Troops buckle under Iraq fiasco

Australian Defence Forces (ADF) troops deployed in Iraq are racking up a marked increase in medical discharges.
One should bear in mind Australian’s small contingent, compared with the US and Britain when considering the figures.
3000 or so soldiers who have served in Iraq over the past three years, 121 of whom have been medically discharged from the military, many of them for psychological trauma.
That number represents 4 per cent of the deployment, and four times higher than the normal medical discharge rate for the military.
Medical discharges from the entire ADF have grown 43 per cent since 1999. In 2004, 723 servicemen and women were discharged; 1.3 per cent of the entire ADF. In 2003 1.18 per cent were discharged and in 2002, 0.99 per cent.

I haven’t seen the corresponding figures from the US or UK so can’t really judge whether this is reflects a general trend or is more about different outlooks.
I pulled an old story out of the box of tricks which shows a basic cultural difference, at least with the US:
Australia's F/A-18 pilots defied the orders of American commanders and refused to drop their bombs on up to 40 missions during the invasion of Iraq.
Squadron Leader Daryl Pudney has described how he and other Australian F/A-18 pilots were forced to weigh up the risk of civilian casualties in a split second before dropping their bombs.
He said pilots broke off many missions after they saw the target and decided there was not a valid military reason to drop their bombs.
Under Australia's rules of engagement pilots had to ask themselves on each mission whether it was right to drop their bombs.

Not to suggest some universal reticence toward violence in the country of surf and sun. Australia’s ‘premier fighting force’ the SAS, will hold their own with the worlds best. Although only a small part of the ADF, this hand picked group represent the very sharp edge of the Australian military.
If there were an Olympic gold medal for aggressive military assault units, the SAS would be well in contention.
So how many of them sought medical discharge? We don’t know because the ADF won’t provide a unit breakdown. My best guess is that any member of that unit who displayed such ‘weakness’ would be shot by his own colleagues.
But they are no more representative of the wider Australian military units than the Aussies are of their US counterparts. Education and personal responsibility are characteristics of the countries military training. Perhaps, and rightly so, that is a result of the many years the ADF had been, primarily, a peace keeping force.
Forgetting the oxymoronic ‘defence’, Australian’s simply aren’t infused with the ‘no guts no glory’ mindset. Faced with the horror of war itself and tragedy occupying forces are subjected to on a daily basis in post war Iraq, it is highly surprising the attrition rate is not greater than reported.