he was personally worried that when he and other top officers visited troops, they were only allowed to talk to "all the happy folks."


"I want to see the folks that have complaints. And sometimes they won't let them near me," Myers said when pressed about the Stars and Stripes newspaper survey in which half of 1,939 troops responding said morale in their unit was low or very low and that they did not plan to reenlist in the military.


The newspaper, which receives funding from the Pentagon, also said that a third of the survey respondents complained that their mission lacked clear definition and characterized the war in Iraq as of little or no value.
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Guess they didn't get the memo that all is good.

How little man learns.

Siegfriend Sassoon, the British WWI soldier-writer who was disgusted by popular support for the war, wrote this poem in 1918. He could have been speaking about America in 2004. Recite *this* to fans of the Iraq war.

- V99


Suicide in the Trenches

I knew a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.
In winter trenches, cowed and glum,
With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
He put a bullet through his brain,
No-one spoke of him again.
You smug-faced cowards with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you’ll never know
The Hell where youth and laughter go.