Recent news reports of the murder of five US troops by a fellow soldier on an army base in Baghdad, Iraq went more or less unnoticed, despite the fact that it is the deadliest attack of its kind (US soldiers killing their own), although by far not the first.

Monday’s attack marks the sixth incident in which a service member was killed by a fellow service member since the launch of Operation Iraqi Freedom, the March 2003 invasion of Iraq.

In March 2003, Capt. Christopher Seifert and Maj. Gregory Stone of the Army’s 101st Airborne Division were killed in a grenade attack at Camp Pennsylvania, Kuwait, that wounded 14 other officers. Sgt. Hasan Akbar was convicted by a court-martial in 2005 and sentenced to death..

Sgt. Joseph Tackett was fatally shot in June 2005 by a fellow soldier in Baghdad. Lt. Willie Davis later pleaded guilty to a charge of negligent homicide and was sentenced to 30 months in prison, the independent Army Times reported.

The same month, Capt. Phillip Esposito and Lt. Louis Allen were killed in an explosion at a base in Tikrit, north of Baghdad. The military charged a sergeant in their company, Alberto Martinez, with murder in their deaths, but a military jury acquitted him in 2008.

Two U.S. sailors based in Bahrain, Seaman Anamarie Camacho and Seaman Genesia Gresham, were shot and killed by a third sailor who then shot himself in October 2007, the Navy said.

A 39-year-old soldier was charged with killing Staff Sgt. Darris Dawson and Sgt. Wesley Durbin in Tunnis, Iraq, in September.

While five or six years ago, such an event would have made headlines at multiple media outlets, CNN most likely would have named the incident and created a graphic, it wasn’t even covered by a majority of news sources and its appears the reason is a lack of interest among the public.  To go one step further, it seems the civilian population has given up on outrage and instead adopted their own, “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy concerning the deteriorating mental state of our armed forces.

And perhaps for the first time, the Military are asking for help.  Reports of long term and widespread Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, reaching all the way up the rankings, and an alarming suicide rate, by far the highest ever for the Army, which prompted a $50 million study from within to try to help the young people serving abroad and those who have come home.

A U.S. soldier is now more likely than a civilian to take his own life. The Army crossed that threshold at the end of 2008 — a year in which 140 soldiers killed themselves — a record high. And the situation is getting worse, not better.

So why is this happening?  There are those who credit the current state of the military on lack of new recruits, perhaps due to a general unenthusiasm with the war.  This thins out the soldiers they already have, sending them back for second and third tours, far sooner than they had expected to have to go.  And the general outlook on the conflict can’t help.  Instead of fighting for a defined purpose, this military finds itself trapped in what feels like an endless war that nobody believes in, seeing things they were never trained to see.  The answer to this question is actually fairly obvious to me: “the first casualty of war is innocence.”  Imagine yourself in this situation, imagine having killed dozens of people, mostly civilians at that (which make up a huge percent of the casualties in Iraq) for reasons you’re not quite sure about, to serve the most unpopular Commander in Chief we’ve ever had.  I would be traumatized, depressed, and probably suicidal as well.

The real question is, why don’t we care anymore?