Iconic Iraq war soldier dies

[Tex]

This is a terribly sad story.

The March 2003 image became one of the most iconic of the U.S. invasion of Iraq: that of a bespectacled American soldier carrying an Iraqi child to safety. The photograph of Army Pfc. Joseph Dwyer, who was raised in Mount Sinai, was used by news outlets around the world.

After being lionized by many as the human face of the U.S. effort to rebuild a troubled Iraq, Dwyer brought the battlefield home with him, often grappling violently with delusions that he was being hunted by Iraqi killers.

His internal terror got so bad that, in 2005, he shot up his El Paso, Texas, apartment and held police at bay for three hours with a 9-mm handgun, believing Iraqis were trying to get in.

Last month, on June 28, police in Pinehurst, N.C., who responded to Dwyer's home, said the 31-year-old collapsed and died after abusing a computer cleaner aerosol. Dwyer had moved to North Carolina after living in Texas.

Dwyer, who joined the Army two days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and who was assigned to a unit of the 3rd Infantry Division that one officer called "the tip of the tip of the spear" in the first days of the U.S. invasion, had since then battled depression, sleeplessness and other anxieties that military doctors eventually attributed to post-traumatic stress disorder.

The war that made him a hero at 26 haunted him to the last moments of his life.

The article goes on to criticize available mental health care treatment available to vets, which is probably legitimate, but I'd prefer not to go down that road with this thread. It just really brings home to me the horrors of war that men who serve have to deal with. It makes them all the more deserving of our honor and deference.



http://www.newsday.com/news/local/ny...36,print.story

[MikeWaters]

Yes, the cost goes far beyond deaths, injuries, maiming.

It goes all the way to the destruction of the soul and mind.

Which is why it should be a last resort.

[Mindfulcoug]

Originally Posted by Tex

This is a terribly sad story.

Thanks Tex .Now i grasp the meaning of photo-op.I knew you are a good educator.

[MikeWaters]

The boy was alive and fairly well in 2003.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/i...hoto-boy_x.htm

I wonder if he is still alive.