This article that Atrios linked to reminds me of the post I did about the photos from the (first) killed miner tragedy. Remember this guy?

Well, it turns out that this moment of battle-scarred weariness was just the tip of the iceberg :

The man in the photograph is James Blake Miller, now 21, and he is an icon, although in ways Rather probably never imagined.

He’s quieter now — easier to anger. He turns to fight at the sound of a backfire, can’t look at fireworks without thinking of fire raining down on a city. He has trouble sleeping, and when he does, his fingers twitch on invisible triggers.

The diagnosis: post-traumatic stress disorder.
. . .
None of the Marines talked much about the strain that war puts on one’s emotions, Miller said. The “wizards” — military psychologists — gave the returning troops a briefing on the subject, but nobody paid much attention. Even guys who were taking antidepressants to help them sleep didn’t think much about the long-term consequences.

“What the hell are those people going to do once they get out? They ride it out until they get an honorable discharge, and then they’re never diagnosed with anything,” Miller said. “How the hell are you going to do anything for them after that? And that’s how so many of these guys are ending up on the damn streets.”
. . .
Mildred Childers…sees Miller’s difficulties as a crisis of faith. She still remembers Miller’s call just before the assault on Fallujah, and his terrible question: “How can people go to church and be a Christian and kill people in Iraq?”

“He was raised where that’s one of the Ten Commandments, do not kill,” she said. “I think it’s hard for a soldier to go to war and have that embedded in them from small children up, and you go over there and you’ve got to do it to stay alive.”

Recently, some of his Marine buddies have been calling Miller up, crying drunk, and remembering their war experiences.

Miller’s shell shock doesn’t make him any less heroic, but you can bet that he won’t be getting half as much attention from the chickenhawk elites that he did before. As the family of Pat Tillman learned, the men and women stuck in Iraq tend to get praise only when it’s politically convenient for the President.