Tick

Will it reach midnight?

If they WERE painting schools, maybe our soldiers wouldn't be quite as stressed out...but they're not. They're playing a horrific, sick version of combat roulette, and it shows:

Only 22 percent of U.S. troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan seen at risk for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder have been referred by Pentagon officials for mental health evaluation, a report has found.

Thursday's report by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, found the Pentagon did not provide reasonable assurance that troops who needed referral for evaluation for combat-related stress actually got it.

Investigators found that 9,145 of 178,664 troops -- about 5 percent -- who served in Iraq or Afghanistan may have been at risk for developing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder based on responses they gave to a Defense Department questionnaire. Among Army soldiers, the figure was 6.4 percent.

Of those at risk, the report found that Pentagon health care providers referred 22 percent for further mental health evaluations, with the rate differing among Army, Marine Corps, Navy and Air Force personnel.

The study looked at troops deployed through the end of September 2004.

In case anyone needs to be reminded of how combat can adversely affect an individual, this story is getting some mention, if not exactly headlines...but it's worth noting:

Jeffrey Hopper and his wife didn't stop as they drove through Washington, D.C., on their way home to Florida, fearful of the sniper who was roaming the region and picking off people at random. But their caution wasn't enough.

Hopper told jurors Thursday in the murder trial of sniper John Allen Muhammad how he was struck in the abdomen by a bullet as he and his wife walked out of a Ponderosa restaurant in Ashland, Va., just north of Richmond.

"`I've been shot. Oh my God, I've been shot,'" Hopper said, recalling how he fell to the ground and prayed with his wife, Stephanie, as they waited for help to come. "It was hard to believe. It was the worst fear came true."

The Hoppers were returning from Philadelphia on Oct. 19, 2002 when Jeffrey was hit by .223-caliber bullet. He lost most of his stomach and parts of other organs, and still has bullet fragments inside, he told jurors.

It was the 12th of 13 sniper shootings Montgomery County prosecutors have described during the first two weeks of Muhammad's trial. With no court on Friday, they are likely to present evidence from the final shooting, the slaying of bus driver Conrad Johnson, next week.