Report highlights effects of repeat deployments on US soldiers

A mental health assessment released by the Pentagon late last week showed an increasing strain placed on US troops in Iraq – especially those with multiple deployments – and raised concern among the top commanders in Iraq about the implementation of military ethics on the battlefield.

The report by the US Army Medical Department's Mental Health Advisory Team was the fourth since the start of the Iraq war, but the first to address military ethics on the battlefield. The New York Times writes that the report shows that multiple deployments and extended tours in Iraq "escalate anger and increase the likelihood that soldiers or marines lash out at civilians, or defy military ethics."

The survey of 1,320 soldiers and 447 marines was conducted in August and September of 2006. The military's report, which drew on that survey as well as interviews with commanders and focus groups, found that longer deployments increased the risk of psychological problems; that the levels of mental problems was highest – some 30 percent – among troops involved in close combat; that more than a third of troops endorsed torture in certain situations; and that most would not turn in fellow service members for mistreating a civilian.

"These are thoughts people are going to have when under this kind of stress, and soldiers will tell you that: you don't know what it's like until you've been there," said Dr. Andy Morgan, an associate clinical professor of psychiatry at Yale University who has worked extensively with regular and Special Operations troops. "The question is whether you act on them."

The Associated Press reports that Gen. David Petraeus, the top US commander in Iraq, said Monday that he was "very concerned" by the report's findings because "they indicated willingness on a fair proportion of soldiers and Marines to not report the illegal actions, if you will, of buddies."

"We can never sink to the level of the enemy," Petraeus said by video link from Baghdad. "We have done that at times in theater and it has cost us enormously," he said, referring specifically to the torture and humiliation of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib facility west of Baghdad. ...

Troops should recall their shared higher values that "put us above the enemy," he said, such as "observing the law of land warfare and the norms that civilized nations have adopted governing the conduct of land warfare."

"So the first step is that we've got to ... make sure that folks remember that that's a foundation for our moral compass ... anything we do that violates that is done at considerable peril," he said.

The Washington Post writes that at a news briefing on Friday accompanying the report's release, the Army's acting attorney general, Maj. Gen. Gale S. Pollock, said the report speaks to "the leadership that the military is providing, because they're not acting on those thoughts," she said. "They're not torturing the people." But the Post also notes that the report argues that US troops in Iraq are in some ways under more stress than the combat forces of World War II or Vietnam, which contributes to the high number of mental health problems of soldiers.

"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."

Page: 1 | 2