U.S. Troop Morale at New Low

CBS News reports

American troops in Afghanistan are suffering the highest rates of mental health problems since 2005 and morale has deteriorated, the Pentagon said Thursday.

Military doctors said the findings were no surprise given the dramatic increase in fighting, which was at its most intense level during the survey period since officials began doing such battlefield mental health analyses in 2003. The grim statistics dramatized the psychological cost of a war campaign that U.S. commanders and officials say has reversed the momentum of the insurgency in the war-ravaged country.

"There are few stresses on the human psyche as extreme as the exposure to combat," Lt. Gen. Eric B. Schoomaker, the Army surgeon general, said at a Pentagon news conference.

Some 70 to 80 percent of troops surveyed for the report said they had seen a buddy killed; roughly half of soldiers and 56 percent of Marines said they'd killed an enemy fighter, and about two thirds of troops said that a roadside bomb — the No. 1 weapon of insurgents — had gone off within 55 yards of them.

Those incidents were higher than what troops experienced in the previous year in Afghanistan as well as during the 2007 surge of extra troops into Iraq, the report said.