The Other Casualties of War

The nightmare doesn't end when they come home:

Her name doesn't show on any official list of American military deaths in the Iraq war, by hostile or non-hostile fire, who died in that country or in hospitals in Europe or back home in the USA. But Iraq killed her just as certainly.

She is Jeanne "Linda" Michel, a Navy medic. She came home last month to her husband and three kids (ages 11, 5, and 4), delighted to be back in her suburban home of Clifton Park in upstate New York. Michel, 33, would be discharged from the Navy in a few weeks, finishing her five years of duty.

Two weeks after she got home, she shot and killed herself.

"She had come through a lot and she had always risen to challenges," her husband, Frantz Michel, who has also served in Iraq, lamented last week. Now he asks why the Navy didn't do more to help her.

Jeanne was not the first to suffer post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD); there are now more than 38,000 veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan getting treatment for PTSD at VA hospitals and counseling centers, an increase of 87% from September 2005 to June 2006. As long as we remain in Iraq, she wouldn't be the last.

Our troops continue to pay the price, even after they've left the battlefield.

(h/t: Americablog)

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