The Washington Post has had a clutch of good articles on Iraq recently.
On the aftermath of the destruction of the mosque in Samarra, the US claims that the problems are over. , as do (mostly unnamed) “Iraqi politicians and Western diplomats“. Good news, except that these aren’t really people I trust to tell me how well things are going in Iraq. And 1300 deaths isn’t something you can ignore this easily. At least there is something on the human effects of the curfew
And then there’s a worrying article, titled “An End to the Soft Sell By the British in Basra“. The gist is that over time the British are losing their “softly softly” approach (softness being strictly relative in the first place). But it’s the incidental comments that are disturbing: the murder rate in Basra has doubled since November, the military are leaving their bases less and less, the police forces are little more than a cover for sectarian militias.
Finally, 1/3 of US veterans of Iraq have reported mental problems. That’s a huge number, especially considering the likelihood that a good few will be suffering but not willing to see a psychiatrist.
A British military psychiatrist I met last May told me that something like a fifth of all serving US troops in Iraq are taking, or have recently taken, anti-depressants. UK armed forces are apparently not allowed to be in theatre if they are taking psychiatric medication of any sort, although he did tell me about one UK soldier he recently saw who had been returned to the UK, having served served several months in Basra before it emerged that he had been forgetting to take his anti-schizophrenia medication. The most striking thing being that in the context of soldiering in Iraq his behaviour had escaped notice for several months. Jeez.
Comment by Mike — March 5, 2006 @ 8:05 pm