Many of the soldiers returning from Iraq are experiencing mental healh issues. Their loved ones say the military is not helping to the extent it could or should be helping.

The psychological toll from the war in Iraq is climbing, according to new research and experts who cite the severe stress of fighting a deadly insurgency. Though the Pentagon says mental health care, including battlefield counseling, is expanding, critics counter that military suicides and post-traumatic stress disorder cases have exposed gaps in how treatment is delivered to soldiers.

"There have been improvements..... "But it's still the military's dirty little secret that lives are shattered and often we don't do enough when the war is over and these people have to deal with the consequences of what they saw and did."

According to a study by the New England Journal of Medicine, one in eight returning soldiers suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. Symptoms include "flashbacks, feelings of detachment, trouble concentrating, sleeplessness and more." Many of those afflicted don't seek help because they fear it will negatively impact their military careers.

Two new polls show that for the first time a majority of Americans think the War in Iraq was a mistake. Bush's approval rating is under 50%. And 52% of Americans think Rumsfeld should lose his job.

Two new polls show that for the first time a majority of Americans believe the Iraq war to be a mistake. They also showed the president's job approval rating had dropped below 50 per cent only a little over a month after his re-election.

According to a Washington Post/ABC News poll, 56 per cent of Americans a new high said the conflict in Iraq was “not worth fighting”, given the costs. Fifty-seven per cent said they disapproved of the way Mr Bush was managing the war, although 53 per cent did approve of his efforts on terrorism.

A CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll also showed a majority of Americans disapproved of how the war was being handled and that 52 per cent believed that Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, should resign. His job approval rating fell from 71 per cent in April 2003 at the height of Iraq invasion to 41 per cent, according to the poll.

Too little, too late.

Details of the suffocation death of Iraqi Major General Abed Hamed Mowhoush have been filed in court Monday. Four U.S. soldiers from Colorado are charged with murder and derelection of duty in his death. The documents show the technique used on Mowhoush had been used before rendering that prisoner unconscious.

The army had closed the hearing to the public and the Denver Post filed suit to stop the hearing until the decision could be reviewed. The new documents were filed in response to the Post's suit.

Mowhoush was placed in a sleeping bag and tied with an electrical cord in what the Army referred to as stress positions during a Nov. 26, 2003, interrogation at the Qaim detention facility northwest of Baghdad, according to the charges and other documents.

Special forces and other individuals previously interrogated the general, leaving him with "bruises, contusions and possibly some fractured ribs," the document said....

"This particular stress position has been used in the past and had rendered one person unconscious," Army lawyers wrote. "After that incident, CW3 Welshofer directed that only he and (another soldier) could use the sleeping bag technique."

Background available here.

Details about mistreatment of Iraqi detainees continue to emerge from the documents obtained by the ACLU. Wednesday's Washington Post reports the abuse was widespread. It also occurred over a three year time period -- blowing out of the water Administration claims of a few bad apples at a particular place like Abu Ghraib or even a particular point in time.

New documents released yesterday detail a series of probes by Army criminal investigators into multiple cases of threatened executions of Iraqi detainees by U.S. soldiers, as well as of thefts of currency and other private property, physical assaults, and deadly shootings of detainees at detention camps in Iraq.

In many of the newly disclosed cases, Army commanders chose noncriminal punishments for those involved in the abuse, or the investigations were so flawed that prosecutions could not go forward, the documents show. Human rights groups said yesterday that, as a result, the penalties imposed were too light to suit the offenses.

19 U.S. soldiers are among the 24 killed today in the deadliest attack on U.S. forces in Iraq to date. It occurred in a mess tent near Mosul as the soldiers were eating lunch.

An explosion ripped through a mess tent at a military base near Mosul where hundreds of U.S. troops had just sat down to lunch Tuesday, and officials said more than 20 people were killed and at least 57 were wounded.

A military spokesman said 19 of the dead were American soldiers, which would make the attack the deadliest single strike against U.S. troops since the start of the Iraq war.

A radical Muslim group, the Ansar al-Sunnah Army, claimed responsibility. The dead included U.S. military personnel, U.S. contractors, foreign national contractors and Iraqi army, said Brig. Gen. Carter Ham, commander of Task Force Olympia in Mosul.

MSNBC says the soldiers base was Fort Lewis. Bush's comment: They died in a valiant struggle for peace.

The ACLU reports that new documents it received from its Freedom of Information Act request on Iraqi prisoners contain a shocking revelation:

A document released for the first time today by the American Civil Liberties Union suggests that President Bush issued an Executive Order authorizing the use of inhumane interrogation methods against detainees in Iraq. Also released by the ACLU today are a slew of other records including a December 2003 FBI e-mail that characterizes methods used by the Defense Department as “torture” and a June 2004 “Urgent Report” to the Director of the FBI that raises concerns that abuse of detainees is being covered up.

“These documents raise grave questions about where the blame for widespread detainee abuse ultimately rests,” said ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero. “Top government officials can no longer hide from public scrutiny by pointing the finger at a few low-ranking soldiers.”

by TChris

As more potential recruits realize that joining the National Guard could lead to a nasty, life-threatening tour in a volatile Iraq, enlistment declines.

The sharp decline in recruiting is significant because National Guard and Army Reserve soldiers now make up nearly 40 percent of the 148,000 troops in Iraq, and are a vital source for filling the ranks, particularly those who perform essential support tasks, like truck drivers and military police.

General Blum said the main reason for the Army National Guard's recruiting shortfall was a sharp reduction in the number of recruits joining the Guard and Reserve when they leave active duty. In peacetime the commitment means maintaining their ties to the military with a weekend of service a month and two weeks in the summer.

The Guard is trying to entice enlistees with cash, but those who worry about a draft cannot be encouraged by today's news.

by TChris

As Iraq continues to turn into Vietnam II, will we be seeing more stories like this?

A soldier who allegedly had a relative shoot him so he wouldn't have to return to Iraq could face military discipline. Army Spc. Marquise J. Roberts, of Hinesville, Ga., suffered a minor wound Tuesday to his left leg from a .22-caliber pistol, police said. He was treated at a hospital, then arrested after he and a relative allegedly admitted making up a story about the shooting.

by TChris

William Kristol recently noticed that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld hasn't done his job all that well, leading him to conclude that American soldiers "deserve a better defense secretary than the one we have." Other Republicans are starting to sing the same tune.

Senator Susan Collins, a member of the Armed Services Committee, commented yesterday that her peers are voicing "increasing concerns about the secretary's leadership of the war, the repeated failures to predict the strengths of the insurgency, the lack of essential safety equipment for our troops, the reluctance to expand the number of troops."

The sharp comments by Ms. Collins, together with other recent statements Senator John McCain of Arizona, Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, who led American forces in the Persian Gulf war in 1991 and, after his retirement, twice campaigned for President Bush, suggested that the ground might well be shifting a bit under Mr. Rumsfeld.

Will the ground shift sufficiently to swallow him up?

Anti-Polygraph.Org has the details, the documents and commentary about the Navy's use of a dubious polygraph to end an inquiry into the alleged murder of three Iraqi prisoners:

According to documents recently released under the Freedom of Information Act, investigators of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) relied on a "passing" polygraph result to terminate an investigation into the alleged execution of three Iraqi prisoners of war in April 2003, even though the polygrapher suspected that the examinee was using polygraph countermeasures.

Human Rights Watch reports that the Pentagon recently acknowledged a total of 8 prisoner deaths in Afghanistan.

It’s time for the United States to come clean about crimes committed by U.S. forces in Afghanistan,” said Brad Adams, Asia division director for Human Rights Watch. “The United States has to get serious about prosecuting people implicated in prisoner deaths and mistreatment.”

Can it get any worse? Documents obtained by the ACLU show that U.S. Marines conducted mock executions of juveniles in Iraq:

Marines in Iraq conducted mock executions of juvenile prisoners last year, burned and tortured other detainees with electrical shocks, and warned a Navy medic they would kill him if he treated any injured Iraqis, according to military documents made public Tuesday.

The latest revelations of prisoner abuse, obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union in a lawsuit against the government, involved previously unknown incidents in which 11 Marines were punished for abusing detainees.

"A few bad apples" gets less credible every day. The Pentagon needs to be held accountable for this disgrace.