In Haditha a squad of second tour Marines kills 24 civilians in their homes; a soldier issued sleeping pills for his symptoms of PTSD and sent back into combat rapes and murders a young Iraqi girl in Mahmoudiaya; Sergeant John Russell on his third tour cracks and kills five fellow soldiers while at mental health clinic in Baghdad. All of these incidents are red flags of the much larger problem of the mental condition of soldiers returning home from long, unpopular wars. Mental health workers have concluded that there is a correlation between stateside violence and a constellation of mental disorders catalogued under the heading of "post traumatic stress disorder" and the lenient attitude of military commanders
[1] towards crimes committed by American military personnel during combat. The crime statistics among Vietnam veterans indicates the depth of the problem. The National Vietnam Veterans Readjustment Survey reports that by 1986 almost half of all veterans suffering from PTSD had been arrested or jailed at least once; a third had been jailed more than once; 11.5% had been convicted of a felony
[2]. Eight hundred thousand soldiers have served at least two tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. A non-partisan estimate is that more than 300,000 suffer from major depression or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. 43,000 soldiers deemed mentally unfit for duty were nevertheless
deployed in the first five years of the Iraq war.
Suicides have hit record levels in the Army. One elite unit, the 101st Airborne stationed at Ft. Campbell, KY has recorded eleven suicides in one year, the highest rate in the Army. The alarming number of suicides caused their commander
to temporarily close down camp operations recently, and order his troops to re-evaluate themselves.
[1]Of the four enlisted Marines and four officers charged for the Haditha killings, murder charges against two of the enlisted men were dropped, as have dereliction of duty charges against three of the officers. Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani is facing a possible renewed prosecution for failing to order a full-scale investigation into the killings. One enlisted man was acquitted after trial. Only Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich remains in jeopardy for nine counts of murder. [2] More recent statistics are equally shocking. Within four years 14 soldiers in one brigade of the 4th Infantry Division stationed at Ft. Carson, CO have been involved in homicides. The 4th brigade completed two tours in Iraq and lost 113 of its members in combat. One soldier, a former California surfer, was diagnosed with PTSD and traumatic brain injury due to blasts. He was medically discharged with prescriptions for 12 different medications. He is now charged with beating his nineteen year old girlfriend to death. The 4/4 is currently deployed on the Pakistan border in Afghanistan. For more on homicide involving Ft. Carson veterans see this link.