ETHAN WATTERS EMAILS: “You posted a piece from some fellow who summarized an article I wrote in the independent. I don’t think he quite got what I was trying to get across. Thought you might like to see (or link to) the original piece.” Always happy to!

UPDATE: A reader emails:

The PTSD article linked was quite solid but one facet it didn’t seem to highlight is that there is a major monetary incentive in PTSD for US soldiers as well in the form of higher VA disability payments after separation. Add in the fact that the military’s medical corps also has a major incentive to broadly diagnose PTSD “just in case” to ward off criticism that they are not doing enough and you end up with very few people involved in the diagnosis process who don’t have an incentive to lean towards PTSD.

I know when I got back from my Iraq tour (mine was an easy tour by anyone’s standards) the psychologists and medical assistants who were required to interview us over and over again frankly seemed to be pushing for us to answer yes to the questions that would require more PTSD follow-up and that was for a unit who never went outside the wire.

Hmm.