war comes home

[Frag]

The targets have also changed - before, they were mostly shooting uniformed Nazis, rather then plain-clothed insurgents.

I'm not certain this point can be overstated enough. The difficulties in fighting irregulars is well documented, but rarely is it brought up in the context of the stress it places on the regular combatants. My cousin served two tours during 2005 and 2006 in Southern Iraq and regularly has recited the incident of a crying ~8 y.o. that pulled out a RPG from under a hill of bodies to take aim at his platoon. More than anything else, that situation drove home to how little he could rely on any rationale judgment system for evaluating threats and, I believe, has made him a little paranoid. He handled the stress and situations he was placed into rather well, but it's not too far of a stretch to see how trying to assess threats coming at you from all quarters, every person you meet, in a warzone could reinforce certain behaviors and impulses that can easily turn destructive after you've left the situation.

The Snipers, in particular, were very heavily relied upon for target acquisition due to their vantage points in Iraq and the difficulty that ground soldiers had in distinguishing civilian from enemy. I was given the impression that they have a lower incidence of mental illness, even apart from their conditioning, due to the fact that they weren't doing door to door work and had the ability to watch for more obvious cues instead of dealing with the stress of trying to observe everything near you for signs of hostility. That's second-hand info from a marine and first-hand from a navy medic.

God Bless'm,
~Frag