But the ones who bring the war back home - the vets emotionally scarred by a tour of duty in the Middle East - are more ambiguous.
Walter Smith is one of those.
Last week, the 26-year-old former Marine admitted he drowned Nicole Speirs, his girlfriend and mother of his infant twins, in the bathtub of their Tooele home in March 2006.
Members of Smith's unit didn't want to believe it. But they could understand how it happened.
As a young man, Smith was thrown into the chaos of invasion as a member of Fox Company, a Marine Reserve unit from Utah and Nevada. He felt responsible for women and children caught in the crossfire. He was haunted by memories of opening fire on a car approaching a checkpoint in Iraq, killing the man inside, a noncombatant.
Smith was discharged "for medical issues" and started counseling for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In 2004, Pleasant Grove police found him loading a shotgun, intent on killing himself. He spent two days in a mental health facility before he was released and told "to find counseling." He did. It didn't help.
Truth is, Smith might have been better off had he been shot. At least then, friends say, he would have been sent to Walter Reed or another military hospital. As it was, former roommate Wayde Broberg said, he "tried 100 different times" to get help from the Veterans Affairs medical system.
But with mold growing on the walls of Walter Reed, soldiers with mental health issues are the least of the Pentagon's worries. Since 2001, more than 20,000 soldiers have been discharged for "personality disorder." At the V.A. Hospital in Salt Lake City, the number of vets getting treatment for PTSD increased 75 percent from 2005 to 2006.
Smith went to the V.A. Hospital in Salt Lake City just one more time last December. He said he needed to "clear his conscience."
Smith's attorney blames his experiences in Iraq. He witnessed, Matthew Jube said, "more trauma than many soldiers." Prosecutors had originally charged Smith with first-degree murder, but allowed him to plead guilty to manslaughter. Speirs' family did not object.
Smith's story isn't unique. In a six-week period in 2002, four Army officers at Fort Bragg in North Carolina killed their wives or ex-wives. Two vets then killed themselves. Between 2003 and 2005, Iraq veterans killed five wives, a girlfriend and one child in Washington. Three soldiers then killed themselves.
In prison, Smith finally will get the help he needs. Whatever he is, casualty or criminal, Nicole Speirs' role in this story is clear: She's collateral damage. And so are her sons. For them, this war will go on and on.
walsh@sltrib.com
