Taken from the Times, UK, 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.
CBS News claimed that the figures represented the first attempt to conduct a nationwide count of veteran suicides. The tally was reached by collating suicide data from individual states for both veterans and the general population from 1995.
The 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.
CBS quoted the father of a 23-year-old soldier who shot himself in 2005 as suggesting that the military was covering up the scale of the problem. “Nobody wants to tally it up in the form of a government total,” Mike Bowman said. “They don’t want the true numbers of casualties to really be known.”
Mr Bowman’s son, Tim, was an army reservist who patrolled one of the most dangerous places in Baghdad, known as Airport Road. “His eyes when he came back were just dead. The light wasn’t there anymore,” said his mother, Kim Bowman. Eight months later, on Thanksgiving Day, Tim committed suicide.
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.
The National Alliance to End Homelessness, based the findings of its report on numbers from Veterans Affairs and the Census Bureau. Data from 2005 estimated that 194,254 homeless people on any given night were veterans.
Daniel Akaka, the chairman of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee, said: “For too many veterans, returning home from battle does not bring an end to conflict. There is no question that action is needed.”
The plight of US veterans is a matter of acute sensitivity for the Bush Administration which has set great store by standing up for – and support from – US troops. This year General Kevin Kiley, the US Army’s Surgeon General, was among senior military officials dismissed for his role in the mistreatment of wounded veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan.
Newspaper revelations about conditions at the Walter Reed Army Medical Centre in Washington became a lightning rod for criticism of the war in general. The outpatient clinic was described as squalid and rat-infested; a maze of red tape left many outpatients – often with severe brain injuries – wandering the corridors without help.
Thursday, November 15, 2007
America suffers an epidemic of suicides among traumatised army veterans
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Living as a veteran of the streets after 25th anniversary of the Vietnam Memorial
Yesterday marked the 25th anniversary of the Vietnam Memorial. Thousands of Veterans Join in March to Mark the Anniversary Of the Wall's Dedication and to Honor Those Named on It. The Wall bears the names of those killed or missing during the war. It was dedicated Nov. 13, 1982, with ceremonies and an emotional parade of tens of thousands of veterans from across the country. There were initially 57,939 names inscribed on the memorial. But 317 names have been added for various reasons, and the total now is 58,256, according to the memorial fund.
But what about the Veterans today? We hear in the media, on films, in songs how upon their return they were mistreated by their communities and Governments - so it was sad to read thier fates in this newspiece...
This is an interesting article taken from the BBC, Friday, 9 November 2007
One in four homeless people in the US is a military veteran, a report has found, even though veterans make up only 11% of the adult population. One former soldier told his story to the BBC's Vincent Dowd in Washington.
Only a year ago, Ben Israel could have been forgiven for thinking nothing would ever go right with his life again.
He had been mainly homeless since his early 30s, living either on the streets of the richest nation in the world or in a selection of public shelters. Sometimes he lived in his car.
Ben was born on an army base in the US state of North Carolina, where his father was a soldier.
When he was 18 months old he swallowed - or maybe was given - furniture polish. He was in a coma for days.
A disproportionate number of the homeless are military veterans
He blames this for his occasionally hesitant speech and some of the problems he has had throughout life. "It caused me issues," he says simply.
Yet today you only need to spend a few minutes with him to recognise a keen intelligence too.
Soup kitchens
In 1973, conscription ended in America - but that year Ben volunteered for the US Army artillery corps anyway.
He was just 17 and says he feared winding up in prison otherwise, because there was so little money around.
He just missed Vietnam but saw service, less dramatically, in Panama. He was only in the army for three years.
I ask if he has ever married. "Not officially," he says.
After the US Army, mainly he travelled and worked and he studied a little. From the late 1980s to November 2006 he was usually homeless - although there were brief periods here and there with a roof over his head.
He tries to recall the cities whose soup kitchens he got to know too well: "Dallas, Texas. Miami, Florida. Atlanta, Georgia - twice. Fayetteville, North Carolina. Portland, Oregon..."
He acknowledges there were others he may have forgotten. "What I would mainly do was move."
Charity salvation
Ben, at 51, is honest enough to acknowledge that some problems of his thirties and forties were of his own making.
But he also believes his middle years showed how badly America's Department of Veterans Affairs - the VA - has sometimes focused its resources.
"They are a giant cash-cow but they are spending their money in the wrong areas. If they put more emphasis on housing their charges that would solve most of their issues out on the street."
Ben's life has improved - more than he ever expected it might. But ultimately salvation came from a charity, not the VA.
He was in line at one more soup kitchen when he was approached by someone from Pathways to Housing.
It is a New York-based charity which, for 17 years, has helped the homeless who have psychiatric problems.
Important for Ben was that, as Pathway's mission statement makes clear, they do not require treatment or sobriety as a pre-condition of getting someone into an apartment.
Their philosophy is that the path to recovery starts with getting off the street and under a roof.
Watching squirrels
Ben's apartment in Marshall Heights in Washington DC is not big but it is clean and well kept.
Ben intends to find a job again and get off Social Security Disability Insurance. He dreams of being an electrician. "But I want a career - not a job," he says.
We get in a cab and travel to Franklin Square, in downtown Washington.
It's where a lot of still homeless veterans hang out during the day - some of Ben Israel's age, some a little younger. There is not much to do but watch the squirrels.
Ben passes on the phone number of the people who after almost two decades helped him escape his wasted life.
He is a middle-aged man who found a sort of salvation when all hope seemed gone. He wants others to share in the same good fortune.
Thursday, October 25, 2007
6 soldiers suspected of beating Druze comrades
Soldiers repeatedly kick Druze soldier who was late for guard duty; his friend also beaten up. Military judge: Incident has racist overtones
Taken from Ynet news, Israel, Hanan Greenberg
20.10.07,
Six IDF soldiers have been detained by Military Police over the past few days on suspicion of beating two of their Druze comrades at the Samaria Division headquarters in the West Bank, Ynet learned Saturday.
One of the Druze soldiers testified that he sustained blows to his entire body and that his friend was also beaten after trying to come to his aid.
"I'm very scared, because I believe they will try and take their revenge; they are very dangerous," the soldier told army investigators.
During a court hearing on the extension of five of the six soldiers' remand, Jaffa Military Court President Colonel Avi Levy described the incident as "a vile act" and said it had "racist overtones."
In the next few weeks Military Police will apparently file an indictment against the five soldiers whose remand was extended.
'Stab him, stab him already'
The scuffle broke out following an argument over guard duty. Apparently, one of the Druze soldiers was late in replacing one of his comrades and hurled insults at another soldier who confronted him on the matter.
A few hours later, one of the soldiers on the base approached the Druze soldier as he was coming out of the shower. According to the Druze soldier, the soldier who approached him summoned one of his friends and then said to him, "Is this how you talk to my brother?"
"Then he cursed me and headbutted me," the Druze soldier told army investigators. "I felt dizzy and then fell to the ground; I was kicked in the neck, back, stomach, hips – wherever – they kept kicking me all over."
The soldier said the assailants spewed racial epithets and threatened to "butcher" him.
Eventually the battered soldier managed to run toward the base's commissary while screaming for help, but the soldiers chased after him.
At a certain point one of the soldiers who took part in the beginning of the fight appeared and proceeded to throw the Druze soldier down on the ground and beat him along with the others.
"They continued to kick me, and one of them said 'stab him; stab him already'," the Druze soldier recounted.
The Druze soldier then fled to a nearby Border Guard base, where he informed an officer of what had transpired.
Immediately following the incident an impromptu lineup was set up, during which the Druze soldier identified his attackers. He was then transferred to a hospital for treatment.
"I'm still in need of additional medical treatment; I have nightmares," he told Military Police.
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Well it was only a few months ago that Senior IDF officers & Israeli government officials gatherd in Carmiel to honor IDF's Druze soldiers (there are currently 110,000 Druze soldiers in its ranks). The truth of the matter is that anyone that is not a Jew in Israel is considered an outsider even those who have lived there (includes occupied areas) for centuries. Non jews are prevented from proper medical, eduction and even jobs in the state. They have little hope in a country where European and American jews are First Class Citizens, followed by Jews who have lived in the Middle East for centuries (second class citizens), then Christians are third class, then follwed by Eithopean black jews, then Druze, then Muslims are the lowest class. So much for Democracy in the Middle East and all that!
Saturday, July 21, 2007
Another War Reopens Trail To Canada
Taken from Sydney Morning Heald, 21 July 2007
July 21, 2007
A generation after Vietnam, an increasing number of American soldiers are evading Iraq by heading north, writes Ian Munro in Toronto.
BEFORE he deserted from the US Marine Corps, Dean Walcott had ridden shotgun on besieged convoys speeding towards Baghdad and spent a second Iraq tour setting up military communications.
Though he had re-enlisted and was in no imminent danger of being redeployed for a third tour to Iraq, Mr Walcott could not go through with it. He bought a ticket on a Greyhound bus and rode to Canada, joining a steady trickle of US enlisted soldiers seeking refuge.
Mr Walcott's life was up-ended in 2004 at a military hospital in Germany when burns survivors from the Mosul mess tent bombing were shipped in.
Some resembled nothing so much as lumps of coal, he said. As they screamed in pain despite the tide of morphine cascading through them, he tortured himself with questions.
"If you are going to do that to your country's soldiers and sailors, then there's got to be a damn good reason, not just the abstract like this one was," said Mr Walcott, 25.
He grew weary of trying to answer the young reservists recovering from the loss of limbs and wanting to know what the heck the war was about and why they were there when all they had wanted was what the recruiters had promised: help with a college education.
His time there was followed by eight months in Iraq, ending in March last year, when he asked not to be redeployed to the war zone. The tragedy for him was that his new job was preparing others to ship out to Iraq. "I put myself in a position where I may be safe, but I was asking other people to go instead of me."
Late last year he resolved not to do it any more and has had no regrets about joining the ranks of the deserters. He saw a military psychiatrist but has had no other psychiatric help since arriving in Canada on December 5.
"I don't think there's any doctor in the world can take away memories," he said.
Mr Walcott's route north follows a path worn decades ago by more than 50,000 Vietnam War draft dodgers and deserters. An estimated 250 have taken that route out of the Iraq conflict.
Lee Zaslofsky deserted from the US Army in 1970. Since 2004 he has directed the War Resisters Support Campaign for Americans evading combat in Iraq.
His group is in touch with up to 40 deserters or war resisters who are seeking refugee status in Canada, but he said there may be several hundred in the country.
"It was pretty slow at first; we would see one a month or so. I would say that it went up to a new level in the past year or so, since last summer," said Mr Zaslofsky, soon to turn 63 and financing the group out of his savings.
He says he deserted partly because he did not believe in the Vietnam War and partly because he did not want to put himself in a situation where he might join in something like the My Lai massacre "or where I might witness that and not have the balls to report it".
Mr Zaslofsky made a life for himself in Canada, working as a political aide and community activist. But in 2004 several deserters contacted the Canadian peace movement, and his war resisters group was formed.
The deserters he sees are mostly young, from late teens to mid-30s, of sergeant's rank or lower, and almost uniformly deeply disillusioned with the war in Iraq.
A Toronto lawyer, Jeffry House, said he had spoken to 170 people hiding in Canada and estimated the total number of deserters at 250. "I can't believe I have seen every single guy up here," he said.
"Some don't want to go through the war resisters because they are a political group. Some people want to make the point about their concern but don't want to be part of a campaign."
Mr House said the basis of the refugee claims lay in the United Nations charter, which says there is no obligation on a soldier to take part in a war begun in or conducted in violation of international law. A soldier facing punishment for refusing to fight in that case is considered to be facing persecution.
"We have said that the US Administration violates international law, and condones violation of international law in relation to its interrogation policy," Mr House said.
At 21, Phillip McDowell, formerly of Rhode Island, was just the sort of kid George Bush would embrace. His response to the September 11 attacks was to enlist.
"I had just finished an IT degree," he said. "I thought I could do something positive for the country. I was thinking how we responded to this big event would define us as a nation."
But last Saturday Mr McDowell, Iraq veteran, deserter and one of Mr Zaslofsky's would-be refugees, was outside a church in Toronto canvassing support for the resisters and opposition to the war.
He would have gone to Afghanistan, he said, but was not prepared to return to Iraq. "I believed everything the Government told us about weapons of mass destruction, that there were links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. I was aware of the international opposition to going in, but growing up I always trusted my government."
By the end of his tour he saw the war as wrong, illegal and counterproductive, and was disturbed by the treatment of some prisoners. But he thought he was clear by the middle of last year when his enlistment expired. Then the army called him back.
With his family's support, he and his partner Jasmine took the Canada option in October. The couple have resettled in Toronto.
Mr Walcott's refugee claim was heard a week ago and he is awaiting the ruling, although earlier cases have not succeeded and are being appealed through the higher courts. Mr House does not expect Canada's Supreme Court to decide whether to allow an appeal against earlier refugee rulings before mid-September.
Mr Walcott is juggling offers for his computer skills while working in a sandwich shop and waiting for his parents to visit, since he cannot visit them.
Thursday, July 05, 2007
Taking U.S. Citizenship Oaths In Iraq
The number of legal immigrants seeking to become United States citizens is surging, officials say, as printed in the NY Times. More than 4,000 new Americans were sworn in Wednesday in tradition-steeped — and some not so traditional — Fourth of July ceremonies. About 1,000 people from 75 countries took their oaths together under the turrets of Cinderella’s Castle at Walt Disney World in Lake Buena Vista, Fla., as Gloria Estefan sang “The Star-Spangled Banner.” In Iraq, 325 foreign-born soldiers who are fighting in the United States military took the oath of allegiance in two ceremonies. Wait a minutes did they say foreign born soldiers fighting for the US army? Why would anyone do that? Here' are some answers...
Hundreds of American immigrants serving in the military are naturalized in ceremonies around the war-torn country.
U.S. soldiers and Marines filed into the marble hall of Saddam Hussein's former Al Faw Palace on Independence Day as foreigners at home as well as here. But they left the room as American citizens.
Standing under a glittering chandelier, 161 service members took the oath of citizenship Wednesday, the largest group to be naturalized at once in Iraq since the conflict began in March 2003. The mostly young, mostly male troops with last names such as Toledo and Serrano stitched across the backs of their caps vowed to "support and defend the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America against all enemies," an abstract promise with a deeper daily meaning here.
"You chose to endure the same sacrifices as your fellow comrades in arms to preserve the freedom of a land that was not yet fully yours," Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, military commander in Iraq, told the gathering in Baghdad. "It is the greatest of honors to soldier with you."
About 800 personnel filled the room, including 585 service members reenlisting as part of the ceremony, with onlookers straining to see from crowded balconies and stairwells. Among them were presidential contender Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), both veterans, who flew in for the occasion.
Near the front of the hall, Pfc. Mark Ayson, with a black brace on one wrist and an M-4 rifle slung across his back, had tears in his eyes.
Ayson, 26, of Pensacola, Fla., was born in the Philippines and immigrated to the U.S. with his family when he was 8. Less than a week before the ceremony, he was riding in a Humvee that was hit by a copper-plated explosive in the north Baghdad neighborhood of Adhamiya. A fellow soldier lost a his leg in the attack, but Ayson escaped with damaged eardrums, shrapnel in his right leg and a bruised left wrist. He was back to work within 72 hours.
Ayson said the experience underlines why he joined the Army, came to Iraq nearly a year ago and became a citizen on Wednesday.
"We're fighting for a cause," he said.
A large contingent of Mexican Americans from California milled around carrying U.S. flags, a gift from the government, along with their new citizenship certificates and pieces of red, white and blue sheet cake.
Pfc. Cecilia Rodriguez, 19, of Fresno, immigrated to California in 1997 from the town of Pastor Ortiz in the Mexican state of Michoacan. Her parents, two sisters and a brother are legal U.S. residents, but Rodriguez is the first in her family to become a citizen.
"It was a dream that my dad had for us, to come over here and have more opportunities," Rodriguez said of her new homeland.
She said becoming a citizen will help her career, both in the military and afterward, when she hopes to become a federal agent. Noncitizens are ineligible for the military promotions and security clearances she is pursuing.
U.S. immigration officials swore in 325 service members as citizens during ceremonies across Iraq on Wednesday. As of May, 1,186 service members had become citizens in Iraq since the beginning of the conflict, according to the Defense Department.
Immigrants have long filled the ranks of America's military, fighting in the Revolutionary War, Civil War and both world wars. The Navy recruited Filipinos from the late 1940s until the law changed in 1992, and they remain the largest nationality among noncitizen soldiers, followed by Mexicans and Jamaicans.
More recently, permanent residents, particularly the so-called Mexican "green card soldiers," have drawn attention for their heroism and sacrifices in Iraq. Lance Cpl. Jose A. Gutierrez of Lomita and Cpl. Jose A. Garibay of Costa Mesa were granted posthumous citizenship after they died in the first three days of the war.
Immigrants' military service has become part of the Washington immigration debate in recent months. Legislation that stalled in the Senate last week would have created a path to citizenship for undocumented youths who serve in the military for at least two years.
Although undocumented immigrants are ineligible for military service by law, some so-called "no-card soldiers" manage to join using false documents, said Margaret Stock, an Army reservist and part-time associate professor at West Point. Stock said many service members who hold green cards or are U.S. citizens have immediate family who are undocumented and would benefit from a provision granting them legal status, similar to laws that apply to Cuban nationals who enter the U.S. illegally.
The number of noncitizens serving in the U.S. armed forces peaked in 2003 at 37,000, after President Bush signed an order waiving the three-year waiting period for active-duty service members to apply for citizenship if they had joined before Sept. 11, 2001. Legislation passed the following year waived application fees for active-duty service members and allowed them to be sworn in as citizens overseas.
There currently are about 25,000 noncitizens in uniform, said Maj. Stewart Upton, a Defense Department spokesman. About 8,000 noncitizens enlist each year, he said.
Some immigrant advocates say that more should be done to speed citizenship for immigrant service members and their families.
"These are folks who are on the front lines defending this country, but at the same time they have to defend their families at home from deportation," said Alvaro Huerta, a spokesman for the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles.
But conservative experts such as John Fonte at the Hudson Institute in Washington say there is no need to speed immigrants' citizenship applications to fill the military ranks.
"It's not a job that Americans won't do; soldiering has been a job Americans will do for 200 years," Fonte said.
Wednesday's ceremony was dedicated to some of the 126 noncitizen service members who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan, 70 of whom received posthumous citizenship.
Sgt. Luis Ochoa, 35, of Fayetteville, N.C., said he wanted to avoid becoming one of those noncitizen casualties. He fought in Afghanistan and is in his second tour in Iraq.
"I wanted to die an American. I wanted to die happy," said Ochoa, who immigrated came to the U.S. from Tijuana in 1984.
Ochoa had wanted his wife and four children to be with him Wednesday, to show off his new citizenship certificate stamped "July 4, 2007." Instead, Ochoa stowed the certificate in his footlocker at Forward Operating Base Justice, northeast of Baghdad, where he returned soon after the ceremony — not to hot dogs or friendly fireworks but to his duty as an American citizen.
"I got a patrol," Ochoa said with a smile. "I got work to do."
Thursday, June 14, 2007
A Failure to Protect Our Troops
Taken from The New York Times, Editorial Section
June 14, 2007
The Bush administration and military leaders in Washington are always claiming that they will do anything to support American troops fighting in Iraq. That makes it all the more infuriating to learn that, for more than two years, the Pentagon largely ignored urgent requests from field commanders for better armor-protected vehicles that could have saved untold lives and limbs.
Improvised explosive devices, or I.E.D.’s, can blast through the flat underbelly of the military’s standard Humvees, maiming and killing the soldiers within. These devices, a low-tech response to America’s overwhelming military power, are now causing 70 percent to 80 percent of the American combat deaths in Iraq.
More than two years ago, according to newly disclosed documents, Marine commanders in Al Anbar Province, a center of the Sunni insurgency, submitted an urgent request for more than 1,100 Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicles, or MRAPs, that have V-shaped bottoms able to deflect blasts from below. For reasons yet to be satisfactorily explained, military officials initially sat on the request and then ordered relatively few.
Some, second-guessing the judgment of the battlefield commanders, apparently felt that Humvees with upgraded armor could do the job. Others may have been reluctant to invest billions of dollars in vehicles that might have little use after Iraq. Turf battles were probably also a factor, as a large-scale purchase might threaten future weapons programs. But Iraq is the war that Americans are fighting and dying in today.
Only now are Pentagon leaders, prodded by Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. and other critics on Capitol Hill, rushing to ramp up production. Congress has accelerated funding to buy more than 7,000 of the vehicles by early next year, and the military services are seeking some 21,000 in all, at a cost that could exceed $20 billion. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has declared his determination to “produce as many of these vehicles and get them into the field as fast as possible,” though the precise number needed has yet to be established.
Unfortunately, the MRAPs will remain vulnerable to the deadliest I.E.D.’s, known as “explosively formed penetrators,” which destroy vehicles from the side. The military is looking for ways to add armor to the MRAPs and is testing another new vehicle to counter that threat.
If the small companies that make these vehicles are not able to produce the quantities needed quickly, President Bush and Secretary Gates ought to make this a crash program and enlist major manufacturers.
There can be no excuse for failing to provide the best possible protection for American troops in this disastrous war.
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Billions are spent on creating WMD, Billions are spent on the space programmes, Billions are spent subsidising countries such as Israel, A Billion is expected to be spent on the forthcoming US election - Isn't it time that a billion is spent on military armour for the troops? This is not only an issue for the US but for allied troops as well, particularly in the UK where sometimes soldiers have privately purchased body armour because the UK ministry of Defence did not have the monies to finance all their troops to have them, nor did they have monies to upgrade military vehicles that would have prevented untold deaths to the troops. Maybe it’s economical for troops to be replaced than safety equipment to be provided.
Sunday, April 29, 2007
U.S. Officer Accused Of ‘Aiding Enemy’ In Iraq
Taken from The New York Times, April 27, 2007
By DAMIEN CAVE
BAGHDAD, April 26 — The American military has charged a top commander at its main detention center here with nine violations of military law, including “aiding the enemy,” a rare and serious accusation that could carry a death sentence.
According to a military statement released Thursday, the officer, Lt. Col. William H. Steele, provided aid to the enemy between Oct. 1, 2005, and Oct. 31, 2006, “by providing an unmonitored cellular phone to detainees” at Camp Cropper, an expansive prison near Baghdad International Airport that held Saddam Hussein before he was hanged.
Colonel Steele, who oversaw one of several compounds at Camp Cropper as commander of the 451st Military Police Detachment, was also charged with several counts of illegally storing and marking classified information; failure to obey an order; possession of pornographic videos; dereliction of duty regarding government funds; and conduct unbecoming of an officer — for fraternizing with the daughter of a detainee since 2005, and for maintaining “an inappropriate relationship” with an interpreter in 2005 and 2006.
There were no further details given to explain the circumstances of the accusations.
Military officials said that Colonel Steele was detained last month and was now in Kuwait awaiting a military hearing to determine whether the case would proceed. They emphasized that he should be presumed innocent.
“Is there enough evidence or information that this needs to go to a court-martial?” said Lt. Col. Josslyn L. Aberle, a military spokeswoman. “That’s where we’re at right now.”
Walter Huffman, a former Army judge advocate general and now the dean of the Texas Tech University law school, said that a death sentence was unlikely, because to convict Colonel Steele of the most severe form of aiding the enemy, prosecutors would have to show that he intentionally endangered American troops or missions. In this particular case, he added, that would mean proving that he knew the cellphone was being used to make calls that would put Americans at risk. “That is a difficult charge to prove,” he said.
Mr. Huffman, who emphasized that he had not seen the specific charges or details of Colonel Steele’s case, said the fraternization charge sounded as if it was not code for sex but rather a reference to the simple impropriety of regular contact with a detainee’s relative. That would take on added seriousness in a Muslim country, where speaking to young women outside of one’s family is considered highly inappropriate.
He added that Colonel Steele’s rank and supervisory role at Camp Cropper magnified the seriousness of the allegations. “He’s the person in charge of enforcing the rules at the prison,” Mr. Huffman said. “It makes it an even more egregious offense because of the context.”
Regardless of the outcome, the case amounts to another public relations bruise for the American detention system. Camp Cropper was meant to signify reform. It was expanded in recent years as a replacement for Abu Ghraib, where American jailers photographed themselves humiliating and torturing Iraqi prisoners, and it now holds about 3,000 people.
But it has had its share of problems. Several detainees there have died mysteriously in the past year, with the most recent death occurring April 4. The causes of death for these detainees are rarely divulged.
The arrests and treatment of detainees at Camp Cropper is also the subject of a lawsuit filed in 2006 by an American security contractor who said he was unjustly held and mistreated at the prison after acting as an informant for the F.B.I. in cases involving corruption within the contracting company he worked for. A second plaintiff with a similar claim added his name to the complaint in February.
Colonel Steele appears to be only the second American officer accused of collaborating with the enemy since the war in Iraq started four years ago.
In September 2003, Capt. James J. Yee, a Muslim chaplain at the Guantánamo detention center in Cuba, was accused of mutiny, sedition, aiding the enemy, adultery and possession of pornography. The military dropped all the criminal charges the following March, citing national security concerns that would arise from the release of evidence against him. A month later, Captain Yee’s record was wiped clean when an Army general dismissed his convictions for adultery and pornography.
In Washington on Thursday, Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top American commander in Iraq, told reporters that the violence of the war showed no signs of abating.
North of Baghdad, two Iraqi women and two children were believed to have been killed in an American airstrike that killed four insurgents, according to a military statement.
Soldiers were searching for car-bomb factories near Taji when they came under small-arms fire, the statement said. The soldiers called in an airstrike and later discovered all eight bodies at the destroyed building.
Citing the weapons in the building, a military spokesman, Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, blamed Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia for the women’s and children’s deaths.
The police said a suicide car bomber exploded his vehicle south of Khalis, in Diyala Province, on Thursday, killing six Iraqi policemen. The police said that four bodies showing signs of torture were also found nearby in a grove of palm trees.
In Baghdad, 26 bodies were found, a higher daily toll than in the first few weeks of the two-month-old security push, and roadside bombs, mortar attacks and car bombs across the capital killed at least 11 people and wounded scores more, according to an Interior Ministry official.
In northern Iraq, two suicide bombers detonated their explosives at an office of the Kurdistan Democratic Party near Mosul, killing three people and wounding 13, according to the mayor of Tal Afar, a city about 30 miles to the south.
The police also said gunmen in Tikrit had stormed the home of Hashim al-Majeed, a cousin of Saddam Hussein, and shot and killed his wife and daughter. Mr. Majeed, who disappeared soon after Mr. Hussein’s ouster in 2003, was not at home.
Reporting was contributed by Abdul Razzaq al-Saiedi, Qais Mizher and Iraqi employees of The New York Times in Baghdad, and by Paul von Zielbauer and Michael Moss in New York.
Sunday, April 15, 2007
Army Is Cracking Down On Deserters
By PAUL von ZIELBAUER
Army prosecutions of desertion and other unauthorized absences have risen sharply in the last four years, resulting in thousands more negative discharges and prison time for both junior soldiers and combat-tested veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Army records show.
The increased prosecutions are meant to serve as a deterrent to a growing number of soldiers who are ambivalent about heading — or heading back — to Iraq and may be looking for a way out, several Army lawyers said in interviews. Using courts-martial for these violations, which before 2002 were treated mostly as unpunished nuisances, is a sign that active-duty forces are being stretched to their limits, military lawyers and mental health experts said.
“They are scraping to get people to go back, and people are worn out,” said Dr. Thomas Grieger, a senior Navy psychiatrist. Though there are no current studies to show how combat stress affects desertion rates, Dr. Grieger cited several examples of soldiers absconding or refusing to return to Iraq because of psychiatric reasons brought on by wartime deployments.
At an Army base in Alaska last year, for example, “there was one guy who literally chopped off his trigger finger with an axe to prevent his deployment,” Dr. Grieger said in an interview.
The Army prosecuted desertion far less often in the late 1990s, when desertions were more frequent, than it does now, when there are comparatively fewer.
From 2002 through 2006, the average annual rate of Army prosecutions of desertion tripled compared with the five-year period from 1997 to 2001, to roughly 6 percent of deserters, from 2 percent, Army data shows.
Between these two five-year spans — one prewar and one during wartime — prosecutions for similar crimes, like absence without leave or failing to appear for unit missions, have more than doubled, to an average of 390 per year from an average of 180 per year, Army data shows.
In total, the Army since 2002 has court-martialed twice as many soldiers for desertion and other unauthorized absences as it did on average each year between 1997 and 2001. Deserters are soldiers who leave a post or fail to show up for an assignment with the intent to stay away.Soldiers considered absent without leave, or AWOL, which presumes they plan to return, are classified as deserters and dropped from a unit’s rolls after 30 days.
Most soldiers who return from unauthorized absences are punished and discharged. Few return to regular duty.
Officers said the crackdown reflected an awareness by top Army and Defense Department officials that desertions, which occurred among more than 1 percent of the active-duty force in 2000 for the first time since the post-Vietnam era, were in a sustained upswing again after ebbing in 2003, the first year of the Iraq war.
At the same time, the increase highlights a cycle long known to Army researchers: as the demand for soldiers increases during a war, desertions rise and the Army tends to lower enlistment standards, recruiting more people with questionable backgrounds who are far more likely to become deserters.
In the 2006 fiscal year, 3,196 soldiers deserted, the Army said, a figure that has been climbing since the 2004 fiscal year, when 2,357 soldiers absconded. In the first quarter of the current fiscal year, which began Oct. 1, 871 soldiers deserted, a rate that, if it stays on pace, would produce 3,484 desertions for the fiscal year, an 8 percent increase over 2006.
The Army said the desertion rate was within historical norms, and that the surge in prosecutions, which are at the discretion of unit commanders, was not a surprise given the impact that absent soldiers can have during wartime.
“The nation is at war, and the Army treats the offense of desertion more seriously,” Maj. Anne D. Edgecomb, an Army spokeswoman, said. “The Army’s leadership will take whatever measures they believe are appropriate if they see a continued upward trend in desertion, in order to maintain the health of the force.”
Army studies and interviews also suggest a link between the rising rate of desertions and the expanding use of moral waivers to recruit people with poor academic records and low-level criminal convictions. At least 1 in 10 deserters surveyed after returning to the Army from 2002 to mid-2004 required a waiver to enter the service, a report by the Army Research Institute found.
“We’re enlisting more dropouts, people with more law violations, lower test scores, more moral issues,” said a senior noncommissioned officer involved in Army personnel and recruiting.“We’re really scraping the bottom of the barrel trying to get people to join.” (Army officials agreed to discuss the issue on the condition that they not be quoted by name.)
The officer said the Army National Guard last week authorized 34 states and Guam to enlist the lowest-ranking group of eligible recruits, those who scored between 16 and 30 on the armed services aptitude test. Federal law bars recruits who scored lower than 16 from enlisting.
Desertions, while a chronic problem for the Army, are nowhere near as common as they were at the height of the Vietnam War. From 1968 to 1971, for instance, about 5 percent of enlisted men deserted.
But the rate of desertion today, after four years of fighting two ground wars, is “being taken much more seriously because we were losing so many soldiers out of the Army that there was a recognized need to attack the problem from a different way,” said an Army criminal defense lawyer.
In interviews, the lawyer and two other Army lawyers each traced the spike in prosecutions to a policy change at the beginning of 2002 that required commanders to welcome back soldiers who deserted or went AWOL.
Before that, most deserters, who are often young, undistinguished soldiers who have fallen out of favor with their sergeants, were given administrative separations and sent home with other-than-honorable discharges.
The new policy, ordered by the secretary of the army, effectively eliminated the incentive among squad sergeants to urge returning AWOL soldiers to stay away for at least 30 days, when they would be classified as deserters under the old rules and dropped from the roll.
But some unit commanders, wary of scrutiny from their superiors, go out of their way to improperly keep deserted soldiers on their rosters, and on the Army’s payroll, two officers said in interviews. To counter that, the Army adopted a new policy in January 2005 requiring commanders to formally report absent soldiers within 48 hours.
Such problems are costly. From October 2000 to February 2002, the Army improperly paid more than $6.6 million to 7,544 soldiers who had deserted or were otherwise absent, according to a July 2006 report by the Government Accountability Office.
Most deserters list dissatisfaction with Army life or family problems as primary reasons for their absence, and most go AWOL in the United States. But since 2003, 109 soldiers have been convicted of going AWOL or deserting war zones in Iraq or Afghanistan, usually during their scheduled two-week leaves in the United States, Army officials said.
With the Iraq war in its fifth year, a new subset of deserter is emerging, military doctors and lawyers said: accomplished soldiers who abscond reluctantly, as a result of severe emotional trauma from their battle experiences.
James, a 26-year-old paratrooper twice deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, went AWOL in July after being reassigned to Fort Bliss, Tex., an Army post in the mountainous high-desert region near El Paso.
“The places I was in in Iraq and Afghanistan look exactly like Fort Bliss,” said James, who agreed to talk about his case on the condition that his last name not be printed. “It starts messing with your head — ‘I’m really back there.’ ”
In December, he and another deserter, Ronnie, 28, who also asked that his last name not be used, tried to surrender to the authorities at Fort Bliss. A staff sergeant told them not to bother, James said.
James and Ronnie, who both have five years of service, suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder and abuse alcohol to self-medicate, said Dr. David M. Walker, a former Air Force psychiatrist who has examined both men.
With help from lawyers, James and Ronnie returned to Fort Bliss on Tuesday. They were charged with desertion and face courts-martial and possibly a few months in a military brig. “If I could stay in the military, get help, that’s what I want,” said Ronnie, who completed an 18-month combat tour in Kirkuk, Iraq, with the 25th Infantry Division in 2004.
The Army said combat-related stress had not caused many soldiers to desert.
Major Edgecomb, the spokeswoman, said more than 80 percent of the past year’s deserters had been soldiers for less than three years, and could not have been deployed more than once.
Morten G. Ender, a sociologist at the United States Military Academy at West Point, said soldiers’ decisions to go AWOL or desert might come in response to a family crisis — a threat by a spouse to leave if they deploy again, for instance, or a child-custody battle.
“It’s not just that they don’t want to be in a war zone anymore,” Dr. Ender said. “We saw that a lot during Vietnam, and we see that a lot in the military now.”
Saturday, February 17, 2007
US: Army Giving More Waivers In Recruiting
Taken from the New York Times, February 14, 2007
The number of waivers granted to Army recruits with criminal backgrounds has grown about 65 percent in the last three years, increasing to 8,129 in 2006 from 4,918 in 2003, Department of Defense records show.
It has also increased the number of so-called “moral waivers” to recruits with criminal pasts, even as the total number of recruits dropped slightly. The sharpest increase was in waivers for serious misdemeanors, which make up the bulk of all the Army’s moral waivers. These include aggravated assault, burglary, robbery and vehicular homicide.
The number of waivers for felony convictions also increased, to 11 percent of the 8,129 moral waivers granted in 2006, from 8 percent.
Waivers for less serious crimes like traffic offenses and drug use have dropped or remained stable.
The Army enlisted 69,395 men and women last year.
While soldiers with criminal histories made up only 11.7 percent of the Army recruits in 2006, the spike in waivers raises concerns about whether the military is making too many exceptions to try to meet its recruitment demands in a time of war. Most felons, for example, are not permitted to carry firearms, and many criminals have at some point exhibited serious lapses in discipline and judgment, traits that are far from ideal on the battlefield.
The military automatically excludes people who have committed certain crimes. They include drug traffickers, recruits who have more than one felony on their record or people who have committed sexually violent crimes. A felony is defined as a crime that carries a sentence of a year or more in prison.
Bill Carr, the under secretary of military personnel policy, said the military granted waivers selectively and scrutinized a recruit’s full record, the nature of the crime, when it was committed, the degree of rehabilitation and references from teachers, employers, coaches and clergy members.
In many cases, Mr. Carr said, the applicant may have committed the crime at a young age and then stayed out of trouble. To his knowledge, he said, recruits who are issued moral waivers are not tracked once inside the military.
“If the community backs them, we are willing to take a hard look,” Mr. Carr said, referring to the waiver process, which includes checks of local, state and federal records.
The majority of moral waivers are for serious misdemeanors, most often committed by juveniles. As Douglas Smith, the public information officer for the Army’s recruiting command, said, “We understand that people make mistakes in their lives and they can overcome those mistakes.”
Fewer than 3 in 10 people ages 17 to 24 are fully qualified to join the Army. That means they have a high school diploma, have met aptitude test score requirements and fitness levels, and would not be barred for medical reasons, their sexual orientation or their criminal histories.
The Defense Department has also expanded its applicant pool by accepting soldiers with criminal backgrounds and medical problems like asthma, high blood pressure and attention deficit disorder, situations that require waivers. Medical waivers have increased 4 percent, totaling 12,313 in 2006. Without waivers, the soldiers would have been barred from service.
In the last three years, the percentage of moral waivers for all new enlistments in the four services combined has fallen 3 percent, with spikes in the Army and Air Force. In all, 125,525 such waivers have been issued since 2003. The Marine Corps issues far more moral waivers than the Army — 20,750 in 2006 — but only because it has a stricter policy on drug use. It requires waivers for one-time marijuana use while the other services do not. Rules on waivers vary by service.
“The data is crystal clear; our armed forces are under incredible strain, and the only way that they can fill their recruiting quotas is by lowering their standards,” said Representative Martin T. Meehan, Democrat of Massachusetts and chairman of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight. He has requested more detailed data from the Defense Department on the use of waivers.
Mr. Belkin said the increases in moral waivers in the Army posed a problem only to the extent that the military failed to track these recruits or provide special integration training for them.
Since more than 125,000 service members with criminal histories have joined the military in the last three years, Mr. Belkin said, “you have a sizeable population that has been incarcerated and is not used to the same cultural norms as everybody else.”
“The chance that one of those individuals is going to commit an atrocity or disobey an order is higher,” he said. “Many of those individuals can be good soldiers, but in some cases they have special needs. The military should address those needs rather than pretending they don’t exist.”
Recruiters ask potential recruits to reveal whether they have been arrested or convicted of crimes. City, county and state records are checked, as are federal fingerprint databases. The military searches for convictions but also looks at cases that were dismissed, dropped or settled in some way. If someone is found not guilty, depending on the crime, extenuating circumstances are explored, said Maj. Stewart Upton, a Defense Department spokesman.
The system is far from foolproof, though. Juvenile records can get tricky because of privacy laws; not every state will release sealed information. And if someone has moved to a different state, the criminal history may not always show up.
Decisions on the most serious crimes rise up the chain of command, Mr. Smith said. He said the military invested a lot of money training soldiers and tried to screen its recruits to maximize success.
A General Accounting Office report that looked at attrition from 1990 to 1993 found that service members who were granted moral waivers were more likely to be discharged from the Air Force because of misconduct. But most who were granted moral waivers succeed in completing their term and were more likely to re-enlist.
It is not uncommon for young criminal offenders to turn to the military, hoping for a waiver, experts say, because their records typically narrow their job opportunities.
Beth Asch, a senior economist for the RAND Corporation, said the increase in waivers bore monitoring but was not atypical of what had happened to the military during past recruitment crunches. The moral waivers, Ms. Asch said, particularly for felons, still constitute a relatively small proportion of all enlistments.
“It is something that should be tracked with concern,” she said. “It shouldn’t increase without monitoring but, so far, it is within historic norms.”
John D. Hutson, dean and president of the Franklin Pierce Law Center in New Hampshire and former judge advocate general of the Navy, said the military must tread carefully in deciding which criminals to accept. There is a reason, he said, why allowing people with criminal histories into the military has long been the exception rather than the rule.
“If you are recruiting somebody who has demonstrated some sort of antisocial behavior and then you are a putting a gun in their hands, you have to be awfully careful about what you are doing,” Mr. Hutson said. “You are not putting a hammer in their hands, or asking them to sell used cars. You are potentially asking them to kill people.”
