What's going to happen when they come home...?

From a story in the Seattle Post Intelligencer, highlighted by Common Dreams:

...Anguish and guilt are what at least some of the soldiers in the Army's 3rd Infantry Division, which has borne the brunt of the fighting in Iraq, are now experiencing. They have found themselves fighting a grossly outmatched opponent. The Christian Science Monitor quoted one 3rd Infantry Division soldier saying, "For lack of a better word, I feel almost guilty about the massacre. We wasted a lot of people. It makes you wonder how many were innocent. It takes away some of the pride. We won, but at what cost?"

The Monitor reported that as waves of Iraqis armed only with rifles came against U.S. armored divisions in Najaf, the U.S. commander called in an air strike on the factory sheltering the Iraqis rather than have his troops continue the slaughter. Lt. Col. Woody Radcliff at the 3rd Infantry Division Operations Center said, "There were waves and waves of people coming at them, with AK-47s, and they were killing everyone. The commander (in the field) called and said, 'This is not right. This is insane. Let's hit the factory with close air support and take them out all at once.'....

Troubling, isn't it, that "taking them out all at once" is seen as somehow morally preferable?

An air-strike certainly spares our grunts the agony of mowing down an outclassed enemy then living with nightmares for decades. Small wonder our government prefers the video-game illusions afforded by an air war.

But what's going to become of the young men of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division when they return home? The recession is gobbling up U.S. jobs like a glutton at an all-you-can-eat pancake breakfast. With the House voting to cut veterans' benefits by $14 billion over the next 10 years to fund Bush's proposed $1.4 trillion tax cut, where does that leave veterans' mental healthcare? Will these guilt-ridden trained killers be turned loose, to navigate the challenges of civilian life solo? Is it mere coincidence that two of the craziest mass murderers in recent U.S. history--Oklahoma City bomber, Timothy McVeigh, and alleged D.C. Beltway sniper, John Allen Muhammad--were both Gulf War I veterans?