One of Ours

A slim majority of Army soldiers in Iraq -- 52 percent -- reported that their morale was low, and three-fourths of them said they felt poorly led by their officers, according to a survey taken at the end of the last summer and released yesterday by the Army.

In addition, seven in 10 of those surveyed characterized the morale of their fellow soldiers as low or very low. The problems were most pronounced among lower-ranking troops and those in reserve units...

...Patterson said he could not place the numbers in historical context because similar surveys have not been conducted before. "This is the first time we've ever gone into an active combat theater and asked soldiers how they are doing, so we have no comparative data,"...