Afghanistan attack on New York National Guard soldiers

If you still cannot understand what the cause of PTSD is in our troops and citizen soldiers, read this and then if you still don't understand, you never will.

Insurgency’s Scars Line Afghanistan’s Main Road
By CARLOTTA GALL
Published: August 13, 2008

SAYDEBAD, Afghanistan — Not far from here, just off the highway that was once the showpiece of the United States reconstruction effort in Afghanistan, three American soldiers and their Afghan interpreter were ambushed and killed seven weeks ago.

The soldiers — two of them members of the National Guard from New York — died as their vehicles were hit by mines and rocket-propelled grenades. At least one was dragged off and chopped to pieces, according to Afghan and Western officials. The body was so badly mutilated that at first the military announced that it had found the remains of two men, not one, in a nearby field.

The attack, on June 26, was notable not only for its brutality, but also because it came amid a series of spectacular insurgent attacks along the road that have highlighted the precariousness of the international effort to secure Afghanistan six years after the United States intervened to drive off the Taliban government.

Security in the provinces ringing the capital, Kabul, has deteriorated rapidly in recent months. Today it is as bad as at any time since the beginning of the war, as militants have surged into new areas and taken advantage of an increasingly paralyzed local government and police force and the thinly stretched international military presence here.
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Linked from RawStory