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Troops at Odds With Ethics Standards
By Thomas E. Ricks and Ann Scott Tyson
The Washington Post
Saturday 05 May 2007
Army also finds more deployment means more
mental
illness.
More than one-third of U.S. soldiers in Iraq surveyed by the Army
said they believe torture should be allowed if it helps gather
important information about insurgents, the Pentagon disclosed
yesterday. Four in 10 said they approve of such illegal abuse if it
would save the life of a fellow soldier.
In addition, about two-thirds of Marines and half the Army troops
surveyed said they would not report a team member for mistreating a
civilian or for destroying civilian property unnecessarily. "Less
than half of Soldiers and Marines believed that non-combatants should
be treated with dignity and respect," the Army report stated.
About 10 percent of the 1,767 troops in the official survey -
conducted in Iraq last fall - reported that they had mistreated
civilians in Iraq, such as kicking them or needlessly damaging their
possessions.
Army researchers "looked under every rock, and what they found was
not always easy to look at," said S. Ward Casscells, the assistant
secretary of defense for health affairs. The report noted that the
troops' statements are at odds with the "soldier's rules" promulgated
by the Army, which forbid the torture of enemy prisoners and state
that civilians must be treated humanely.
Maj. Gen. Gale S. Pollock, the acting Army surgeon general, cast the
report as positive news. "What it speaks to is the leadership that
the military is providing, because they're not acting on those
thoughts," she said. "They're not torturing the people."
But human rights activists said the report lends support to their
view that the abuse of Iraqi civilians by U.S. military personnel was
not isolated to some bad apples at Abu Ghraib and a few other
detention facilities but instead is more widespread. "These are
distressing results," said Steven R. Shapiro, national legal director
for the American Civil Liberties Union. "They highlight a failure to
adequately train and supervise our soldiers."
The study also found that the more often soldiers are deployed, the
longer they are deployed each time; and the less time they spend at
home, the more likely they are to suffer mental health problems such
as combat trauma, anxiety and depression. That result is particularly
notable given that the Pentagon has sent soldiers and Marines to Iraq
multiple times and recently extended the tours of thousands of
soldiers to 15 months from 12 months.
"The Army is spread very thin, and we need it to be a larger force
for the number of missions that we were being asked to address for
our nation," Pollock said.
The authors of the Army document argued that the strains placed on
troops in Iraq are in some ways more severe than those borne by the
combat forces of World War II. "A considerable number of Soldiers and
Marines are conducting combat operations everyday of the week, 10-12
hours per day seven days a week for months on end," wrote Col. Carl
Castro and Maj. Dennis McGurk, both psychologists. "At no time in our
military history have Soldiers or Marines been required to serve on
the front line in any war for a period of 6-7 months."
And although U.S. casualties in Iraq are far lower than in the
Vietnam War, for example, military experts say that Iraq can be a
more stressful environment. In Vietnam, there were rear areas that
were considered safe, but in Iraq there are no truly secure areas
outside big bases. "The front in Iraq is any place not on a base
camp" or a forward operating base, the report noted.
The authors recommended that soldiers be given breathers during
combat tours and intervals of 18 to 36 months between such tours,
substantially longer than they are allowed now.
Overall, 20 percent of the soldiers surveyed and 15 percent of the
Marines appeared to suffer from depression, anxiety or stress, the
Army reported. That was in keeping with findings of past surveys, as
was the conclusion that more than 40 percent of soldiers reported low
morale in their units.
Strains on military families also are intensifying. About 20 percent
of soldiers said they were planning a divorce or separation, up from
15 percent in the previous year's survey. Marital problems seem to
grow with the length of a deployment, the survey found. Ten percent
of soldiers deployed for less than six months reported that
infidelity was a problem in their marriage, compared with 17 percent
among those who had been in Iraq longer than that.
"The story I heard from my wife and daughter a lot is, 'You're not
the same person that left to go over there,' " said retired Sgt. Coby
Thomas, who developed post-traumatic stress disorder after serving in
Iraq. "People expect you to be like you were and pick up where you
left off, and they're not prepared for the changes."
Thomas, who suffered a traumatic brain injury while protecting a
convoy south of Baghdad in December 2004, agreed that the stress on
soldiers is increasing with multiple tours of duty. "You're talking
about fourth deployments; it's the same people going over again and
again," he said.
Retired Air Force Tech. Sgt. Scott Shore said multiple deployments
over a 19-year military career left him with severe post-traumatic
stress disorder. His last deployment was in 2004 in Iraq's Sunni
insurgent stronghold, Anbar province, where he provided medical care
and saw combat.
"That seemed to be the straw that broke the camel's back," Shore
said
in a telephone interview from Browns Mills, N.J. Shore said he has
suffered flashbacks and nightmares that contributed to the breakup of
his first marriage. "I don't go into crowds, I don't like driving, I
don't like doing a lot of different things because I'm always on the
lookout for the next ambush, the next IED," he said.
The Army has surveyed mental health issues in Iraq three times
before, but this was the first time that Marines were included and
that ethical questions were posed. Those were added by order of Army
Gen. George W. Casey Jr., who until February was the top commander in
Iraq. The surveyors did not say why Casey, who is now chief of staff
of the Army, made the changes, but they came following revelations
about Marines killing 24 civilians in November 2005 in Haditha, Iraq,
and about their commanders not seeing reason to investigate.
Military officials sought to boost troops' awareness of ethical
issues, first after the Abu Ghraib prisoner-abuse scandal broke in
the spring of 2004 and again after news of the Haditha killings emerged.
Asked for his reaction to the data indicating that the majority of
Marines would not report wrongdoing, Rear Adm. Richard R. Jeffries,
the Marine Corps' chief medical officer, answered gingerly. "I know
the Marine Corps is concerned that this may be of some significance,"
he said, "and they're looking very closely at this with several
groups and several teams that have now taken in consideration to see
what this means and what we may do differently if there is a problem
here."
Pollock said that, in response to the report, completed last
November, the Army has altered training to place more emphasis on
"Army values, suicide prevention, battlefield ethics and behavioral
health awareness."
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