Oops, dupe. I swear I searched with no hits on hissy's post.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/us/13vets.html

The New York Times found 121 cases in which veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan committed a killing in this country, or were charged with one, after their return from war. In many of those cases, combat trauma and the stress of deployment — along with alcohol abuse, family discord and other attendant problems — appear to have set the stage for a tragedy that was part destruction, part self-destruction.

Three-quarters of these veterans were still in the military at the time of the killing. More than half the killings involved guns, and the rest were stabbings, beatings, strangulations and bathtub drownings. Twenty-five offenders faced murder, manslaughter or homicide charges for fatal car crashes resulting from drunken, reckless or suicidal driving.

About a third of the victims were spouses, girlfriends, children or other relatives, among them 2-year-old Krisiauna Calaira Lewis, whose 20-year-old father slammed her against a wall when he was recuperating in Texas from a bombing near Falluja that blew off his foot and shook up his brain.

A quarter of the victims were fellow service members, including Specialist Richard Davis of the Army, who was stabbed repeatedly and then set ablaze, his body hidden in the woods by fellow soldiers a day after they all returned from Iraq.


. . .

being involved in the fight against the Iraqis, especially with all the advantage on one side, quite undermines any idea of heroism, of overcoming a powerful enemy. For americans, at least some, the fight has to be justified, by the power and nastyness of an enemy, but even the dimmest bulb must see the stagey aspects of what's going on in Iraq, the nudge wink reasoning behind it, and still the burden of serving in the military weighs on them...while blackwater goons count their money...there's something almost physically repulsive about a jackbbooted nazi grinding his heel on a human face- to be part of it would be so demoralising (if one was young)