Army Report on Stress and Murder

The online magazine, Salon, continues its Coming Home series finding an "Army report [that] seems to confirm a Salon investigation linking battle stress to murder. But the Army begs to differ."

Funny how Salon — that has animatedly opposed the Iraq War — steps up for veterans. Where the hell are the neocons?

Talking to veterans, many report that troops in the rear or those patrolling areas with erratic insurgencies have a worse time of it than those troops who fight more-or-less straight-up against their enemy.

But the bottom line is, we don’t know and we can’t guess and we shouldn’t subject troops asking for DVA benefits to humiliation and bullshit.      From Michael de Yoanna and Mark Benjamin:

Read excerpts from the Army’s report on homicides at Fort Carson here or download the full study here. Read Salon’s Coming Home series about preventable deaths at Fort Carson here.

July 16, 2009
FORT CARSON, Colo. — The harsh combat in Iraq, including potential war crimes that were witnessed by soldiers, contributed to a series of brutal murders by soldiers based at this Army post near Colorado Springs after they returned home, according to a hard-hitting Army study released Wednesday. Many of the findings in the study, which was announced by senior Army brass at a press conference on the post, mirror those in Salon’s Coming Home series, which identified a pattern of preventable homicides and suicides at Fort Carson among soldiers who served in Iraq with combat stress and failed to receive proper medical treatment.