GI SPECIAL
4E15:
BRING THEM ALL HOME NOW, ALIVE
Carlos Arredondo holds a portrait of his son
during an anti-Iraqi war rally outside the White House in Washington May 13,
2006. Arredondo's son, U.S. Marine Cpl.
Alexander Arredondo was killed in Najaf by a sniper in August 2004. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas
Pentagon Traitors Devise Exciting New Way To Kill
More U.S. Troops:
Col. Ritchie Confirms Sending Mentally Disabled
Back Into Combat “Driven In Part By A Troop Shortage”
SOME DAY, Trisha Fish says, she
will have to tell Chance, now 7, that his father committed suicide in
Iraq. She says she finds herself
rehearsing what she will say. “Your Daddy went to war and he saw a lot of
things and they broke his heart. They
broke his spirit. They changed who he
was.” (MARK MIRKO) Mar. 17, 2006
[Thanks to Alan Stolzer and James Starowicz, who
sent this in.]
Some
service members who committed suicide in 2004 and 2005 were kept on duty
despite clear signs of mental distress, sometimes after being prescribed
antidepressants with little or no mental health counseling or monitoring, the
Courant reported.
The Army's
top mental health expert, Col. Elspeth Ritchie, acknowledged that some
deployment practices, such as sending service members diagnosed with
post-traumatic stress syndrome back into combat, have been driven in part by a
troop shortage.
May 14, 2006 By LISA CHEDEKEL And MATTHEW
KAUFFMAN, The Hartford Courant & AP [Excerpts]
At least 11 U.S. service
members who committed suicide in Iraq in 2004 and 2005 were reportedly kept on
duty despite exhibiting signs of psychological problems, according to a recent
newspaper report. In at least seven of
the cases, superiors were aware of the problems, military investigative records
and interviews with families indicate.
U.S. military troops with
severe psychological problems have been sent to Iraq or kept in combat, even
when superiors have been aware of signs of mental illness, a newspaper reported
for Sunday editions.
The Hartford Courant, citing records obtained
under the federal Freedom of Information Act and more than 100 interviews of
families and military personnel, reported numerous cases in which the military
failed to follow its own regulations in screening, treating and evacuating
mentally unfit troops from Iraq.
Although The Courant determined that a spate
of six suicides occurred within eight weeks last year, from late May to July,
there is no indication that the military took steps to respond to the cluster.
Twenty-two U.S. troops
committed suicide in Iraq last year, accounting for nearly one in five of all
non-combat deaths and the highest suicide rate since the war started, the
newspaper said.
Some service members who
committed suicide in 2004 and 2005 were kept on duty despite clear signs of
mental distress, sometimes after being prescribed antidepressants with little
or no mental health counseling or monitoring, the Courant reported.
Those findings conflict with
regulations adopted last year by the Army that caution against the use of
antidepressants for "extended deployments."
"I can't imagine something
more irresponsible than putting a soldier suffering from stress on
(antidepressants), when you know these drugs can cause people to become
suicidal and homicidal," said Vera Sharav, president of the Alliance for
Human Research Protection, a New York-based advocacy group. "You're creating chemically activated
time bombs."
Besides causing suicides, experts say, gaps
in mental health care can cause violence between soldiers, accidents and
critical mistakes in judgment during combat operations.
Although Defense Department
(website) standards for enlistment disqualify recruits who suffer from
post-traumatic stress disorder, the military also is redeploying service
members to Iraq who fit that criteria, the newspaper said.
"I'm concerned that people
who are symptomatic are being sent back.
That has not happened before in our country," said Dr. Arthur S.
Blank, Jr., a Yale-trained psychiatrist who helped to get post-traumatic stress
disorder recognized as a diagnosis after the Vietnam War.
The Army's top mental health
expert, Col. Elspeth Ritchie, acknowledged that some deployment practices, such
as sending service members diagnosed with post-traumatic stress syndrome back
into combat, have been driven in part by a troop shortage.
Col. Elspeth Ritchie, the top psychiatry
expert for the Army surgeon general, said that while the Army is reviewing the
2005 suicides as a way to gauge its mental health efforts, "suicide rates
go up and down, and we expect some variation."
"The challenge for us ...
is that the Army has a mission to fight.
And, as you know, recruiting has been a challenge," she said. "And so we have to weigh the needs of
the Army, the needs of the mission, with the soldiers' personal needs."
Commanders, not medical
professionals, have final say over whether a troubled soldier is retained in
the war zone.
"Your average commander
doesn't want to deal with a whacked-out soldier. But on the other hand, he doesn't want to
send a message to his troops that if you act up, he's willing to send you
home," said Maj. Andrew Efaw, a judge advocate general officer in the Army
Reserves who handled trial defense for soldiers in northern Iraq last year.
From March 2003 to October 2005, only 6.5
percent of deploying service members who indicated a mental health problem were
referred for evaluations; overall, fewer than 1 in 300 deploying troops, or 0.3
percent, were referred.
That rate of referral is dramatically lower
than the more than 9 percent of deploying troops that the Army itself
acknowledges in studies have serious psychiatric disorders.
In addition, despite its
pledges in 2004 to improve mental health care, the military was more likely to
deploy troops who indicated psychological problems in 2005 than it was during
the first year of the war, the data show.
The Courant found that at least seven, or
about one-third, of the 22 soldiers who killed themselves in Iraq in 2005 had
been deployed less than three months, raising questions about the adequacy of
pre-deployment screening. Some of them
had exhibited earlier signs of distress.
Also, at least three soldiers
who killed themselves since the war began were deployed despite serious mental
conditions, including bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.
The military relies
increasingly on antidepressants, some with potentially dangerous side effects,
to keep troops with known psychological problems in the war zone.
Military investigative reports and interviews
with family members indicate that some service members who committed suicide in
2004 and 2005 were kept on duty despite clear signs of mental distress, sometimes
after being prescribed antidepressants, including a class of drugs known as
SSRIs.
Some service members who experienced
depression or stress before or during deployments to Iraq described being
placed on Zoloft, Wellbutrin and other antidepressants, with little or no
mental health counseling or monitoring. Some of the drugs carry warnings of an
increased risk of suicide, within the first weeks of their use.
In one case, a 26-year-old
Marine who was having trouble sleeping was put on a strong dose of Zoloft, an
SSRI that carries a warning urging doctors to closely monitor new patients for
suicidal urges. Last April, within two
months of starting the drug, the Marine killed himself in Iraq.
Those anecdotal findings
conflict with regulations adopted last year by the Army cautioning that
antidepressants for cases of moderate or severe depression "are not
usually suitable for extended deployments."
Also, the military's top health
official, Assistant Defense Secretary William Winkenwerder Jr., indicated in
testimony to Congress last summer that service members were being allowed to
deploy on psychotropic medications only when their conditions had "fully
resolved."
The use of psychiatric drugs has alarmed some
medical experts and ethicists, who say the medications cannot be properly
monitored in a war zone.
The Army's own reports indicate that the
availability and use of such medications in Iraq and Kuwait have increased
since mid-2004, when a team of psychiatrists approved making Prozac, Zoloft,
Trazodone, Ambien and other drugs more widely available throughout the combat
zone.
The military is sending troops back into
combat for second and third tours despite diagnoses of PTSD or other
combat-related psychological problems, a practice that some mental health
experts fear will fuel incidents of suicide and violence among troops abroad
and at home.
Although Department of Defense standards for
enlistment in the armed forces disqualify recruits who suffer from PTSD, the
military is redeploying service members to Iraq who fit that criteria.
The practice, which military
experts concede is driven partly by pressure to maintain troop levels, runs
counter to accepted medical doctrine and research, which cautions that
re-exposure to trauma increases the risk of psychological problems.
"You think it's a stigma
to be sent home from the Iraq war? That
might be the line they're using" to justify retaining troops, said Dr.
Arthur S. Blank Jr., a psychiatrist who formerly served as national director of
the Veterans Administration's counseling centers. "I wouldn't say
that."
"You have to become comfortable with
things we wouldn't normally be comfortable with," said Bob Johnson, a
psychologist in Atlanta who counseled soldiers last year as chief of combat
stress control for the Army's 2nd Brigade.
"If there were an endless supply, the compassionate side of you
just wants to get these people out of here. They're miserable. You can see it
in their faces. But I had to kind of put
that aside." [Let’s
“kind of” ship this worthless piece of shit to Iraq. After all, “you have to become
comfortable with things we wouldn’t normally be comfortable with.” Let’s see how “comfortable”
he finds that. What a marvelous first
hand research experience for such a distinguished, honorable clinician. Why, with luck, he might even run into one of
the emotionally fucked up soldiers he sent back, late some night.]
Military data show that deaths in Iraq due to
all non-combat causes, such as accidents, rose by 32 percent from 2004 to 2005.
Of the more than 500 non-combat
deaths among all service branches since the start of the war, gunshot wounds
were the second-leading cause of death, behind vehicle crashes but ahead of
heart attacks and other medical ailments.
At least seven troops who are believed to
have committed suicide in 2005 and early 2006, and one who has been charged
with killing a fellow soldier, were serving second or third tours in Iraq. Some of them had exhibited signs of combat stress
after their first deployments, according to family members and friends.
Some soldiers now serving second tours in
Iraq say they are wrestling with debilitating PTSD symptoms, despite being
placed on medications.
Jason Sedotal, a 21-year-old military
policeman from Pierre Part, La., returned home in March 2005 after seven months
in Iraq, during which a Humvee he was driving rolled over a land mine, badly
injuring his sergeant. After completing
his tour, Sedotal was diagnosed with PTSD and placed on Prozac, he said.
Last October, after being
transferred to a new unit, he was shipped back to Iraq for a one-year tour. During a short visit home last week, he
described being wracked by nightmares and depression and convinced that
"somebody's following me." When
he conveyed his symptoms to a doctor at Fort Polk in Louisiana last Tuesday, he
said, he was given a higher dose of medication and the sleeping pill Ambien and
told that he was to go back to Iraq.
"I can't keep going
through this mentally. All they do is
fill me up on medicine and send me back," he said. "What's this going to do to me in the
future? I'm going to be 60 years old,
hiding under my kitchen table? I'm real
scared."
More than 378,000 active-duty, Reserve and
National Guard troops have served more than one tour in Iraq or Afghanistan,
representing nearly a third of the 1.3 million troops who have been deployed,
according to Department of Defense statistics.
That repeat exposure to combat could
dramatically increase the percentage of soldiers and Marines who experience PTSD,
major depression or other disorders, some experts say.
While the 2005 jump in
self-inflicted deaths was as pronounced as the 2003 spike that had stirred
action, Army officials said last week that there were no immediate plans to
change the approach or resources targeted to mental health.
Ritchie insisted the military works hard to
prevent suicides, but said that is a challenge because every soldier has access
to a weapon. [True
enough. Perhaps, if instead of suicide,
one or more of these wrecked troops uses a weapon to scatter some commanding
officers’ brains over the floor, the policy will change.]
MORE:
Army
Spec. Jeffrey Henthorn
Roll Call:
Army Spec. Jeffrey Henthorn;
Army Pfc. David L. Potter;
Army Spec. Michael S. Deem;
Pfc. Jason Scheuerman;
Army Pfc. Samuel Lee;
Pfc. Steven Sirko;
Army National Guard 1st Lt. Debra
A. Banaszak;
“It’s The Same As Vietnam. All They Care About Is The Numbers In The
Field,” He Said. “That's All That Matters, Having The
Numbers.”
5 14 By LISA
CHEDEKEL And MATTHEW KAUFFMAN, Hartford Courant [Excerpts]
Among the troops who plunged
through the gaps in the mental health system was Army Spec. Jeffrey Henthorn, a
young father and third-generation soldier, whose death last year is still being
mourned by his native Choctaw, Okla.
What his hometown does not know
is that Henthorn, 25, had been sent back to Iraq for a second tour, even though
his superiors knew he was unstable and had threatened suicide at least twice,
according to Army investigative reports and interviews.
When he finally succeeded in
killing himself on Feb. 8, 2005, at Camp Anaconda in Balad, Iraq, an Army
report says, the work of the M-16 rifle was so thorough that fragments of his
skull pierced the barracks ceiling.
In a case last July, a 20-year-old
soldier who had written a suicide note to his mother was relieved of his gun
and referred for a psychological evaluation, but then was accused of faking his
mental problems and warned he could be disciplined, according to what he told
his family. Three weeks later, after his
gun had been handed back, Pfc. Jason Scheuerman, of Lynchburg, Va., used it to
end his life.
Also kept in the war zone was
Army Pfc. David L. Potter, 22, of Johnson City, Tenn., who
was diagnosed with anxiety and depression while serving in Iraq in 2004.
Potter remained with his unit
in Baghdad despite a suicide attempt and a psychiatrist's recommendation that
he be separated from the Army, records show. Ten days after the recommendation
was signed, he slid a gun out from under another soldier's bed, climbed to the
second floor of an abandoned building and shot himself through the mouth, the
Army has concluded.
While many families of service members who
died of non-combat causes say they are not familiar with military deployment
policies, some question whether the military knowingly put their loved ones at
risk.
Among them are relatives of
Army Spec. Michael S. Deem, a 35-year-old father of two, who was deployed to
Iraq in January 2005 despite a history of depression
that family members say was known to the military. Shortly before Deem
deployed, a military psychiatrist gave him a long-term supply of Prozac to help
him handle the stress, his wife said.
Just 3½ weeks after he arrived in Iraq, Deem
died in his sleep of what the Army later determined was an enlarged heart
"complicated by elevated levels of fluoxetine" - the generic name for
Prozac.
Family members of some troops whose deaths
have been labeled suicides complain that the military has given them limited
information about the circumstances of the deaths. Some have had to wait more than a year for
autopsies and investigative reports, which they say still leave questions
unanswered.
Barbara Butler, mother of Army
National Guard 1st Lt. Debra A. Banaszak, 35, of Bloomington, Ill., said
she has trouble understanding why her daughter would have taken her own life in
Kuwait last October, as the military has determined. She said that while Banaszak, the single
mother of a teenage son, was proud to serve her country and had not complained,
the stresses of the deployment may have exacerbated her depression.
"She was used to being in charge and
being a leader, but never in these circumstances," said Butler. "If
the Army is right that she did this, it was nothing she would have done
ordinarily. It was that war that brought it about."
Some autopsy and investigative reports
obtained by The Courant make clear that service members who committed suicide
were experiencing serious psychological problems during deployment.
In the months before Army Pfc.
Samuel Lee, of Anaheim, Calif., killed himself in March 2005, an
investigative report says, the 19-year-old had talked to fellow soldiers about
a dream in which he tried to kill his sergeant before taking his own life, and
of kidnapping, raping and killing Iraqi children.
Three times, a soldier
recounted in a sworn statement, Lee had pointed his gun at himself and
depressed the trigger, stopping just before a round fired.
But two of Lee's superiors gave statements
saying they did not realize Lee was having trouble until the day he balanced
the butt of his rifle on a cot, put his mouth over the muzzle and fired.
But a number of other reports on 2004 and
2005 suicides indicate that military superiors were aware that soldiers were
self-destructing.
Ann Scheuerman, mother of the
soldier who shot himself after his suicide note was discounted by Army
officials, said her family has had a frustrating time
getting the military to acknowledge mistakes in the way her son was treated.
"We wanted to make sure
that whatever protocol they have in place is used, and if it doesn't work, fix
it," Scheuerman said. "And to
date, we're just not getting anything at all.
"Nothing can bring back my son,"
she said. "But if something can be
done to prevent any more deaths, then if I offend a couple of people, I'll go
ahead and apologize up front. Go ahead and come after me, but something needs
to be done."
Family members of Jeffrey
Henthorn, the Choctaw, Okla., native, are concerned that the Army
ignored blatant warnings that Henthorn was suicidal.
Jeffrey
Henthorn in Iraq with a young girl he befriended.
He told family members he was
tormented by memories of having shoved a boy off a moving tank and watching the
boy’s limp body slip under the wheels.
An investigative report into Henthorn's death
contains statements indicating that Henthorn's "chain of command" was
aware that he had tried to harm himself in November 2004 - by slashing his arm
"intentionally, in a (horizontal) manner" - in the weeks leading up
to his second deployment to Iraq, while he was stationed at Fort Riley in
Kansas.
Then, soon after his deployment in December,
a distressed Henthorn took his gun into a latrine in Kuwait and charged it, in
what fellow soldiers feared was a suicide gesture. Although his superiors at the scene grabbed
the weapon away, his platoon sergeant returned the gun the same day, after
talking to Henthorn for about a half-hour, according to a sworn statement. The platoon's first lieutenant was notified,
but there is no indication that Henthorn was referred for a mental health
evaluation or counseling.
Eighteen days later, after crossing into Iraq
with his unit, Henthorn finished what he had started.
"If you lock yourself in a
latrine for 10 minutes with your gun and threaten to hurt yourself, you don't
just get your gun back. You get relieved
of duty and sent home," said Henthorn's father, Warren, who is still
struggling to understand what happened to his only son.
"It's the same as Vietnam
- all they care about is the numbers in the field," he said. "That's
all that matters, having the numbers."
Some troops and their families say the
military has not made good on its pledge to make mental health care easily
accessible in the field.
Summer Lipford of Statesville, N.C., said she
urged her son, Pfc. Steven Sirko, to talk to a
counselor in April of last year, after he complained in a phone call from Iraq
that he was having nightmares, losing weight and not sleeping.
"I asked Steven, `If
you're having dreams that are so (messed) up, why don't you go talk to
somebody?'" Lipford recalled. "He said, `Yeah, Mom, like that's gonna
happen.' He said it was an act of God to
get to see somebody."
Four days later, Sirko, a 20-year-old medic,
injected himself with vecuronium, an anesthetic that causes muscular paralysis,
and died of an accidental overdose, according to what the military has told
Lipford.
IRAQ WAR REPORTS
Baghdad Roadside Bomb Kills Two U.S. Soldiers
May 14, 2006 AP
BAGHDAD, Iraq: Two U.S. soldiers
were killed Sunday by a roadside bomb, the U.S. command said in a statement.
The military said the two
soldiers, whose identities were withheld pending notification of next of kin,
were killed at about 8 p.m. in east Baghdad.
Another Wisconsin Soldier Reported Killed In Iraq
May 14, 2006 (AP)
PLEASANT PRAIRIE, WI A 22-year-old soldier
from Pleasant Prairie has been reported killed while on active duty in Iraq,
according to an area funeral home.
A family member of U.S. Army Spc. Eric D.
Clark told the Kenosha News on Friday that Army representatives had delivered
the news that he died. But details of the circumstances surrounding the death
this week had not been released by the military.
An obituary sent to the Kenosha News by the
Piasecki-Althaus Funeral Home in Kenosha said Clark was on active duty in
Baghdad. The obituary was to be printed
in Sunday editions.
Doug Reindl, dean of St. Joseph Interparish
Junior High, said he learned of the death when Clark's stepfather called school
Friday morning to explain why Clark's younger brother, a seventh-grader, would
not be in school. Clark graduated from St. Joseph in 1997.
"Just before he left he stopped in to
say goodbye," Reindl said. "He came in with his uniform on and he was
getting ready to go.
"Everyone here is just really shook. I'm
not just saying this just because he is gone," Reindl said. "He was
really a good kid. You're looking at almost 10 years ago now that he had
graduated, but he has been back about once a year since. You don't have a lot
of students who do that."
Sgt. Eugene Washington,
assigned the past five years to a Kenosha recruiting office, said he remembered
Clark worked at a nearby Pizza Hut when he enlisted in the Army.
"The guy was really excited about
joining and serving his country," he said.
There have been 54 military
personnel from Wisconsin killed in the Iraq war.
Two British Soldiers
Killed By Roadside Bomb Near Basra
14/05/2006 Telegraph Group Limited
Two British soldiers have been
killed and another injured in a roadside bomb attack in southern Iraq, the
Ministry of Defence has confirmed.
The attack happened north of Basra as the
troops carried out a routine patrol in an armoured Land Rover.
The troops involved were members of the 2nd
Battalion Royal Anglian Regiment.
A British helicopter recovered the men, who
were taken to a military hospital.
The 2nd Battalion Royal Anglian Regiment has
been based at Ternhill, Shropshire, since 2005.
The MoD said the regiment's role in Iraq was "security sector reform"
- training members of the Iraqi police, army and customs.
The regiment recruits in Leicestershire,
Northamptonshire, Lincolnshire and Bedfordshire. It was previously based at Ballykelly, in
Northern Ireland.
U.S. Convoy Attacked In Mosul:
Casualties Not Announced
5.14.06 THOMAS WAGNER, Associated Press
Writer
In the city of Mosul, a bomber
rammed a U.S. military convoy, killing two Iraqi bystanders and wounding nine,
said police Brig. Abdul-Hamod al-Jibori.
U.S. forces closed off that area, there were no immediate reports of
U.S. casualties.
Oh Shit Dept.
14 May 2006, By Patrick Cockburn in Arbil,
Indep