Iraq facing mental health crisis

It is time to send into forced retirement one of the most cherished rhetorical life-lines of Bush war supporters.

When, in the course of any debate, war supporters find themselves without an argument, they can be counted on to fall back on this little gem: "Are you saying the Iraqi people would be better off with Saddam Hussein still in power?"

Upon hearing this, members of the reality-based community invariably begin sputtering and stuttering, unable to come up with an answer that does not sound like a defense of that evil, evil man. This is despite overwhelming evidence that the Iraqi people are, in fact, worse off under George W. Bush than they were under Saddam Hussein. As tragic as life was under the Baathist regime, it was actually possible to go along to get along. Life under the Iraqi dictatorship was brutal and oppressive and violent and the people were deprived of basic liberties that westerners take for granted. There is no excuse for the pains they suffered.

However, even within the confines of that dictatorship, Iraqis were able to find a level of stability. Iraqis were among the most educated populations in the Middle East. It had a large professional class. Its women enjoyed freedoms that those in other Arab nations do not even dream of.

Life under the Iraqi dicatorship was traumatic, but evidence is emerging that life after Saddam is worse.

This year the Health Ministry declared mental health a top priority and opened two psychological outreach centers in Baghdad (the second is in the city's main teaching hospital in the predominantly Sunni Muslim neighborhood of Yarmouk). In addition to studying those affected by the bridge collapse, the ministry has begun collecting data on the population as whole.

In a survey of just over 1,000 randomly selected people across five Baghdad neighborhoods, completed this month by psychiatrists at Baghdad's Mustansariyah University, about 890 reported having experienced a violent incident firsthand, including all 27 children under 12 in the sample.

Most alarming, according to the physicians who analyzed the data, was that exposure to trauma has grown dramatically more common since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. The people in the study recalled 3,504 violent incidents between 1979, when Hussein came to power, and 2003. Since the invasion, they have recorded 6,463.

To be sure, the Iraqi mental health crisis has been decades in the making. One expert quoted by the Post makes reference to "epidemic levels" of post-traumatice stress disorder. Read it and weep.

But, it cannot be denied that the invasion and its aftermath have made the lives of Iraqis worse, not better. The level of violence in the lives of the Iraqi people has doubled since the invasion over the level of violence over the previous two decades. There is no level of stability to be reached in a country that has no government. And, make no mistake, Iraq has no government in any meaningful sense of the word. George Will makes this point when he explains that one of the characteristics of a functioning government is a monopoly on the legitimate use of force. In what sense, he asks, is Iraq even a nation?

Who will be the first principled opponent of this war to say to Bill O'Reilly or to Sean Hannity that the Iraqi people were, in fact, better off under Saddam Hussein than they are under George W. Bush?