Veterans Return From Iraq Disabled and Homeless

A suicide bomber killed at least seven Iraqis at an entrance to the heavily fortified Green Zone in Baghdad on Monday. The U.S. military said no U.S. soldiers were hurt in the bombing that comes a day after seven U.S. Marines were killed in two separate incidents west of Baghdad.

The attack comes a year to the day since U.S. forces captured Saddam Hussein. At that time, President Bush and U.S. military commanders hoped the former president's arrest would weaken the Iraqi resistance. But, violence has continued unabated and the death rate among U.S. troops has risen dramatically.

Nearly 1,300 U.S. soldiers have been killed since the war began. Many thousands more have been wounded. Last week the New England Journal of Medicine reported that the US is facing a "severe shortage of surgeons in Iraq" to treat wounded soldiers. It is now estimated that more soldiers have been injured in Iraq than during the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, or the first five years of the Vietnam conflict.

And in what appears to be a chilling echo of the Vietnam war, UPI found that homeless shelters around the country are reporting they are already seeing some recently returned Iraq veterans showing up in need of shelter. The Homeless Veterans coalition estimates that nearly 500,000 veterans are homeless at some point in a given year. Almost half served during the Vietnam era.

* Mark Benjamin, UPI Investigations editor. He has been closely following the hidden U.S. casualties from the Iraq war. He was awarded the American Legion's top journalism award for 2004 for his reporting on the plight of hundreds of sick, wounded and injured soldiers at Fort Stewart, Ga.

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