Derek Coy hails from Baytown, Texas, and could be a poster child for American veterans of the war in Iraq as they look back and ask: "Was it all worth it?" 

A former U.S. Marine sergeant based in the volatile Anbar province at the height of the conflict, Coy is proud of his service and believes the "invaluable tools" he gained as a Marine will ultimately help him succeed in life.

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But seven years since he left Iraq, he’s fighting a different battle — against anxiety, depression and emotional numbness — the effects of post-traumatic stress. 

"I still struggle, both mentally and physically, with the toll it took on me and countless others do as well," he said.

Tuesday will mark 10 years since the "shock and awe" invasion and more than a year since the last company of U.S. troops left Iraq. But only about 4 in 10 Americans who fought there — according to a Pew Research Center poll — believe the reasons for going to war justified the loss in blood and treasure.

Almost 4,500 U.S. troops were killed and more than 32,000 wounded, including thousands with critical brain and spinal injuries.  Estimates of the number of Iraqi civilian fatalities are staggering, ranging from 100,000 to 600,000.

The monetary cost could exceed $3 trillion.

While the war in Iraq has ended, the sacrifice for vets continues back in a civilian world they often find "foreign" and isolating.

Ann Weeby, a native of Boyne City, Michigan, was deployed at the beginning of the war, attached to the 101st Airborne under then-Major General David Petraeus , in the northern Iraqi town of Mosul.

"Our goal was to find weapons of mass destruction and Saddam Hussein," she said.

"After WMDs were not found and Saddam was captured, I didn’t expect [such a] prolonged U.S. military presence in Iraq," she added.

As the only person her family and friends know who fought in the war, Weeby tries to educate them about the scourges of depression and suicide that U.S. vets face after Iraq. 

"American troops are suffering, and in some cases dying, because a Veterans Affairs' claims backlog is preventing them from getting [mental] health care. Twenty-two U.S. veterans commit suicide every day!" Weeby said, citing a troubling statistic recently published by the Department of Veterans Affairs.

'The cost was high'
When Leon Panetta, then secretary of defense, addressed U.S. troops in Baghdad before they pulled out of Iraq, he argued that their core mission had been accomplished.

"To be sure, the cost was high," he said. "But those lives were not lost in vain. They gave birth to an independent, free, and sovereign Iraq."

Today, however, Iraq’s Shiite Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, heads what looks more like an authoritarian regime, propped up by a coercive secret service.

Toby Dodge, an analyst at U.K.-based think tank Chatham House, claimed Iraq had morphed into a pro-Iran police state, where Sunni gunmen and al Qaeda’s suicide bombers seem to strike at will, killing hundreds each week. 

His conclusion: 10 years after regime change in Iraq, little has changed.

"The lives of ordinary Iraqis, in terms of the relationship to their state and their economy, are comparable to the situation they faced in the country before regime change," he said in a report written for Chatham House.

Many Iraq War veterans admit they were fighting more for their battle buddies than for any "island of democracy" in the Arab world.

Robert Contreras, from Sylmar, California, left the military after 10 years in the Navy, including two tours of duty in Iraq, and returned to California to finish a college degree.

"Personally, I was not there fighting for Iraq," he said when asked if the war was won or lost.

"I was there to protect those who served alongside me to the best of my abilities," he said.

He’s struggled to relate to his student peers who know little about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"The most common question I get … is if I’ve ever killed someone," he said.

Contreras also developed symptoms of PTSD. "I was anxious in crowded places and unable to feel at ease anywhere but at home."

Veterans like Weeby and Coy have found a therapeutic way to generate positives from their Iraq War experiences — and better deal with some of the nagging uncertainties about Iraq’s future: They’ve reached out to their fellow vets.

Weeby is an outspoken advocate for San Francisco Bay Area veterans, while Coy is an associate at the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, or IAVA, the first and largest non-profit group representing U.S. vets from those wars.

Both are currently in Washington, D.C., part of the "Storm the Hill" offensive, pressuring Congress to address key veterans’ issues, like 9.4 percent unemployment and a bottle-necked health-care program.

"Coming home with a renewed appreciation for my life and freedoms, I’ve committed my career to helping others," reflected Weeby.

U.S. military commanders would argue that the war in Iraq brought important changes there:  Iraqis are better off without Saddam Hussein and have at least gained a fledgling democracy and national elections.

But 10 years since “shock and awe” was supposed to clear the path for a liberated Iraq and a "forward strategy of freedom" that would sweep across the Middle East, Iraqis are instead falling victim to wave upon wave of sectarian violence.

And many of their American "liberators" are fighting for their own survival — back home.

Jim Maceda has covered Iraq since the 1980s.

Related:

Concern grows about military suicides spreading within families

The enemy within: Soldier suicides outpaced combat deaths in 2012

Full Iraq coverage from NBC News

An attorney for Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, who has been charged with killing 17 Afghan civilians in two villages, said Friday that the defense team is “facing an almost complete information blackout from the government,” which is having a “devastating effect” on their investigation.

Bales, a 38-year-old father of two, is accused of creeping into the villages at night on March 11 and attacking the villagers. The Army has charged him with 17 counts of murder, six counts of attempted murder and six counts of assault. Nine children, four men and four women, were slain.

“We are facing an almost complete information blackout from the government which is having a devastating effect on our ability to investigate the charges preferred against our client,” his civilian attorney, John Henry Browne, said in a statement. 

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Maj. Chris Ophardt, a spokesman for 1st Corps, Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington, said the investigation was ongoing.

“The prosecution will provide the defense with evidence in accordance with the Rules for Courts-Martial and the Military Rules of Evidence. Within these guidelines the prosecution is and has been communicating with the defense,” he said in an e-mail. 

Browne, who is in Seattle, was speaking about members of the defense team in Afghanistan. He said they had tried to interview injured civilians being treated at Kandahar Hospital but were denied access and told to coordinate with prosecutors. He said that the following day, the prosecution team interviewed the wounded, with defense counsel only later learning that they had been released from hospital and there was no contact information for them.

“These witnesses are now who knows where … people just disappear into the countryside in Afghanistan,” he said later Friday at a press conference. “They (prosecutors) actually promised us that if we sent people to Afghanistan … that they would cooperate and make witnesses available for us, and they obviously violated that promise.”

Browne also said in the statement that his team was denied access to medical records of the wounded, making it “even more impossible” to locate them, and that the prosecution was “withholding the entire investigative file from the defense team.”

Afghan massacre: Sgt Bales case echoes loudly for ex-soldiers on hotline for vets

 The Army doesn’t have any requirement to provide evidence to the defense at this point, according to military rules governing courts-martial. The next stage of the legal process is the Article 32 hearing, akin to a civilian grand jury, and which is “supposed to be a discovery tool for the defense,” Michael Navarre, an adviser at the National Institute of Military Justice and a former Navy prosecutor and defense counsel, told msnbc.com.

In general, most military prosecutors are cooperating with the defense and will provide some information -- though not everything -- prior to the Article 32 hearing to ensure it goes smoothly, he added, noting that some evidence may even be discovered after that proceeding.

“As a defense counsel, one of your jobs is to … build a public record as to what the government’s doing during the course of their investigation and also to some degree build sympathy for your client,” he said. “Given the seriousness and the gravity of the charges against his client, I would say it’s not uncommon to point out that the government isn’t being cooperative with your client in the investigation given the current public perception of his client.”

Browne said that though the defense team didn’t have the right to certain discovery materials until 30 days before the Article 32 hearing, he’d had better dealings in the past with prosecutors.

“We usually have the cooperation of prosecutors and they will give us information ahead of time just so we can be prepared and that’s just not happening in this case,” he said at the press conference. “My gut, from a defense lawyer’s standpoint, is when the prosecutors are not cooperating there’s a reason, and that reason usually is because they don’t really have much of case.”

“If they want cooperation from us, they better start cooperating more,” he later added.

How Staff Sgt. Bales' lawyers are fighting for his life

Bales, of Bellevue, Wash., is being held at a U.S. military prison in Fort Leavenworth, Kan. He was on his fourth tour in a war zone since signing up for the Army after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001. He had been in Iraq on his previous tours, during which he suffered a foot injury and a traumatic brain injury in a vehicle rollover, media reports say.

Browne said Bales was “holding up,” communicating with his wife, being treated well. He said Bales had seen a chaplain.

Some military law experts interviewed by msnbc.com said they expect the defense to mount a legal pincer attack, in which Bales’ attorneys may try to win acquittal by attacking the evidence but have a fallback position aimed at winning a lesser sentence than the death penalty -- which Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has said could be sought in this case.

That fallback position could be diminished mental capacity, which they may attribute to his reported combat injuries and mental trauma.

For alleged Afghan shooter, death penalty unlikely

U.S. military officials told NBC News on Friday that the Army was preparing to conduct a psychological exam of Bales. The exam, known as the “706 Board,” is considered routine in such cases and will include a team of psychiatrists.

It's likely Bales would remain at Fort Leavenworth and the board doctors would travel to him, though a final decision has not been made.

NBC’s Chief Pentagon Correspondent Jim Miklaszewski and news producers Karen Lucht and Courtney Kube contributed to this report.

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Lynndie England, who became the face of U.S. military abuses overseas for her role in the Abu Ghraib scandal, says she doesn’t feel bad for detainees who were subjected to torture.

“Their lives are better. They got the better end of the deal,” England told The Daily, a news publication for the iPad, from her home in Fort Ashby, W. Va. “They weren’t innocent. They’re trying to kill us, and you want me to apologize to them? It’s like saying sorry to the enemy.”

England was sentenced to three years behind bars for her role in the abuse scandal.

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She appeared in several of the best-known photos taken by U.S. guards at Abu Ghraib, including one image in which she held a naked prisoner on a leash; in others, she posed with a pyramid of naked detainees and pointed at one man’s genitals while a cigarette hung from the corner of her mouth.

At her trial, England said she appeared in the photos at the behest of Pvt. Charles Graner Jr., who she said took advantage of her love and trust while they were deployed in Iraq.

According to the Daily, England lives with her parents, is unemployed, has suffered from PTSD symptoms and is haunted by her past. She told the news publication that Graner has refused to acknowledge their 7-year-old son, even though his paternity was proved in 2009.

The 29-year-old added that she was troubled by the fear that her actions may have caused the death of members of the U.S. military. "That’s something that falls on my head,” she told The Daily. “I think about it all the time — indirect deaths that were my fault. Losing people on our side because of me coming out on a picture.”

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The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Lawyers for Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, suspected of killing 16 Afghan civilians, will likely mount a two-pronged defense, military law experts say, attacking the evidence against him while also arguing that his reported combat injuries and mental trauma created diminished mental capacity.

Bales’ civilian attorney, John Henry Browne, has suggested such an approach in his public comments on the case, in which the Army has identified the soldier as the lone suspect in the March 11 attack but not yet charged him.

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“There’s no forensic evidence, there’s no medical examiner’s evidence, there’s no evidence about how many alleged victims or where those remains are,” he told NBC Nightly News on Tuesday, adding that he intends to travel to Afghanistan to oversee his own investigation.

But he also stated that his client had “no memory” of the attack and suggested that could be from a concussive head injury. In comments to CBS News on Monday, he indicated he would make a "diminished capacity" argument rather than pursue an insanity defense.

Defense official: Staff Sgt. Robert Bales to face 16 counts in Afghanistan massacre

Some military law experts interviewed by msnbc.com said they expect a legal pincer attack, in which the defense may try to win acquittal by attacking the evidence but have a fallback position aimed at winning a lesser sentence than the death penalty -- which Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has said could be sought in this case.

Military officials have said that after drinking at an Army outpost in southern Afghanistan on March 11, Bales, 38, crept away in the night to two nearby villages, where he shot his victims and set many of them on fire. At least nine of the 16 victims were children, they said.

Gary Solis, former head of the Marine Corps’ Military Law Branch and current adjunct professor of law at Georgetown Law School, said the fact that the crime occurred in a combat zone in a distant country complicates the task for prosecutors, who are expected to charge Bales with premeditated murder and other crimes.

Army Sgt. Robert Bales' lawyer questions evidence in Afghanistan killings

To convict Bales of that charge, prosecutors would have to prove that people died, the means by which they died, that the accused is the person who used those means and had premeditated the offense, Solis said.

That would be no easy feat, given the possibility of numerous crime scene complications, he said.

“The prosecution is under additional burden in that they’re trying a crime that happened … 9,000 miles away,” he said. “They have no bodies, they have no autopsies, they have no forensics, they have no photographs, they have no witnesses. There is no Afghan who is going to come here to testify against this guy, so how do they prove premeditation? It’s going to be a problem for them.”

Daniel Conway, a lawyer and former Marine staff sergeant who has been involved in battlefield investigations in Iraq and Afghanistan of alleged crimes by U.S. soldiers, said prosecuting Bales will be “exceptionally difficult.” Even establishing him as the gunman could be problematic, he said.

“It still remains to be seen whether any of these Afghan local nationals can actually identify Bales as the shooter,” he said. “Now there’s going to be some real linguistic divides here in terms of people’s … ability to communicate what they saw but you may very well have the potential down the road for a defense that he didn’t do it.”

The physical evidence from combat zone crimes is similarly suspect, Conway said.

“In these combat zone cases, you have crime scenes that are contaminated almost instantly … bodies are moved, forensic evidence is either contaminated or cleaned, there (are) typically no photographs that are taken of forensic value so you can’t necessarily go back and do a very thorough wound analysis,” he said, noting that it would be difficult to exhume the bodies if they have already been buried due to Islamic tradition.

“It’s not easy to separate the fact from the fiction in this kind of case,” he added.

If Bales’ case goes to trial, the defense will have an opportunity to react to the government’s case, because the Army presents first. That will enable his lawyers to decide whether to focus on attacking the evidence or arguing that Bales’ reported combat injuries and mental trauma from the battlefield created diminished mental capacity. Or, they may do both, Solis said.

“The government has to go first and it has to prove its case,” he said. “He’s going to be ready to take advantage of any chink in the government’s arguments that he perceives in addition to whatever argument he may have.”

Bales was on his fourth tour in a war zone since signing up for the Army after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001. He had spent three years in Iraq on his previous tours, during which time he lost part of a foot and suffered a traumatic brain injury (TBI) due to a vehicle rollover, media reports say. Two days before he allegedly attacked the Afghan villagers, he saw the aftermath of a bombing in which a fellow soldier had his leg blown off, The Associated Press reported.

While an insanity defense remains possible, experts who spoke to msnbc.com note that winning such a case is extremely difficult in a military trial.

Unlike an insanity defense, where Bales would have to be shown not to have known right from wrong to be acquitted, diminished capacity is simply an argument that the crime was not premeditated and that mitigating factors should lessen his punishment.

“That’s very hard, so … he might have to go with this diminished capacity,” Greg Rinckey, a former attorney with the U.S. Army’s Judge Advocate General Corps who is now managing partner of military law firm Tully Rinckey PLLC, said of an insanity defense. “Most of the cases that I’ve tried, that’s what we’ve went with is because we couldn’t get to … the complete no mental responsibility or the capability to stand trial.”

Eugene R. Fidell, who teaches military justice at Yale Law School, said testimony indicating that Bales’ was afflicted by post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, could be introduced at this juncture, but would be unlikely to result in acquittal.

“Maybe some psychiatrist will say he suffers from PTSD,” he said. “That’s not a defense – probably. There’s no case in which PTSD has given rise to a successful insanity defense in the military.”

Solis said Bales’ lawyers would likely put the brain injury, the wounding of his comrade, the multiple deployments and his foot injury into the “diminished capacity argument box,” with the traumatic brain injury (TBI) possibly being a strong element in support of that claim.

Afghan massacre by US soldier puts focus back on brain testing

“You can get a doctor who will come in there with a chart and … show here’s a normal brain and here’s his brain getting TBI,” he said. “So the jury’s got something concrete … that they can wrap their not guilty finding around,” if that’s how they’re leaning.

Conway said doctors compare traumatic brain injury to a “hardware” problem, whereas PTSD is more like a “software” issue.

Solis, the former head of the Marines law branch, said the horrific nature of the crime could ironically benefit Bales’ defense.

“They’re going to say, ‘Would somebody in control of their facilities, somebody who didn’t have diminished capacity have done something this wacky?’” he said. “The act itself is inherently supportive of a diminished capacity” argument.

As a result, he said, Bales’ case might not even make it to a military courtroom. Perhaps a deal will be struck, or maybe mental health exams -– which could takes months -- will show that Bales is not competent to stand trial.

But Conway, the former Marine who has been involved in high-profile military crime cases, including the 2005 killing by U.S. Marines of 24 unarmed Iraqi men, women and children in Haditha, Iraq, said the defense also runs a risk by telegraphing that it intends to argue diminished capacity.

“It’s a two-edged sword. On the one hand, if they can prevent this from turning into a capital (death penalty) case, that’s a huge victory,” he said. “On the other hand, they’re giving away the playbook and they don’t have any access to the witnesses. So the government is going to be out talking to everybody trying to rebut the diminished capacity defense.”

At the same time, a defense built on PTSD and brain injury is generally a tough sell in a military courtroom, Conway said.

“We have used it many times” to get charges reduced, he said. “I can tell you that it’s hard to get a military jury to be sympathetic to these kinds of defenses because the way they look at it is, ‘I’ve had multiple deployments, I’ve had multiple concussive events … I’ve got family problems, and I didn’t go out and do this.’”

“So you’re going to have to be able to explain to the jury why this case is different from their own experiences in combat and that’s going to be tough to do.”  

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Defense officials have told NBC News that the Army staff sergeant who allegedly shot and killed 16 Afghan civilians, including nine children, admitted his actions to fellow soldiers just before he was taken into custody.

"I did it," he is said to have told them.

According to the officials, a search party that included helicopters was formed after an Afghan soldier reported the American had left their small remote outpost in the early morning hours. In the meantime, the base received word that a number of civilians had been killed in a shooting spree at a nearby village.

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Overhead surveillance first spotted the soldier on his stomach in a field, either attempting to hide or crawl toward the base.  He eventually stood up and walked a short distance to the base where he was confronted and asked about the shootings at the village.  The officials say the staff sergeant replied "I did it."  At that point he was disarmed and taken into custody.  He then asked for a lawyer and has refused to talk ever since.

 

The officials also said they’ve received reports that the soldier was having marital problems and had recently received a troubling letter or email from his wife. According to one official, after four combat deployments it’s not unusual there would be stress on the family.

Defense officials also told NBC News that investigators have reason to believe that alcohol "may" have been a contributing factor in the shooting spree.

The investigation found bottles of alcohol on the small remote base where the staff sergeant was deployed.  The officials emphasize "may" because they say that nowhere in the reporting from the field is there any indication the staff sergeant was inebriated.

The soldier, reportedly married with two children, enlisted in the Army soon after the terror attacks of Sept. 11 and did three combat tours in Iraq before arriving in Kandahar, near where the shootings took place, in December 2011.

US soldier accused in Afghan massacre had brain injury history

Reports that the soldier had received post-traumatic stress disorder examinations are not unusual, since every soldier coming out of combat is routinely screened for PTSD.

The soldier suffered some minor traumatic brain injury in a rollover in Iraq in 2010, but that part of his medical history does not appear at this point to be a factor, according to the officials. They also said the man has a clean medical and behavior record.

Obama: Killing Afghans as serious as killing Americans

Col. Gary Kolb, a spokesman for the U.S.-led military coalition in Kabul, told The Associated Press a 48-hour probable cause assessment has been completed and that the service member continues to be confined.

Additionally, the officials told NBC News that the the military is considering capital murder charges against the soldier, meaning he could face the death penalty if convicted. They said the military also intends to conduct his court martial hearing in Afghanistan. Not only would it send the right signal to the Afghan people, officials said, but trying him in the United States or another country in the region would also present a logistics nightmare given the number of witnesses that would be expected to testify.

Military investigators in Afghanistan hope to file charges and release the identity of the soldier by the end of the week, but warn it could take another two weeks.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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