Meanwhile Thomas H. Maugh II reports on mental wounds in "Iraq war veterans often delay mental reactions" (Los Angeles Times):
The stress and depression caused by combat in Iraq often don't appear until a few months after a soldier has returned home, researchers reported today.
Six months after their deployment ended, the number of soldiers referred for mental health care was nearly three times as high as when they first returned, and the number reporting relationship problems with their families and others had quadrupled, according to results from a new screening tool used by the military to assess the troops' mental health.
Overall, about 20% of active-duty Army soldiers and more than 40% of National Guardsmen and reservists were referred for care or had sought care on their own, a military team reported in the Journal of the American Medical Assn.Psychologists hope that catching problems early and getting soldiers into treatment will prevent the type of long-term mental health problems that afflicted many soldiers who fought in Vietnam, said Dr. Charles S. Milliken of the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, who led the study.
AFP reports: "A roadside bomb attack targetting a US patrol near Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone killed two Iraqi civilians and wounded three on Wednesday, security officials said."
And on those non-existant displaced (internal and external) who are all returning according to the puppet government and US military spin, from Hannah Allam's "U.S. accused of ignoring crisis of displaced Iraqis" (McClatchy Newspapers via Santa Barbara New-Press):
The U.S. government is ''unforgivably slow'' in resettling Iraqi refugees and has failed to coordinate with its Arab allies to address the suffering of an estimated 4.5 million displaced Iraqis, according to a report released Tuesday by a leading Washington-based refugee advocacy group.
Nearly five years after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration has made little effort to speed up relief for a population that's growing more vulnerable by the day, Refugees International concluded after its most recent trip to Iraqi refugee communities in the Middle East. The group's advocates said the White House appeared oblivious to the magnitude of the war's humanitarian disaster.
''The first reason for this is the lack of political will,'' said Kristele Younes, a co-author of the Refugees International report. ''Until very recently, the Bush administration never even acknowledged the humanitarian crisis because they were concerned that it would be interpreted as acknowledging failure in Iraq. And President Bush still has yet to acknowledge that there are now almost 5 million Iraqis who've had to leave their homes.''
The report is critical of the United States' inability to make good on its resettlement promises. Despite talk of allowing 7,000 Iraqi refugees into the U.S. this year, only 1,608 had been admitted by the end of September and another 450 entered in October.
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