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Attack of the Drones: Is war becoming a video gam…: http://youtu.be/msHJLwYWX30

British dead and wounded in Afghanistan, month by month

link

America suffers an epidemic of suicides among traumatised army veterans

From The Times, November 15, 2007 by Tom Baldwin in Washington.


More American military veterans have been committing suicide than US soldiers have been dying in Iraq, it was claimed yesterday.

At least 6,256 US veterans took their lives in 2005, at an average of 17 a day, according to figures broadcast last night. Former servicemen are more than twice as likely than the rest of the population to commit suicide.

Such statistics compare to the total of 3,863 American military deaths in Iraq since the invasion in 2003 - an average of 2.4 a day, according to the website ICasualties.org.

The rate of suicides among veterans prompted claims that the US was suffering from a “mental health epidemic” – often linked to post-traumatic stress.

suicide rate among Americans as a whole was 8.9 per 100,000, but the level among veterans was at least 18.7. That figure rose to a minimum of 22.9 among veterans aged 20 to 24 – almost four times the nonveteran average for people of the same age.

There are 25 million veterans in the United States, 1.6 million of whom served in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“Not everyone comes home from the war wounded, but the bottom line is nobody comes home unchanged,” said Paul Rieckhoff, a former Marine and founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans for America.
(...)

A separate study published last week shows that US military veterans make up one in four homeless people in America, even though they represent just 11 per cent of the general adult population, and younger soldiers are already trickling into shelters and soup kitchens after completing tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.

While it took roughly a decade for the lives of Vietnam veterans to unravel to the point that they started showing up among the homeless, at least 1,500 ex-servicemen from the present wars have already been identified.

(...)

MoD agrees public inquiry into death of Iraqi

by Richard Norton-Taylor, The Guardian, Thursday May 15


The Ministry of Defence bowed to pressure from the courts yesterday and agreed to an independent public inquiry into one of the most notorious episodes involving British troops in Iraq: the death of Baha Mousa, a hotel receptionist, in Basra in September 2003.

Victim died in British army custody with 93 injuries

After years of legal argument and a court martial in which the judge accused soldiers of erecting a "wall of silence", the MoD accepted that an independent inquiry was needed to find out why Mousa died in British custody with 93 separate injuries on his body and why eight other Iraqi civilians held with him were abused.

General Sir Richard Dannatt, the head of the army, welcomed the decision, saying he was determined to establish how the "disgraceful incident" occurred.

Des Browne, the defence secretary, who is believed to have personally pressed for an inquiry, told MPs he hoped it would reassure the public that "no stone has been left unturned".

Dannatt said: "Important questions have yet to be answered about how and why [Mousa's death] occurred."

He said the army would give the inquiry its "fullest cooperation". It had no wish to hide anything and he wanted to get "under the skin" of what happened. He said only a "small number of individuals" had let the army down.

But an inquiry must also find out whether the underlying cause of the incident had been a "systemic" failure in the army and in the way soldiers were trained, he added. The inquiry would examine why the soldiers involved, and other senior figures in the British army, were apparently unaware that five interrogation techniques - wall standing, hooding, subjection to noise, sleep deprivation, and deprivation of food and drink - were banned. They were prohibited in 1972 by Edward Heath, then prime minister, after the European human rights court condemned British security forces in Northern Ireland. Phil Shiner, lawyer for the Iraqis, said an inquiry must investigate other allegations of abuse by British soldiers, notably concerning the deaths and mistreatment of Iraqis in Abu Naji facility in May. But Bob Ainsworth, the armed forces minister, made it clear he wanted the inquiry's terms of reference, yet to be decided, to be as narrow as possible. "If they are drawn too widely, not sufficient weight will be given to the death [of Mousa] itself," he said. Ainsworth said the case had "nil" to do with the Human Rights Act. But the act demands that an independent public inquiry be set up in the wake of evidence of serious wrongdoing by agents of a state.

The MoD has admitted that British soldiers breached the act, specifically the principles enshrining the right to life and prohibition on torture.

(...)

At a court martial, six soldiers of the Queen's Lancashire Regiment, including Colonel Jorge Mendonca, the commanding officer, were acquitted of negligence and abuse over Mousa's death and the ill-treatment of the other Iraqis. A corporal admitted inhumane treatment. No one was convicted of killing Mousa.

Shiner, who also represents families of British soldiers killed in Iraq, said: "It will not be sufficient if the inquiry has a narrow remit and does not look at all the cases and issues. The public, as well as parliament, must be given the opportunity of fully understanding what went wrong in our detention policy in Iraq and what are the lessons to be learned for the future."

Shami Chakrabarti, director of the civil rights group Liberty, compared the potential impact of the inquiry to that into the death of Stephen Lawrence.

She said: "As the Stephen Lawrence inquiry was to the Metropolitan police so the Baha Mousa inquiry must be for the British military. It has been sparked by one case but they are going to have to look root and branch at how the British military treats people who are detained."

(...)

Timeline
September 15 2003 Baha Mousa, 26, is beaten to death in British custody

January 6 2004
MoD discloses it has paid compensation to Mousa's family

July 28 2004
Mousa's family issues legal challenge to government's decision not to hold independent inquiry

December 14 2004
High court rules in favour of full inquiry

June 13 2007
Law lords uphold ruling that UK human rights laws apply to Mousa, paving the way for a public inquiry

May 14 2008
MoD announces a full public inquiry into Mousa's death

weiterführende Literatur:
Armeeaufträge aus militärethischer Sicht
MILES KOSMOPOLITIS - Brevier für den kritisch urteilenden Soldaten

US army increases use of moral waivers to meet demand for troops

by Elana Schor in Washington guardian.co.uk, Monday April 21 2008

The US army doubled its use of "moral waivers" for enlisted soldiers last year to cope with the stress of the Iraq war, allowing convicted sex offenders, people convicted of making terrorist threats and child abusers into the military, according to new records released today.

The army gave out 511 moral waivers to soldiers with felony convictions last year, relaxing its recruiting standards in order to admit them. Criminals got 249 army waivers in 2006, a sign that the high demand for US forces in Iraq has forced a sharp increase in the number of criminals allowed on the battlefield.

The felons accepted into the army and marines included 87 soldiers convicted of assault or maiming, 130 convicted of non-marijuana drug offences, seven convicted of making terrorist threats, and two convicted of indecent behaviour with a child. Waivers were also granted to 500 burglars and thieves, 19 arsonists and 9 sex offenders.

The new data was released by the oversight committee of the House of Representatives, which also noted that "poor record-keeping and maintenance" prevented the military from tracking how many convicted criminals had received moral waivers before 2006.

Henry Waxman, the Democratic chairman of the oversight panel, wrote to Pentagon personnel chief David Chu to seek more details on how directly the rise in waivers stems from Iraq-related recruiting needs.

Waxman told Chu that while "providing opportunities to individuals who have served their sentences and rehabilitated themselves" is important, the waivers are a sign that the US military is stretched too thin.

The total number of moral waivers in the military reached 34,476 in 2006, or nearly 20% of all enlisted soldiers, according to the Palm centre at the University of California.

Recruits with felony convictions are more likely than other soldiers to drop out or be released from the military, often at a significant cost to the US government.

More than one felony conviction disqualifies recruits from the army or marines, even with a moral waiver, but the navy and air force can admit those with multiple offences. Still, the army and marines have stepped up their moral waivers while the navy and air force have cut down since the Iraq war began.

Entgrenzte Gewalt

von Kurt Spillmann, 15. Februar 2008, Neue Zürcher Zeitung

Abu Ghraib bei Bagdad war das verrufenste Gefängnis des Iraks. Unter Saddam wurden hier die politischen Gefangenen gefoltert und getötet. Nach Saddams Sturz übernahmen die US-Truppen Abu Ghraib. Im Mai 2004 gelangten die ersten Bilder von Folterungen und Demütigungen irakischer Gefangener durch amerikanische Soldaten und Soldatinnen an die Öffentlichkeit und lösten Entsetzen aus. 2005 und 2006 folgten weitere Bilderserien und Videos; offenbar gehörten solche Misshandlungen – in rund 100 Fällen mit Todesfolge – zum Standardverfahren bei Befragungen. Klagen wurden eingereicht, das Pentagon dementierte, das Weisse Haus schwächte ab: Schuld an diesen Misshandlungen seien einige untergeordnete Figuren gewesen, die sich nicht an die Vorschriften gehalten hätten.


Druck der Situation

Einer, der von den Bildern aus Abu Ghraib tief aufgewühlt – aber nicht überrascht – wurde, war Philip Zimbardo, Professor für Sozialpsychologie in Stanford. Einige Bilder aus Abu Ghraib glichen zum Verwechseln den Bildern, die 1971 im Laufe des von ihm geplanten und geleiteten «Stanford Prison Experiment» gemacht worden waren: nackte, gefesselte Gefangene mit Säcken über dem Kopf, sexuell missbraucht von ihren Bewachern und unter extremem Stress. Das Experiment, das arglos begonnen hatte, musste vorzeitig abgebrochen werden. Die 24 Studenten, alles wohlintegrierte junge Männer, die sich freiwillig für ein sozialpsychologisches Experiment gemeldet hatten und völlig zufällig in «Gefangene» und «Wärter» eingeteilt worden waren, kamen als «Gefangene» derart unter Druck und entwickelten als «Wärter» derart sadistische Züge, dass Zimbardo die Fortsetzung des Versuchs nach nur sechs Tagen nicht weiter verantworten konnte.

Wie leicht die im Hintergrund aller Menschen lauernde Gewaltbereitschaft jederzeit und überall entfesselt werden kann, dokumentierte auch Christopher R. Browning 1992 in seiner Studie «Ganz normale Männer: Das Reserve-Polizeibataillon 101 und die in Polen».

Er schilderte, wie die 500 Männer einer Hamburger Reserveeinheit – im Wesentlichen «ganz normale» Angestellte, Lehrer, Handwerker und Facharbeiter – unter dem Einfluss der Umstände – dem Druck der militärischen Organisation, der Legitimation durch Ideologie und Befehle von oben, der Bereitschaft der Kameraden, Schiessbefehle gegen Zivilisten auszuführen, der Angst, die Zugehörigkeit zur Gruppe zu verlieren – zu Massenmördern wurden, ohne dazu gezwungen worden zu sein.

Auch aus den Genoziden in Rwanda, Bosnien, Kambodscha und aus vielen weiteren Konflikten wird berichtet, wie unter dem Druck der Kriegssituation die persönliche Ethik schwindet, der «Gegner» oder die Opfer nicht mehr als Menschen betrachtet werden und Gleichgültigkeit gegenüber den Opfern, sogar Gewöhnung an den Akt des Tötens möglich wird.

Der unsichtbare Feind
Auf erschütternde Art und in bis anhin nie gesehenem Detail dokumentiert nun der Hamburger Historiker Bernd Greiner diesen Prozess an den amerikanischen Soldaten, die in Vietnam in einem «Krieg ohne Fronten» kämpften, ständig auf der Suche nach dem Feind, den sie als Helden des Guten besiegen wollten. Junge Männer, auf positive soziale Werte sozialisiert in ihren amerikanischen Familien und Schulen, kamen nach Vietnam als Gutgläubige, «die in die Fussstapfen ihrer Väter treten, sie nachahmen oder gar übertreffen wollten». «Als Treuhänder des amerikanischen Patriotismus wollten sie gesehen werden.» Doch der Alltag des Krieges entsprach nicht ihren John-Wayne-Bildern. Statt einen klar definierten und klar erkennbaren Feind vorzufinden, trafen sie nur auf eine vorwiegend ländliche Bevölkerung, die ihnen in Sprache, Mentalität und Kultur unverständlich und fremd war. Bald schien eine Unterscheidung zwischen Vietcong, Sympathisanten und Zivilisten nicht mehr möglich: Der unsichtbare Tod lauerte überall.

Greiner zeigt die Dynamik eines asymmetrischen Krieges ohne Fronten, in dem gerade die Unsichtbarkeit des Gegners Angst und Wut der Kämpfenden ins Masslose steigert und alle Schranken hinwegfegt, die das Völkerrecht und speziell die Genfer Konventionen für die Schonung von Zivilisten und Gefangenen aufgerichtet haben. Aus der Angst erwuchs ein abgrundtiefer Hass auf den unsichtbaren Feind. Was sich bewegte, war potenziell ein Feind und wurde zum Ziel. So wurde auch My Lai möglich, wo im März 1968 rund 500 Männer, Frauen und Kinder von einer kleinen Gruppe von Soldaten unterschiedslos erschossen wurden. Im Gegensatz zur Meinung von Öffentlichkeit, Gerichten, militärischen Vorgesetzten und Politikern zeigt nun Greiner auf der Basis einer erdrückenden Fülle von Beweismaterial auf, dass das Massaker von My Lai bei weitem kein Einzelfall war, sondern nur das bekannteste Beispiel aus einer unabsehbaren Folge willkürlicher Gewalttaten.

(...)

Die Stärke von Greiners Buch ist die Schilderung des Vietnamkrieges und der in Vietnam verübten Gewalttaten aus einer vernachlässigten Perspektive: Es stehen weder die strategischen Entscheidungen des Kalten Krieges noch die diplomatischen Anstrengungen zu seiner Beilegung, weder die Traumata der Heimkehrer noch die zurückblickenden Gestaltungen von Kriegserlebnissen in Film und Literatur im Mittelpunkt, sondern es sind der Kriegsalltag und die darin immer wieder hervorbrechende hemmungslose Gewalttätigkeit, die in einer streng sachlichen, unpolemischen und deshalb umso stärker beeindruckenden Art zur Darstellung kommen.
Im Zentrum steht die Gewalt von Bodentruppen, wie sie abseits der Hauptkriegsschauplätze und jenseits des grossen Kampfgeschehens verübt wurde. Da bei dieser Kriegführung operative und doktrinale Vorgaben, die in Washington entwickelt und gutgeheissen wurden, eine entscheidende Rolle spielten, werden auch die Rolle der Kriegsherren im Weissen Haus, der Generäle im Pentagon und das Verhalten der Offiziere vor Ort einer genauen Analyse unterzogen. Die endemische Verachtung des Kriegsrechts kommt ebenso zur Sprache wie das karrierebedingte Interesse vieler Kommandanten an einer aggressiven Kriegführung, die um jeden Preis eine hohe «body count»-Bilanz anstrebte.

Greiners Werk ist eine meisterhafte Darstellung des Kriegsalltags in Vietnam und der Auswirkungen der unerträglichen Anspannung der für einen ganz anderen Krieg ausgebildeten Kämpfer in Dschungel und Reisfeldern, die militärische Aufträge zu erfüllen hatten, ohne einen organisierten militärischen Feind zu Gesicht zu bekommen.

Ebenso eindrücklich ist die Schilderung der Leichtigkeit, mit der harmlose junge Männer plötzlich unter den Umständen dieses asymmetrischen Krieges zu Mördern wurden. Schwer zu begreifen die Unfähigkeit der amerikanischen Führung, eine Exit-Strategie zu finden. Bedenklich die Verleugnung der Gewaltexzesse und Kriegsverbrechen durch militärische, politische und juristische Instanzen aller Ebenen und schliesslich die Unfähigkeit grosser Teile der amerikanischen Öffentlichkeit, das Gewaltgeschehen als tatsächliches Geschehen zu akzeptieren und selbstkritisch zu reflektieren.

Greiner stellt eine kritische Bemerkung Telford Taylors, des Hauptanklägers im Nürnberger Kriegsverbrecherprozess ab 1946, an den Schluss seines Buches: «Wir haben es irgendwie nicht geschafft, die Lektionen zu lernen, die wir in Nürnberg lehren wollten, und genau dieses Versagen ist die Tragödie des heutigen Amerika.» – Ist es nur die Tragödie Amerikas?

Liegt nicht ein allgemeineres Versagen vor, dass Kämpfende, Kriegführende, Politisierende die Wurzeln ihres eigenen Handelns und ihre eigene verborgene Neigung zu Gewalthandlungen nicht kennen und auch kaum bereit sind, ernsthaft danach zu suchen?

Modernes Ingenieurwissen hat den Regierungen und den Kämpfenden unserer Zeit Waffen in die Hand gegeben, die Wirkungen von geologischen Dimensionen erzielen können. Es ist höchste Zeit, in Erfahrung zu bringen, warum die Gewaltneigung im Menschen – von Kain und Abel bis zu Holocaust, Rwanda, Srebrenica, My Lai, Darfur und Abu Ghraib – so viel dauerhafter und stärker ist als alle kulturellen Dämme, die von der menschlichen Zivilisation im Laufe der Geschichte in Gestalt von Rechtsnormen dagegen aufgerichtet wurden.

Bernd Greiner: Krieg ohne Fronten. Die USA in Vietnam. Hamburger Edition, Hamburg 2007. 595 S., Fr. 58.90, € 35.–.

Es geht um fundamentalste Fragen

von Urs Gehriger, in WELTWOCHE Nr. 1.08, S. 24-31 (Link)

Noch vor kurzem schien die amerikanische Mission im Irak epochal gescheitert. Seit einem halben Jahr jedoch gehen Gewalt und Terror markant zurück. Der Architekt der politisch-militärischen Wende, General David H. Petraeus, erklärt exklusiv in der Weltwoche warum.

(...)

Im Gespräch mit Soldaten im Feld sind mir zwei Dinge aufgefallen: Erstens sind sie deutlich optimistischer als noch vor einigen Monaten. Gleichzeitig ist eine gewisse Frustration zu spüren. Sie sagen: «Wir wurden für den Kampf ausgebildet, und jetzt machen wir vor allem Nation-Build-ing.» Ist das die künftige Rolle der US-Streitkräfte?

Unsere Armee hat den Bodentruppen mit Nachdruck eine neue Idee auferlegt, die wir «Full Spectrum»-Operationen nennen. Das heisst:

Alle Operationen bestehen aus einem Mix von Offensive, Defensive sowie Stabilisierungs- und Unterstützungsoperationen.

Dies ist ein grosser Bruch mit der Vergangenheit. Als Befehlshaber des Combined Arms Center in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, war ich massgebend an der Ausarbeitung der neuen Doktrin beteiligt. Wir unterzogen die Kampfausbildungszentren und alle Offiziersausbildungskurse einer Generalüberholung. Wir nahmen die ersten Lektionen, die wir im Irak gelernt hatten, in die Revision auf. Ich denke, diese Doktrin enthält, worauf wir uns künftig einstellen müssen. Beispiel ist das Marine Corps, das bereits nach der Idee eines Drei-Block-Kriegs funktioniert: Kämpfen – Stabilisieren – Aufbauen.

Es folgt der Idee, dass dieselben Truppen, die grössere Kampfoperationen durchgeführt haben, auch die Stabilisierungs- und Wiederaufbauoperationen durchführen.

Nation-Building ist also Teil des Pakets, das wir künftig zu leisten haben. Nation-Building ist etwas, was wir künftig noch viel öfter werden tun müssen.


Sie haben das Training und die Ausbildung der Armee-Offiziere in Fort Leavenworth geleitet. Zudem waren Sie federführend am Handbuch für die neue Anti-Guerilla-Strategie beteiligt. Wollen Sie die US-Armee einer kulturellen Revolution zu unterziehen?

Zuerst möchte ich festhalten, dass es beim Ganzen nicht um eine einzelne Person geht. Der Generalstabschef der Armee hat mich mit der Aufgabe beauftragt.

In der Tat ist ein grosser Kulturwandel im Gang.

Wir pflegten einst zu sagen: «Wenn du die ‹grossen Dinge› tun kannst, die grossen kombinierten Kampfoperationen mit High-Tech-Waffen, dann schaffst du auch die ‹kleinen Dinge›.» Dies hat sich als falsch erwiesen.

Als ich Ende 2005 aus dem Irak nach Fort Leavenworth kam, wusste jeder, vom Generalstabschef bis hinunter zum simplen Offizier, dass wir als Armee substanzielle Änderungen vornehmen müssen. Mein Vorgänger in Leavenworth, General William Wallace, hat den Terminus «Maschine des Wandels» für die gesamte Organisation geprägt. Auf allen Stufen arbeiten wir mit neuen Doktrinen, neuen Konzepten, die auch die Ausbildung unserer Offiziere neu definieren und schliesslich auch das Training unserer Truppen beeinflussen. All dies musste angepasst werden angesichts der Lektionen, die wir während der Operationen in letzten Jahrzehnten gelernt hatten.


Welche Lektionen?

Wir haben aus dem Irak viele Erfahrungen nach Hause gebracht, aber auch aus Zentralamerika und bis zu gewissen Teilen aus Orten wie Haiti, Bosnien und Kosovo. Es geht in erster Linie um ein gewachsenes Bewusstsein für den gewaltigen Einfluss von kulturellen, religiösen und ethnischen Faktoren.

Die Kenntnis des sogenannten «kulturellen Terrains» ist in vielen Fällen genauso wichtig wie die Kenntnis des «physischen Terrains».

Wir mussten uns diesen neuen Herausforderungen stellen, wenn wir Kriege gewinnen wollen.

(...)

weiterführende Literatur:
MILES KOSMOPOLITIS
MILES KOSMOPOLITIS - 8 Thesen
MILES KOSMOPOLITIS- Zwei Chancen
Lehrübung 'RAUMSICHERUNG' des Ausbildungszentrums Heer (AZH)

Link: sevenload.com

Army 'losing battalion' to drugs

BBC, Friday, 14 December 2007

The Army is dismissing the equivalent of almost a battalion of soldiers every year for taking drugs, a report says.


The Royal United Services Institute said the number of positive tests for illegal drugs like cocaine and heroin rose from 517 in 2003 to 769 last year.

Positive tests for cocaine use rose four-fold during the same period. A dishonourable discharge is likely after a positive test for illegal drug use.

The MoD said drug abuse was less common among forces personnel than civilians.

Test changes

Unannounced compulsory drug testing (CDT) is carried out across the Royal Navy, Army and RAF.

In the Army, which tests 85% of its personnel yearly, positive tests rose from 1.4 per 1,000 in 2003 to 4.0 in the first half of 2006 and 5.7 per 1,000 from January to June 2007.

Professor Sheila Bird, a senior scientist with the Medical Research Council writing for the RUSI Journal, said the government had refused to say whether it had change testing practices since 2003 "on the grounds of cost".

More sensitive tests and more testing after weekends and home leave would "go a long way" to accounting for the rise in positive tests for cocaine, she said.

Infrequent use

However, if there had been no changes, she said the cocaine results could signal "a genuine change in soldiers' drug use during a period coincident with major operations".

It could also indicate that cocaine use was actually two to three times higher because there was a high chance infrequent use was going undetected, Professor Bird said.

This was because infrequent use could occur on weekends - but testing may not specifically carried out on Mondays.

Professor Bird analysed answers to Parliamentary questions to find out about army drug testing.

She said that in 2003 cannabis accounted for 50% of all CDT positive tests and cocaine 22%, but by 2006 the figures were 30% for cannabis and 50% for cocaine.

The switch could be the result of soldiers deliberately moving away from cannabis to "minimise their chance of testing positive" - traces of cannabis remain in the urine for two to three weeks, while cocaine remains for two or three days after use.

'Zero tolerance'

RUSI defence management analyst Christianne Tipping said the Ministry of Defence's drugs policy needed to re-examined, especially "at a time when recruitment and retention are problematic".

"CDT exists to deter rather than to try to catch every single person who might engage in occasional drug use. It also helps to maintain operational effectiveness and reduce possible security risks, such as blackmail.

"However, there could be a need to look at a more pragmatic management strategy so that recruitment difficulties in certain trades are not compounded by high discharge rates resulting from drug offences."

But a Ministry of Defence spokesman said: "Drug misuse is incompatible with service life and is not tolerated.

"Positive rates in the Army over the past four years average around 0.77%, compared with over 7% in civilian workplace drug testing programmes in the UK.

"These statistics demonstrate that drug misuse is significantly less prevalent among service personnel than in corresponding civilian demographic groups."

The RUSI report comes a month after 17 soldiers from the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders were discharged after testing positive for drugs.

US marine guilty of Iraq killing

by Peter Bowes, Friday, 14 December 2007
BBC News, California

A US marine has been found guilty of killing an Iraqi soldier while they were on night-time patrol in Fallujah.

Lance Corporal Delano Holmes was convicted of negligent homicide, but was found not guilty of a more serious charge of unpremeditated murder.

Holmes told a military court in San Diego he stabbed the Iraqi private in a fight after suspecting he might be signalling to an insurgent sniper.

He now faces up to eight years in prison and a dishonourable discharge.

Cigarette

Holmes told the court he had had fought with Private Munther Jasem Muhammed Hassin while they had been on night-time sentry duty in Falluja.

He said he suspected that the Iraqi was signalling to insurgents with a lit cigarette and a mobile phone.

He told investigators that during the fight Pte Hassin reached for his AK-47 after refusing to put down the cigarette and phone.

Prosecutors accused Holmes of repeatedly stabbing the Iraqi solder with his bayonet. They said Pte Hassin was an ally of the United States, and there was no evidence he was anything but "a peaceful guy".


Holmes's defence lawyer told jurors the actions of the marine were "a perfectly reasonable application and escalation of force".

A post-mortem examination found that Pte Hassin had 17 stab wounds, 26 cuts and a gash that nearly severed his nose.

Holmes was also found guilty of lying to his superiors about the incident.

The five-day trial focused on the politically sensitive issue of how US marines interact with the Iraqi security forces.

Murder trial sniper says US used 'bait' for suspect Iraqis

by David Smith in Baghdad
Sunday November 11, 2007
The Observer

A trial opening in Baghdad today will shed new light on a secret Pentagon programme in which US snipers allegedly planted fake weapons as 'bait' to lure their Iraqi enemies to their deaths.

Sergeant Evan Vela is accused of murdering an unarmed Iraqi man and an attempted cover-up. He has admitted that he fired two bullets at point-blank range into a detainee's head but said he was following a direct order.

His court martial comes after those of two fellow snipers in an embarrassing saga which has blown the cover of an alleged classified 'baiting' programme in which snipers scatter ammunition, detonation cords or other items, then lie in wait to shoot insurgents who pick them up.

The tactic emerged earlier this year when Captain Matthew Didier, a platoon commander in an elite sniper unit known as the 'Painted Demons', told a military court:

'Baiting is putting an object out there that we know they will use, with the intention of destroying the enemy.
'Basically, we would put an item out there and watch it. If someone found the item, picked it up and attempted to leave with the item, we would engage the individual as I saw this as a sign they would use the item against US forces.'

Didier claimed that members of the US military's Asymmetric Warfare Group visited his unit in January and later supplied ammunition boxes filled with 'drop items' to be deployed as bait. Soldiers told the Washington Post that about a dozen platoon members were aware of the programme, and that others knew about the 'drop items' but did not know their purpose. Vela, team leader Michael Hensley and Jorge Sandoval were members of the 'Painted Demons', which had a reputation for notching 'kills' at a high rate in the so-called 'triangle of death' south of Baghdad. They were charged with the murders of three Iraqis during US operations in the spring.

Last week Hensley, an expert marksman from the 1st Battalion, 501st Airborne, was cleared of murder charges but reprimanded and demoted on lesser charges of planting an AK-47 rifle beside the body of a dead Iraqi and disrespecting an officer.

Last month Sandoval was found not guilty on two murder charges but was demoted from specialist to private and is serving a 44-day sentence for planting a detonation cord on the body of an Iraqi.

Vela is charged with premeditated murder, planting a weapon, making false statements and obstruction of justice. The first pre-trial hearing is today.

Lawyers for the snipers have argued that the baiting programme is relevant to their defence because it shows how officials backed unorthodox methods of killing not only insurgents but also unarmed men thought to be enemy combatants.

James Culp, Vela's attorney, has said:

'I don't know how far up the chain this baiting programme goes right now. I know the government is trying to dummy this down to the lowest level possible.'

He added:

'Our government is asking soldiers and Marines to make morally bruising decisions under the most horrific conditions imaginable. When the government doesn't like the results, they isolate and vilify the soldier while hiding behind security clearances, classifications and unreasonable expectations.'

(...)

US military officers in Baghdad deny the existence of a baiting programme. The court barred most classified material from Hensley's court martial.

Nine fewer and under fire until the end

by Audrey Gillan
The Guardian Weekly, 02.11.07, p. 11

(...)

The fiercest, longest and most lethal firefight took place in the early hours of Saturday September 8 south of Garmsir in Helmand province.

Corporal Ben Umley, 26, fingered a hole in his helmet where a bullet penetrated and fell out inside.

Some time before, he had drawn a smiley face in white marker just next to the hole. It may have brought him luck but the corporal doesn't like the word; his friend died in the attack and later, a sergeant died trying to bring out the friend's body. "I can smile, but he can't," he says. "It's not about luck."

The corporal's platoon was crossing open ground when it came under fire from the Taliban. In the chaos, it was difficult to work out who was hit and where they were, and where the enemy would attack from again, and when.

Two soldiers were shot, one in the head and one in the leg and stomach. Then Private Johann Botha, a South African soldier, was hit and could not be found. Screaming could be heard over the radio: "They're coming to get him," and "Don't leave me."

Sergeant Michael Lockett, 27, extracted his injured men and knew he would have to leave his fatality behind. "I got them behind a position called the three walls and I radioed Brels [Sergeant Craig Breslford] and told him about Botha, that I didn't want to go anywhere till I had got him out. He said 'No dramas, I'll get him back for you'. He was moving forward in sections and Brelsy got shot in the neck. [He died in the attack]. They had to extract him." After stocking up with more ammunition and water, the men returned to the combat zone. "We had to find Botha and extract him," said Sgt Lockett.

"When we got back that night we felt like shit. Everyone was crying for six to eight hours solid. I'm still not sure that it has really hit me yet."

Brigadier John Lorimer, commander of 12 Mechanised Brigade, of which the Mercians are a part, said: "Over the last six months, 30 UK soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan, all but two in Helmand.

"Our main effort now is to look after those who have been injured - both physically and psychologically - and their families."

He added that the brigade had "a quiet sense of professional satisfaction that we had done a good job", though there was a "hell of a long way to go". He said: "It has been worth the effort and the sacrifices the brigade has made."

But one soldier, who preferred not to be named, disagreed. "Did we make a difference? Yes, we have killed Taliban but the worst thing you ever want to do is lose a man and at the moment I don't think it's for a valid reason or a cause."

Brain damage fears for troops

up to 20 000 British soldiers could be at risk

by Mattew Taylor and Esther Addley
The Guardian Weekly, 2.11.07, p. 11

A committee of MPs is to investigate fears that up to 20,000 UK troops who served in Iraq and Afghanistan are at risk of brain damage after being exposed to high-powered explosions.

It was revealed last week that the Ministry of Defence has launched a major study into mild traumatic brain injury (MTBI) in soldiers returning from active service.

MTBI, cuased by blows to the head or shockwaves by explosions, has been named in the US as one of four "signature injuries" of the Iraq war, due to the increased use of roadside bombs there and in Afghanistan. The condition can lead to memory loss, depression and anxiety.

(...)

The US army says a many as 20% of its soldiers and marines may be at risk of MTBI. It is introducing a largescale screening programme for troops returning from the frontline.

(...)

Mental health problems for reservists

http://www.kcl.ac.uk/phpnews/wmview.php?ArtID=1882; accessed on 2nd of october

Tess Browne with Professors Matthew Hotopf and Simon Wessely, with colleagues from the King's Centre for Military Health Research, have today published a new study which highlights problems UK reservists experience before and after deployment – one indicator as to why this group has more mental health problems than regular soldiers.

The findings published in this month's British Journal of Psychiatry (June) indicate that the main differences relate more to problems at home than to what actually happens to reservists in Iraq.

The research team originally conducted a large MOD-funded survey that involved around 1,600 reservists and 8,500 regulars who went on Operation Telic ‘British Operations in Iraq' in 2003. The survey indicated that around 25 per cent of reservists experienced a mental health disorder compared with 19 per cent of regular soldiers.

The follow-up survey published today was designed to examine the differences between the two groups and suggests a lack of support for soldiers and families, before and after being deployed.

One of the authors of the new study, Professor Wessely comments that reservists tended to be older and of higher rank than the regular forces sent into war zones. They reported higher exposure to traumatic experiences than regular soldiers, lower unit cohesion, and more problems adjusting to homecoming.

He adds: ‘Improvements have been made to support serving reservists. We are now looking into whether this has been matched by similar changes in support for their families back at home.'

UK personnel deployed in the war completed a health survey about their experiences. Their health was measured using self-report of common mental disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), fatigue, physical symptoms and well-being. It was found that there were major differences in the reservists' socio-demographic characteristics, in the way they were deployed, and their reported experiences during deployment.

Although reservists were more likely to report their families feeling proud of their contribution compared with regular personnel, they also experienced more difficulties and less marital satisfaction on their return.

Traumatic experiences

The study reports that a large number of the reservists were engaged in medical and welfare roles, aiding the wounded and handling bodies. This could have accounted for their higher exposure to traumatic experiences. They were also less likely to discharge their weapons, or come under small arms fire, reflecting the relatively few reservists in combat roles (11per cent compared with 25per cent of regulars). However, reservists were more likely to report coming under artillery fire, or thinking that they might be killed.

Unit cohesion has been shown to be the single most important sustaining and motivating force among troops, and psychological problems are more common in soldiers who do not form close relationships within their unit. Professor Wessely continues: ‘It is generally more difficult for an individual reservist than if you are part of a large formal unit.'

Research has shown that reservists are at greater risk of psychological stress because of rapid mobilisation, leaving them minimal time to process fears, and put their affairs in order. The unexpected disruption to families and careers, and resulting financial pressures, may have contributed to problems at home among the reservists.

Since the Iraq War began in January 2003, more than 12,000 reservists have been deployed, making up 11per cent of the UK forces in Iraq.

The UK Ministry of Defence has recently changed its policy to provide more mental health services for reservists, who previously were not eligible to use Defence Medical Services following deployment.

'War tsar' calls for return of the draft to take the strain

by Peter Beaumont in Baghdad
Sunday August 12, 2007
The Observer


America's 'war tsar' has called for the nation's political leaders to consider bringing back the draft to help a military exhausted by wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In a radio interview, Lieutenant General Douglas Lute said the option had always been open to boost America's all-volunteer army by drafting in young men in the same way as happened in Vietnam. 'I think it makes sense to consider it,' he said. Lute was appointed 'war tsar' earlier this year after President Bush decided a single figure was needed to oversee the nation's military efforts abroad.

Rumours of a return to the draft have long circulated in military circles as the pressure from fighting two large conflicts at the same time builds on America's forces. However, politically it would be extremely difficult to achieve, especially for any leader hoping to be elected in 2008. Bush has previously ruled out the suggestion as unnecessary.

Lute, however, said the war was causing stress to military families and, as a result, was having an impact on levels of re-enlistment. 'This kind of stress plays out across dinner tables and in living-room conversations within these families. Ultimately the health of the all-volunteer force is going to rest on those sorts of personal family decisions,' he said.

A draft would revive bad memories of the turmoil of the 1960s and early 1970s when tens of thousands of young men were drafted to fight and die in Vietnam. Few other policies proved as divisive in America and the memories of anti-war protesters burning their draft cards and fleeing to Canada are still vivid in the memory.

Fatigue cripples US army in Iraq

Exhaustion and combat stress are besieging US troops in Iraq as they battle with a new type of warfare. Some even rely on Red Bull to get through the day. As desertions and absences increase, the military is struggling to cope with the crisis

by Peter Beaumont in Baghdad
Sunday August 12, 2007
The Observer


Lieutenant Clay Hanna looks sick and white. Like his colleagues he does not seem to sleep. Hanna says he catches up by napping on a cot between operations in the command centre, amid the noise of radio. He is up at 6am and tries to go to sleep by 2am or 3am. But there are operations to go on, planning to be done and after-action reports that need to be written. And war interposes its own deadly agenda that requires his attention and wakes him up.

When he emerges from his naps there is something old and paper-thin about his skin, something sketchy about his movements as the days go by.
The Americans he commands, like the other men at Sullivan - a combat outpost in Zafraniya, south east Baghdad - hit their cots when they get in from operations. But even when they wake up there is something tired and groggy about them. They are on duty for five days at a time and off for two days. When they get back to the forward operating base, they do their laundry and sleep and count the days until they will get home. It is an exhaustion that accumulates over the patrols and the rotations, over the multiple deployments, until it all joins up, wiping out any memory of leave or time at home. Until life is nothing but Iraq.

Hanna and his men are not alone in being tired most of the time. A whole army is exhausted and worn out. You see the young soldiers washed up like driftwood at Baghdad's international airport, waiting to go on leave or returning to their units, sleeping on their body armour on floors and in the dust.

Where once the war in Iraq was defined in conversations with these men by untenable ideas - bringing democracy or defeating al-Qaeda - these days the war in Iraq is defined by different ways of expressing the idea of being weary. It is a theme that is endlessly reiterated as you travel around Iraq. 'The army is worn out. We are just keeping people in theatre who are exhausted,' says a soldier working for the US army public affairs office who is supposed to be telling me how well things have been going since the 'surge' in Baghdad began.
(...)

When the soldiers talk like this there is resignation. There is a corrosive anger, too, that bubbles out, like the words pouring unbidden from a chaplain's assistant who has come to bless a patrol. 'Why don't you tell the truth? Why don't you journalists write that this army is exhausted?'

It is a weariness that has created its own culture of superstition. There are vehicle commanders who will not let the infantrymen in the back fall asleep on long operations - not because they want the men alert, but because, they say, bad things happen when people fall asleep. So the soldiers drink multiple cans of Rip It and Red Bull to stay alert and wired.

But the exhaustion of the US army emerges most powerfully in the details of these soldiers' frayed and worn-out lives. Everywhere you go you hear the same complaints: soldiers talk about divorces, or problems with the girlfriends that they don't see, or about the children who have been born and who are growing up largely without them.
(...)
The anecdotal evidence on the ground confirms what others - prominent among them General Colin Powell, the former US Secretary of State - have been insisting for months now: that the US army is 'about broken'.

Only a third of the regular army's brigades now qualify as combat-ready. Officers educated at the elite West Point academy are leaving at a rate not seen in 30 years, with the consequence that the US army has a shortfall of 3,000 commissioned officers - and the problem is expected to worsen.

And it is not only the soldiers that are worn out. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have led to the destruction, or wearing out, of 40 per cent of the US army's equipment, totalling at a recent count $212bn (£105bn).

But it is in the soldiers themselves - and in the ordinary stories they tell - that the exhaustion of the US military is most obvious, coming amid warnings that soldiers serving multiple Iraq deployments, now amounting to several years, are 50 per cent more likely than those with one tour to suffer from acute combat stress.

The army's exhaustion is reflected in problems such as the rate of desertion and unauthorised absences - a problem, it was revealed earlier this year, that had increased threefold on the period before the war in Afghanistan and had resulted in thousands of negative discharges.

(...)

The war inside

by Anne Hull and Dana Priest
The Guardian Weekly, 06.07.07, pp. 23-25

(Auszug)

...

Calloway felt naked without his M-4 rifle, his constant companion during his tour south of Baghdad with the 101st Airborne Division. The yearlong deployment claimed the lives of 50 soldiers in his brigade. Two suicides. Calloway (...) lasted nine months, until the afternoon he watched his sergeant step on a pressure-plate bomb in the road last year. The young soldier's knees buckled and he vomited into the reeds before he was ordered to help collect body parts. A few days later he was given anti-depressants and rest, but after a week he was still twitching and sleepless. In September the army decided his war was over.

Every month between 20 and 40 soldiers are evacuated from Iraq because of mental problems, according to the army.

...

US soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) outnumber all of the war's amputees by 43 to one in the army alone.

...

One night he put a DVD and watched the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan (...) retching in fear as they waded ashore and faced a rain of German bullets. Limbs were severed, necks punctured, foreheads blown open, but the grunts kept charging. "See why I picked infantry," he said. "There's no other place in the world where you can have a job like that. It's a brotherhood that's deeper than your own family."

His romanticised ideals clashed with reality.

Four months out of basic training he had been sent on one of the most dangerous sectors of Baghdad.

...

The roads (...) were littered with bombs. A first sergeant was lost right away, and the casualties never stopped. Living in abandoned houses, Calloway went days without sleep. He went on raids at night, kicking in doors and searching houses to the sound of gunfire and screams.

He had never felt such excitement or sense of belonging. His best friend was Specialist Denver Rearick, a 23-year-old on his second tour who warned him: "Your entire body is a puzzle before your go to war. You go to war and every little piece of that puzzle gets twisted and turned. And then you are supposed to come back home again."

But the pressure and dread and exhaustion began to smother Calloway. He survived several bomb blasts. Some soldiers were sucking on aerosol cans to get high; one died accidentally. Sleep deprivation mixed with random violence scrambled Calloway.

...

On the day Vosbein died (he treated Calloway like a kid brother), a convoy patrol in three Humvees pulled over to check a crater in the road. As Calloway was opening his door, Vosbein was already moving towards the crater. The explosion knocked two other soldiers to the ground. Vosbein - whistling, happy Vos - was eviscerated. Parts of him were everywhere. Calloway threw up. Then: rage. He wanted to shoot the first Iraqi he saw, but his legs weren't working. He was useless to help clean up the scene. That night they confiscated his weapon. His commanders watched him closely. Eventually it was decided to ship him home.

...

The War Inside

Troops Are Returning From the Battlefield With Psychological Wounds, But the Mental-Health System That Serves Them Makes Healing Difficult

by Dana Priest and Anne Hull
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, June 17, 2007


Army Spec. Jeans Cruz helped capture Saddam Hussein. When he came home to the Bronx, important people called him a war hero and promised to help him start a new life. The mayor of New York, officials of his parents' home town in Puerto Rico, the borough president and other local dignitaries honored him with plaques and silk parade sashes. They handed him their business cards and urged him to phone.

But a "black shadow" had followed Cruz home from Iraq, he confided to an Army counselor. He was hounded by recurring images of how war really was for him: not the triumphant scene of Hussein in handcuffs, but visions of dead Iraqi children.

In public, the former Army scout stood tall for the cameras and marched in the parades. In private, he slashed his forearms to provoke the pain and adrenaline of combat. He heard voices and smelled stale blood. Soon the offers of help evaporated and he found himself estranged and alone, struggling with financial collapse and a darkening depression.

At a low point, he went to the local Department of Veterans Affairs medical center for help. One VA psychologist diagnosed Cruz with post-traumatic stress disorder. His condition was labeled "severe and chronic." In a letter supporting his request for PTSD-related disability pay, the psychologist wrote that Cruz was "in need of major help" and that he had provided "more than enough evidence" to back up his PTSD claim. His combat experiences, the letter said, "have been well documented."

None of that seemed to matter when his case reached VA disability evaluators. They turned him down flat, ruling that he deserved no compensation because his psychological problems existed before he joined the Army. They also said that Cruz had not proved he was ever in combat. "The available evidence is insufficient to confirm that you actually engaged in combat," his rejection letter stated.

Yet abundant evidence of his year in combat with the 4th Infantry Division covers his family's living-room wall. The Army Commendation Medal With Valor for "meritorious actions . . . during strategic combat operations" to capture Hussein hangs not far from the combat spurs awarded for his work with the 10th Cavalry "Eye Deep" scouts, attached to an elite unit that caught the Iraqi leader on Dec. 13, 2003, at Ad Dawr.

Veterans Affairs will spend $2.8 billion this year on mental health. But the best it could offer Cruz was group therapy at the Bronx VA medical center. Not a single session is held on the weekends or late enough at night for him to attend. At age 25, Cruz is barely keeping his life together. He supports his disabled parents and 4-year-old son and cannot afford to take time off from his job repairing boilers. The rough, dirty work, with its heat and loud noises, gives him panic attacks and flesh burns but puts $96 in his pocket each day.

Once celebrated by his government, Cruz feels defeated by its bureaucracy. He no longer has the stamina to appeal the VA decision, or to make the Army correct the sloppy errors in his medical records or amend his personnel file so it actually lists his combat awards.

"I'm pushing the mental limits as it is," Cruz said, standing outside the bullet-pocked steel door of the New York City housing project on Webster Avenue where he grew up and still lives with his family. "My experience so far is, you ask for something and they deny, deny, deny. After a while you just give up."

An Old and Growing Problem

Jeans Cruz and his contemporaries in the military were never supposed to suffer in the shadows the way veterans of the last long, controversial war did. One of the bitter legacies of Vietnam was the inadequate treatment of troops when they came back. Tens of thousands endured psychological disorders in silence, and too many ended up homeless, alcoholic, drug-addicted, imprisoned or dead before the government acknowledged their conditions and in 1980 officially recognized PTSD as a medical diagnosis.

Yet nearly three decades later, the government still has not mastered the basics: how best to detect the disorder, the most effective ways to treat it, and the fairest means of compensating young men and women who served their country and returned unable to lead normal lives.

Cruz's case illustrates these broader problems at a time when the number of suffering veterans is the largest and fastest-growing in decades, and when many of them are back at home with no monitoring or care. Between 1999 and 2004, VA disability pay for PTSD among veterans jumped 150 percent, to $4.2 billion.

By this spring, the number of vets from Afghanistan and Iraq who had sought help for post-traumatic stress would fill four Army divisions, some 45,000 in all.

They occupy every rank, uniform and corner of the country. People such as Army Lt. Sylvia Blackwood, who was admitted to a locked-down psychiatric ward in Washington after trying to hide her distress for a year and a half; and Army Pfc. Joshua Calloway, who spent eight months at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and left barely changed from when he arrived from Iraq in handcuffs; and retired Marine Lance Cpl. Jim Roberts, who struggles to keep his sanity in suburban New York with the help of once-a-week therapy and a medicine cabinet full of prescription drugs; and the scores of Marines in California who were denied treatment for PTSD because the head psychiatrist on their base thought the diagnosis was overused.

They represent the first wave in what experts say is a coming deluge.

As many as one-quarter of all soldiers and Marines returning from Iraq are psychologically wounded, according to a recent American Psychological Association report. Twenty percent of the soldiers in Iraq screened positive for anxiety, depression and acute stress, an Army study found.

But numbers are only part of the problem. The Institute of Medicine reported last month that Veterans Affairs' methods for deciding compensation for PTSD and other emotional disorders had little basis in science and that the evaluation process varied greatly. And as they try to work their way through a confounding disability process, already-troubled vets enter a VA system that chronically loses records and sags with a backlog of 400,000 claims of all kinds.

The disability process has come to symbolize the bureaucratic confusion over PTSD. To qualify for compensation, troops and veterans are required to prove that they witnessed at least one traumatic event, such as the death of a fellow soldier or an attack from a roadside bomb, or IED. That standard has been used to deny thousands of claims. But many experts now say that debilitating stress can result from accumulated trauma as well as from one significant event.

In an interview, even VA's chief of mental health questioned whether the single-event standard is a valid way to measure PTSD. "One of the things I puzzle about is, what if someone hasn't been exposed to an IED but lives in dread of exposure to one for a month?" said Ira R. Katz, a psychiatrist. "According to the formal definition, they don't qualify."

The military is also battling a crisis in mental-health care. Licensed psychologists are leaving at a far faster rate than they are being replaced. Their ranks have dwindled from 450 to 350 in recent years. Many said they left because they could not handle the stress of facing such pained soldiers. Inexperienced counselors muddle through, using therapies better suited for alcoholics or marriage counseling.

A new report by the Defense Department's Mental Health Task Force says the problems are even deeper. Providers of mental-health care are "not sufficiently accessible" to service members and are inadequately trained, it says, and evidence-based treatments are not used. The task force recommends an overhaul of the military's mental-health system, according to a draft of the report.

Another report, commissioned by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates in the wake of the Walter Reed outpatient scandal, found similar problems: "There is not a coordinated effort to provide the training required to identify and treat these non-visible injuries, nor adequate research in order to develop the required training and refine the treatment plans."

But the Army is unlikely to do more significant research anytime soon. "We are at war, and to do good research takes writing up grants, it takes placebo control trials, it takes control groups," said Col. Elspeth Ritchie, the Army's top psychiatrist. "I don't think that that's our primary mission."

In attempting to deal with increasing mental-health needs, the military regularly launches Web sites and promotes self-help guides for soldiers. Maj. Gen. Gale S. Pollock, the Army's acting surgeon general, believes that doubling the number of mental-health professionals and boosting the pay of psychiatrists would help.

But there is another obstacle that those steps could not overcome. "One of my great concerns is the stigma" of mental illness, Pollock said. "That, to me, is an even bigger challenge. I think that in the Army, and in the nation, we have a long way to go." The task force found that stigma in the military remains "pervasive" and is a "significant barrier to care."

Surveys underline the problem.

Only 40 percent of the troops who screened positive for serious emotional
problems sought help, a recent Army survey found. Nearly 60 percent of soldiers
said they would not seek help for mental-health problems because they felt their
unit leaders would treat them differently; 55 percent thought they would be seen
as weak, and the same percentage believed that soldiers in their units would
have less confidence in them.

Lt. Gen. John Vines, who led the 18th Airborne Corps in Iraq and Afghanistan, said countless officers keep quiet out of fear of being mislabeled. "All of us who were in command of soldiers killed or wounded in combat have emotional scars from it," said Vines, who recently retired. "No one I know has sought out care from mental-health specialists, and part of that is a lack of confidence that the system would recognize it as 'normal' in a time of war. This is a systemic problem."

Officers and senior enlisted troops, Vines added, were concerned that they would have trouble getting security clearances if they sought psychological help. They did not trust, he said, that "a faceless, nameless agency or process, that doesn't know them personally, won't penalize them for a perceived lack of mental or emotional toughness."

Overdiagnosed or Overlooked?

For the past 2 1/2 years, the counseling center at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms, Calif., was a difficult place for Marines seeking help for post-traumatic stress. Navy Cmdr. Louis Valbracht, head of mental health at the center's outpatient hospital, often refused to accept counselors' views that some Marines who were drinking heavily or using drugs had PTSD, according to three counselors and another staff member who worked with him.

"Valbracht didn't believe in it. He'd say there's no such thing as PTSD," said David Roman, who was a substance abuse counselor at Twentynine Palms until he quit six months ago.

"We were all appalled," said Mary Jo Thornton, another counselor who left last year.

A third counselor estimated that perhaps half of the 3,000 Marines he has counseled in the past five years showed symptoms of post-traumatic stress. "They would change the diagnosis right in front of you, put a line through it," said the counselor, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he still works there.

"I want to see my Marines being taken care of," said Roman, who is now a substance-abuse counselor at the Marine Corps Air Station in Cherry Point, N.C.

In an interview, Valbracht denied he ever told counselors that PTSD does not exist. But he did say "it is overused" as a diagnosis these days, just as "everyone on the East Coast now has a bipolar disorder." He said this "devalues the severity of someone who actually has PTSD," adding: "Nowadays it's like you have a hangnail. Someone comes in and says 'I have PTSD,' " and counselors want to give them that diagnosis without specific symptoms.

Valbracht, an aerospace medicine specialist, reviewed and signed off on cases at the counseling center. He said some counselors diagnosed Marines with PTSD before determining whether the symptoms persisted for 30 days, the military recommendation. Valbracht often talked to the counselors about his father, a Marine on Iwo Jima who overcame the stress of that battle and wrote an article called "They Even Laughed on Iwo." Counselors found it outdated and offensive. Valbracht said it showed the resilience of the mind.

Valbracht retired recently because, he said, he "was burned out" after working seven days a week as the only psychiatrist available to about 10,000 Marines in his 180-mile territory. "We could have used two or three more psychiatrists," he said, to ease the caseload and ensure that people were not being overlooked.

Former Lance Cpl. Jim Roberts's underlying mental condition was overlooked by the Marine Corps and successive health-care professionals for more than 30 years, as his temper and alcohol use plunged him into deeper trouble. Only in May 2005 did VA begin treating the Vietnam vet for PTSD. Three out of 10 of his compatriots from Vietnam have received diagnoses of PTSD. Half of those have been arrested at least once. Veterans groups say thousands have killed themselves.

To control his emotions now, Roberts attends group therapy once a week and swallows a handful of pills from his VA doctors: Zoloft, Neurontin, Lisinopril, Seroquel, Ambien, hydroxyzine, "enough medicine to kill a mule," he said.

Roberts desperately wants to persuade Iraq veterans not to take the route he traveled. "The Iraq guys, it's going to take them five to 10 years to become one of us," he said, seated at his kitchen table in Yonkers with his vet friends Nicky, Lenny, Frenchie, Ray and John nodding in agreement. "It's all about the forgotten vets, then and now. The guys from Iraq and Afghanistan, we need to get these guys in here with us."

"In here" can mean different things. It can mean a 1960s-style vet center such as the one where Roberts hangs out, with faded photographs of Huey helicopters and paintings of soldiers skulking through shoulder-high elephant grass. It can mean group therapy at a VA outpatient clinic during work hours, or more comprehensive treatment at a residential clinic. In a crisis, it can mean the locked-down psych ward at the local VA hospital.

"Out there," with no care at all, is a lonesome hell.

Losing a Bureaucratic Battle

Not long after Jeans Cruz returned from Iraq to Fort Hood, Tex., in 2004, his counselor, a low-ranking specialist, suggested that someone should "explore symptoms of PTSD." But there is no indication in Cruz's medical files, which he gave to The Washington Post, that anyone ever responded to that early suggestion.

When he met with counselors while he was on active duty, Cruz recalled, they would take notes about his troubled past, including that he had been treated for depression before he entered the Army. But they did not seem interested in his battlefield experiences. "I've shot kids. I've had to kill kids. Sometimes I look at my son and like, I've killed a kid his age," Cruz said. "At times we had to drop a shell into somebody's house. When you go clean up the mess, you had three, four, five, six different kids in there. You had to move their bodies."

When he tried to talk about the war, he said, his counselors "would just sit back and say, 'Uh-huh, uh-huh.' When I told them about the unit I was with and Saddam Hussein, they'd just say, 'Oh, yeah, right.' "

He occasionally saw a psychiatrist, who described him as depressed and anxious. He talked about burning himself with cigarettes and exhibited "anger from Iraq, nightmares, flashbacks," one counselor wrote in his file. "Watched friend die in Iraq. Cuts, bruises himself to relieve anger and frustration." They prescribed Zoloft and trazodone to control his depression and ease his nightmares. They gave him Ambien for sleep, which he declined for a while for fear of missing morning formation.

Counselors at Fort Hood grew concerned enough about Cruz to have him sign what is known as a Life Maintenance Agreement. It stated: "I, Jeans Cruz, agree not to harm myself or anyone else. I will first contact either a member of my direct Chain of Command . . . or immediately go to the emergency room." That was in October 2004. The next month he signed another one.

Two weeks later, Cruz reenlisted. He says the Army gave him a $10,000 bonus.

His problems worsened. Three months after he reenlisted, a counselor wrote in his medical file: "MAJOR depression." After that: "He sees himself in his dreams killing or strangling people. . . . He is worried about controlling his stress level. Stated that he is starting to drink earlier in the day." A division psychologist, noting Cruz's depression, said that he "did improve when taking medication but has degenerated since stopping medication due to long work hours."

Seven months after his reenlistment ceremony, the Army gave him an honorable discharge, asserting that he had a "personality disorder" that made him unfit for military service. This determination implied that all his psychological problems existed before his first enlistment. It also disqualified him from receiving combat-related disability pay.

There was little attempt to tie his condition to his experience in Iraq. Nor did the Army see an obvious contradiction in its handling of him: He was encouraged to reenlist even though his psychological problems had already been documented.

Cruz's records are riddled with obvious errors, including a psychological rating of "normal" on the same physical exam the Army used to discharge him for a psychological disorder. His record omits his combat spurs award and his Army Commendation Medal With Valor. These omissions contributed to the VA decision that he had not proved he had been in combat. To straighten out those errors, Cruz would have had to deal with a chaotic and contradictory paper trail and bureaucracy -- a daunting task for an expert lawyer, let alone a stressed-out young veteran.

In the Aug. 16, 2006, VA letter denying Cruz disability pay because he had not provided evidence of combat, evaluators directed him to the U.S. Armed Services Center for Research of Unit Records. But such a place no longer exists. It changed its name to the U.S. Army and Joint Services Records Research Center and moved from one Virginia suburb, Springfield, to another, Alexandria, three years ago. It has a 10-month waiting list for processing requests.

To speed things up, staff members often advise troops to write to the National Archives and Records Administration in Maryland. But that agency has no records from the Iraq war, a spokeswoman said. That would send Cruz back to Fort Hood, whose soldiers have deployed to Iraq twice, leaving few staff members to hunt down records.

But Cruz has given up on the records. Life at the Daniel Webster Houses is tough enough.

After he left the Army and came home to the Bronx, he rode a bus and the subway 45 minutes after work to attend group sessions at the local VA facility. He always arrived late and left frustrated. Listening to the traumas of other veterans only made him feel worse, he said: "It made me more aggravated. I had to get up and leave." Experts say people such as Cruz need individual and occupational therapy.

Medications were easy to come by, but some made him sick. "They made me so slow I didn't want to do nothing with my son or manage my family," he said. After a few months, he stopped taking them, a dangerous step for someone so severely depressed. His drinking became heavier.

To calm himself now, he goes outside and hits a handball against the wall of the housing project. "My son's out of control. There are family problems," he said, shaking his head. "I start seeing these faces. It goes back to flashbacks, anxiety. Sometimes I've got to leave my house because I'm afraid I'm going to hit my son or somebody else."

Because of his family responsibilities, he does not want to be hospitalized. He doesn't think a residential program would work, either, for the same reason.

His needs are more basic. "Why can't I have a counselor with a phone number? I'd like someone to call."

Or some help from all those people who stuck their business cards in his palm during the glory days of his return from Iraq. "I have plaques on my wall -- but nothing more than that."

Convoys and IED

Auszug aus: 'The carnage, the blown-up bodies I saw ... Why? What was this for?'

Friday July 13, 2007, Guardian Unlimited
by Chris Hedges and Laila Al-Arian

...

"A moving target is harder to hit than a stationary one," said Sgt. Ben Flanders, 28, a National Guardsman from Concord, New Hampshire, who served in Balad with the 172nd Mountain Infantry for eleven months beginning in March 2004. Flanders ran convoy routes out of Camp Anaconda, about thirty miles north of Baghdad.

"So speed was your friend. And certainly in terms of IED detonation, absolutely, speed and spacing were the two things that could really determine whether or not you were going to get injured or killed or if they just completely missed, which happened."

Following an explosion or ambush, soldiers in the heavily armed escort vehicles often fired indiscriminately in a furious effort to suppress further attacks, according to three veterans. The rapid bursts from belt-fed .50-caliber machine guns and SAWs (Squad Automatic Weapons, which can fire as many as 1,000 rounds per minute) left many civilians wounded or dead.

"One example I can give you, you know, we'd be cruising down the road in a convoy and all of the sudden, an IED blows up," said Spc. Ben Schrader, 27, of Grand Junction, Colorado. He served in Baquba with the 263rd Armor Battalion, First Infantry Division, from February 2004 to February 2005. "And, you know, you've got these scared kids on these guns, and they just start opening fire. And there could be innocent people everywhere. And I've seen this, I mean, on numerous occasions where innocent people died because we're cruising down and a bomb goes off."

Several veterans said that IEDs, the preferred weapon of the Iraqi insurgency, were one of their greatest fears. Since the invasion in March 2003, IEDs have been responsible for killing more US troops--39.2 percent of the more than 3,500 killed--than any other method, according to the Brookings Institution, which monitors deaths in Iraq. This past May, IED attacks claimed ninety lives, the highest number of fatalities from roadside bombs since the beginning of the war.

"The second you left the gate of your base, you were always worried," said Sergeant Flatt. "You were constantly watchful for IEDs. And you could never see them. I mean, it's just by pure luck who's getting killed and who's not. If you've been in firefights earlier that day or that week, you're even more stressed and insecure to a point where you're almost trigger-happy."

...

On July 30, 2004, Sergeant Flanders was riding in the tail vehicle of a convoy on a pitch-black night, traveling from Camp Anaconda south to Taji, just north of Baghdad, when his unit was attacked with small-arms fire and RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades). He was about to get on the radio to warn the vehicle in front of him about the ambush when he saw his gunner unlock the turret and swivel it around in the direction of the shooting. He fired his MK-19, a 40-millimeter automatic grenade launcher capable of discharging up to 350 rounds per minute.

"He's just holding the trigger down and it wound up jamming, so he didn't get off as many shots maybe as he wanted," Sergeant Flanders recalled. "But I said, 'How many did you get off?' 'Cause I knew they would be asking that. He said, 'Twenty-three.' He launched twenty-three grenades....

"I remember looking out the window and I saw a little hut, a little Iraqi house with a light on.... We were going so fast and obviously your adrenaline's--you're like tunnel vision, so you can't really see what's going on, you know? And it's dark out and all that stuff. I couldn't really see where the grenades were exploding, but it had to be exploding around the house or maybe even hit the house. Who knows? Who knows? And we were the last vehicle. We can't stop."

Convoys did not slow down or attempt to brake when civilians inadvertently got in front of their vehicles, according to the veterans who described them. Sgt. Kelly Dougherty, 29, from Cañon City, Colorado, was based at the Talil Air Base in Nasiriya with the Colorado National Guard's 220th Military Police Company for a year beginning in February 2003. She recounted one incident she investigated in January 2004 on a six-lane highway south of Nasiriya that resembled numerous incidents described by other veterans.

"It's like very barren desert, so most of the people that live there, they're nomadic or they live in just little villages and have, like, camels and goats and stuff," she recalled. "There was then a little boy--I would say he was about 10 because we didn't see the accident; we responded to it with the investigative team--a little Iraqi boy and he was crossing the highway with his, with three donkeys. A military convoy, transportation convoy driving north, hit him and the donkeys and killed all of them. When we got there, there were the dead donkeys and there was a little boy on the side of the road.

"We saw him there and, you know, we were upset because the convoy didn't even stop," she said. "They really, judging by the skid marks, they hardly even slowed down. But, I mean, that's basically--basically, your order is that you never stop."

...

Intelligence

Auszug aus: 'The carnage, the blown-up bodies I saw ... Why? What was this for?'

Friday July 13, 2007, Guardian Unlimited
by Chris Hedges and Laila Al-Arian

...

Fifteen soldiers we spoke with told us the information that spurred these raids was typically gathered through human intelligence--and that it was usually incorrect. Eight said it was common for Iraqis to use American troops to settle family disputes, tribal rivalries or personal vendettas. Sgt. Jesus Bocanegra, 25, of Weslaco, Texas, was a scout in Tikrit with the Fourth Infantry Division during a yearlong tour that ended in March 2004. In late 2003, Sergeant Bocanegra raided a middle-aged man's home in Tikrit because his son had told the Army his father was an insurgent. After thoroughly searching the man's house, soldiers found nothing and later discovered that the son simply wanted money his father had buried at the farm.

After persistently acting on such false leads, Sergeant Bocanegra, who raided Iraqi homes in more than fifty operations, said soldiers began to anticipate the innocence of those they raided. "People would make jokes about it, even before we'd go into a raid, like, Oh fucking we're gonna get the wrong house," he said. "'Cause it would always happen. We always got the wrong house." Specialist Chrystal said that he and his platoon leader shared a joke of their own: Every time he raided a house, he would radio in and say, "This is, you know, Thirty-One Lima. Yeah, I found the weapons of mass destruction in here."

Sergeant Bruhns said he questioned the authenticity of the intelligence he received because Iraqi informants were paid by the US military for tips. On one occasion, an Iraqi tipped off Sergeant Bruhns's unit that a small Syrian resistance organization, responsible for killing a number of US troops, was holed up in a house. "They're waiting for us to show up and there will be a lot of shooting," Sergeant Bruhns recalled being told.

As the Alpha Company team leader, Sergeant Bruhns was supposed to be the first person in the door. Skeptical, he refused. "So I said, 'If you're so confident that there are a bunch of Syrian terrorists, insurgents...in there, why in the world are you going to send me and three guys in the front door, because chances are I'm not going to be able to squeeze the trigger before I get shot.'" Sergeant Bruhns facetiously suggested they pull an M-2 Bradley Fighting Vehicle up to the house and shoot a missile through the front window to exterminate the enemy fighters his commanders claimed were inside. They instead diminished the aggressiveness of the raid. As Sergeant Bruhns ran security out front, his fellow soldiers smashed the windows and kicked down the doors to find "a few little kids, a woman and an old man."

In late summer 2005, in a village on the outskirts of Kirkuk, Specialist Chrystal searched a compound with two Iraqi police officers. A friendly man in his mid-30s escorted Specialist Chrystal and others in his unit around the property, where the man lived with his parents, wife and children, making jokes to lighten the mood. As they finished searching--they found nothing--a lieutenant from his company approached Specialist Chrystal: "What the hell were you doing?" he asked. "Well, we just searched the house and it's clear," Specialist Chrystal said. The lieutenant told Specialist Chrystal that his friendly guide was "one of the targets" of the raid. "Apparently he'd been dimed out by somebody as being an insurgent," Specialist Chrystal said. "For that mission, they'd only handed out the target sheets to officers, and officers aren't there with the rest of the troops." Specialist Chrystal said he felt "humiliated" because his assessment that the man posed no threat was deemed irrelevant and the man was arrested. Shortly afterward, he posted himself in a fighting vehicle for the rest of the mission.

Sgt. Larry Cannon, 27, of Salt Lake City, a Bradley gunner with the Eighteenth Infantry Brigade, First Infantry Division, served a yearlong tour in several cities in Iraq, including Tikrit, Samarra and Mosul, beginning in February 2004. He estimates that he searched more than a hundred homes in Tikrit and found the raids fruitless and maddening. "We would go on one raid of a house and that guy would say, 'No, it's not me, but I know where that guy is.' And...he'd take us to the next house where this target was supposedly at, and then that guy's like, 'No, it's not me. I know where he is, though.' And we'd drive around all night and go from raid to raid to raid."

"I can't really fault military intelligence," said Specialist Reppenhagen, who said he raided thirty homes in and around Baquba. "It was always a guessing game. We're in a country where we don't speak the language. We're light on interpreters. It's just impossible to really get anything. All you're going off is a pattern of what's happened before and hoping that the pattern doesn't change."

Sgt. Geoffrey Millard, 26, of Buffalo, New York, served in Tikrit with the Rear Operations Center, Forty-Second Infantry Division, for one year beginning in October 2004. He said combat troops had neither the training nor the resources to investigate tips before acting on them. "We're not police," he said. "We don't go around like detectives and ask questions. We kick down doors, we go in, we grab people."

...

Sergeant Bruhns said he uncovered illegal material about 10 percent of the time, an estimate echoed by other veterans. "We did find small materials for IEDs, like maybe a small piece of the wire, the detonating cord," said Sergeant Cannon. "We never found real bombs in the houses." In the thousand or so raids he conducted during his time in Iraq, Sergeant Westphal said, he came into contact with only four "hard-core insurgents."

Raids

Auszug aus: 'The carnage, the blown-up bodies I saw ... Why? What was this for?'

Friday July 13, 2007, Guardian Unlimited
by Chris Hedges and Laila Al-Arian

...

"So we get started on this day, this one in particular," recalled Spc. Philip Chrystal, 23, of Reno, who said he raided between twenty and thirty Iraqi homes during an eleven-month tour in Kirkuk and Hawija that ended in October 2005, serving with the Third Battalion, 116th Cavalry Brigade.

"It starts with the psy-ops vehicles out there, you know, with the big speakers playing a message in Arabic or Farsi or Kurdish or whatever they happen to be, saying, basically, saying, Put your weapons, if you have them, next to the front door in your house. Please come outside, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And we had Apaches flying over for security, if they're needed, and it's also a good show of force. And we're running around, and they--we'd done a few houses by this point, and I was with my platoon leader, my squad leader and maybe a couple other people.

"And we were approaching this one house," he said. "In this farming area, they're, like, built up into little courtyards. So they have, like, the main house, common area. They have, like, a kitchen and then they have a storage shed-type deal. And we're approaching, and they had a family dog. And it was barking ferociously, 'cause it's doing its job. And my squad leader, just out of nowhere, just shoots it. And he didn't--mother­fucker--he shot it and it went in the jaw and exited out. So I see this dog--I'm a huge animal lover; I love animals--and this dog has, like, these eyes on it and he's running around spraying blood all over the place. And like, you know, What the hell is going on? The family is sitting right there, with three little children and a mom and a dad, horrified. And I'm at a loss for words. And so, I yell at him. I'm, like, What the fuck are you doing? And so the dog's yelping. It's crying out without a jaw. And I'm looking at the family, and they're just, you know, dead scared. And so I told them, I was like, Fucking shoot it, you know? At least kill it, because that can't be fixed....

"And--I actually get tears from just saying this right now, but--and I had tears then, too--and I'm looking at the kids and they are so scared. So I got the interpreter over with me and, you know, I get my wallet out and I gave them twenty bucks, because that's what I had. And, you know, I had him give it to them and told them that I'm so sorry that asshole did that.

"Was a report ever filed about it?" he asked. "Was anything ever done? Any punishment ever dished out? No, absolutely not."

According to interviews with twenty-four veterans who participated in such raids, they are a relentless reality for Iraqis under occupation. The American forces, stymied by poor intelligence, invade neighborhoods where insurgents operate, bursting into homes in the hope of surprising fighters or finding weapons. But such catches, they said, are rare. Far more common were stories in which soldiers assaulted a home, destroyed property in their futile search and left terrorized civilians struggling to repair the damage and begin the long torment of trying to find family members who were hauled away as suspects.

Once they were in front of the home, troops, some wearing Kevlar helmets and flak vests with grenade launchers mounted on their weapons, kicked the door in, according to Sergeant Bruhns, who dispassionately described the procedure:

"You run in. And if there's lights, you turn them on--if the lights are working. If not, you've got flashlights.... You leave one rifle team outside while one rifle team goes inside. Each rifle team leader has a headset on with an earpiece and a microphone where he can communicate with the other rifle team leader that's outside.

"You go up the stairs. You grab the man of the house. You rip him out of bed in front of his wife. You put him up against the wall. You have junior-level troops, PFCs [privates first class], specialists will run into the other rooms and grab the family, and you'll group them all together. Then you go into a room and you tear the room to shreds and you make sure there's no weapons or anything that they can use to attack us.

"You get the interpreter and you get the man of the home, and you have him at gunpoint, and you'll ask the interpreter to ask him: 'Do you have any weapons? Do you have any anti-US propaganda, anything at all--anything--anything in here that would lead us to believe that you are somehow involved in insurgent activity or anti-coalition forces activity?'

"Normally they'll say no, because that's normally the truth," Sergeant Bruhns said. "So what you'll do is you'll take his sofa cushions and you'll dump them. If he has a couch, you'll turn the couch upside down. You'll go into the fridge, if he has a fridge, and you'll throw everything on the floor, and you'll take his drawers and you'll dump them.... You'll open up his closet and you'll throw all the clothes on the floor and basically leave his house looking like a hurricane just hit it.

"And if you find something, then you'll detain him. If not, you'll say, 'Sorry to disturb you. Have a nice evening.' So you've just humiliated this man in front of his entire family and terrorized his entire family and you've destroyed his home. And then you go right next door and you do the same thing in a hundred homes."

Each raid, or "cordon and search" operation, as they are sometimes called, involved five to twenty homes, he said. Following a spate of attacks on soldiers in a particular area, commanders would normally order infantrymen on raids to look for weapons caches, ammunition or materials for making IEDs. Each Iraqi family was allowed to keep one AK-47 at home, but according to Bruhns, those found with extra weapons were arrested and detained and the operation classified a "success," even if it was clear that no one in the home was an insurgent.

Before a raid, according to descriptions by several veterans, soldiers typically "quarantined" the area by barring anyone from coming in or leaving. In pre-raid briefings, Sergeant Bruhns said, military commanders often told their troops the neighborhood they were ordered to raid was "a hostile area with a high level of insurgency" and that it had been taken over by former Baathists or Al Qaeda terrorists.

"So you have all these troops, and they're all wound up," said Sergeant Bruhns. "And a lot of these troops think once they kick down the door there's going to be people on the inside waiting for them with weapons to start shooting at them."

Sgt Dustin Flatt, 33, of Denver, estimates he raided "thousands" of homes in Tikrit, Samarra and Mosul. He served with the Eighteenth Infantry Brigade, First Infantry Division, for one year beginning in February 2004. "We scared the living Jesus out of them every time we went through every house," he said.