Lynn C. Woolsey: “those who support our occupation of Iraq often justify it by saying that there will be a terrible humanitarian crisis if…”

“those who support our occupation of Iraq often justify it by saying that there will be a terrible humanitarian crisis if our troops leave. They must have missed the memo about the humanitarian crisis that already exists in Iraq. And they must be blind to the humanitarian crisis that goes on every day right here in America because of the occupation. Last week, the Rand Corporation issued a shocking report which measured the crisis at home. The report found that 300,000 troops who have returned from Iraq and Afghanistan suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder or major depression; that's about 20 percent of all the troops who have been deployed. The numbers are truly staggering, but when you add all the family members who are affected, you realize that we will never be able to calculate the full human toll of the Iraq invasion. Mr. Speaker, the study was the first complete analysis of PTSD and depression problems. It should have been conducted by our government, our government, which, by the way, has the greatest responsibility for the care of our veterans, but it wasn't. It was conducted by the Rand Corporation, a private, nonprofit organization. The codirector of the report said one of the reasons that RAND did the study was because the Pentagon didn't, and they wanted to have the numbers. It is outrageous that our own Department of Defense didn't know how many of our veterans were suffering from PTSD and from major depression.”