Bloodless Coup

Terrible

The good news about the war in Iraq is that more service men and women are getting medical care and surviving their injuries. The bad news is that as a nation we are already dropping the ball on their care. When the mental and emotional toll is factored in, the long-term impact of this conflict has barely surfaced. Some things to consider:

Besides bringing antibiotics and painkillers, military personnel nationwide are heading back to Iraq with a cache of antidepressant and anti-anxiety medications.

The psychotropic drugs are a bow to a little-discussed truth fraught with implications: Mentally ill service mem-bers are being returned to combat.

The redeployments are legal, and the service members are often eager to go. But veterans groups, lawmakers and mental-health professionals fear that the practice lacks adequate civilian oversight. They also worry that such redeployments are becoming more frequent as multiple combat tours become the norm and traumatized service members are retained out of loyalty or wartime pressures to maintain troop numbers.

Born at the Crest of the Empire and Bob Geiger remind us that one of the most important ways to support the troops, is to provide for their health care, something the country has yet to do to with any serious commitment.

The Stealth Badger has been participating for some months in a vigil outside Walter Reed. As he says, their presence is "a reminder to the country that these wounded are not just numbers, and to the wounded that their supporters come in different political and ideological stripes."

One of the things that supporters of all stripes can do is focus their attention on reminding their elected representatives that the effects of war don't stop when service men and women come home. And because those who served have borne the costs with their bodies and mind, the country should commit to bearing the costs of their care and rehabilitation.