Is it Beginning?

The "Marine of the Year" snapped over the weekend:

LAWRENCE, Mass., Aug. 14 (AP) - A veteran recently named "Marine of the Year" for his service in Iraq has been charged with attempted murder, after the police said he fired a shotgun on Sunday from his apartment as a group of noisy revelers stood outside a nightclub.

Two people were hit by bullet fragments and suffered minor injuries.

The veteran, Daniel Cotnoir, 33, had called the police minutes earlier to complain about the noise coming from the street shortly before 3 a.m. Saturday, The Lawrence Eagle-Tribune reported.

He later told the authorities that someone had thrown an empty bottle through his bedroom window, the newspaper reported.

Mr. Cotnoir was scheduled to be arraigned on Monday.

During his tour in Iraq last year, Mr. Cotnoir had been a military mortician responsible for preparing soldiers for open-coffin funerals.

The job took a heavy psychological toll, he told The Eagle-Tribune in an interview last month after The Marine Corps Times named him its marine of the year, an award presented to him at a ceremony in Washington. At the time, he was getting counseling at a veterans hospital.

"It's a lot harder to talk about the job now than it was at the time to actually do it," Mr. Cotnoir told the newspaper then. "The stories I've gained from my deployment aren't the kind of stories you share."

I actually hope this is settled in a reasonable way--if the injuries really are minor, and if Cotnoir is truly remorseful, then maybe they should consider reducing the charge...However, it underscores a potential problem I've posted about more than once: if Tim McVeigh and John Mohammed snapped following a far less costly war, how many veterans will be affected by this one, and what will they do? Recently, I've seen reports of suicide, muder-suicide, and so on.

That's horrible enough--but what's going to happen when returning veterans realize Team Bush and the wingnuts really don't give a shit about them? Things could get VERY ugly.