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News :: Political-Economy |
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Sick, Wounded U.S. Troops Held In Squalor |
Current rating: 0 |
by Mark Benjamin
(No verified email address) |
21 Oct 2003
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"Now, I would not go back to war for the Army..." |
FORT STEWART, Ga., Oct. 17 (UPI) -- The National Guard and Army Reserve soldiers' living conditions are so substandard, and the medical care so poor, that many of them believe the Army is trying push them out with reduced benefits for their ailments. One document shown to UPI states that no more doctor appointments are available from Oct. 14 through Nov. 11 -- Veterans Day.
"I have loved the Army. I have served the Army faithfully and I have done everything the Army has asked me to do," said Sgt. 1st Class Willie Buckels, a truck master with the 296th Transportation Company. Buckels served in the Army Reserves for 27 years, including Operation Iraqi Freedom and the first Gulf War. "Now my whole idea about the U.S. Army has changed. I am treated like a third-class citizen."
Since getting back from Iraq in May, Buckels, 52, has been trying to get doctors to find out why he has intense pain in the side of his abdomen since doubling over in pain there.
After waiting since May for a diagnosis, Buckels has accepted 20 percent of his benefits for bad knees and is going home to his family in Mississippi. "They have not found out what my side is doing yet, but they are still trying," Buckels said.
One month after President Bush greeted soldiers at Fort Stewart -- home of the famed Third Infantry Division -- as heroes on their return from Iraq, approximately 600 sick or injured members of the Army Reserves and National Guard are warehoused in rows of spare, steamy and dark cement barracks in a sandy field, waiting for doctors to treat their wounds or illnesses.
The Reserve and National Guard soldiers are on what the Army calls "medical hold," while the Army decides how sick or disabled they are and what benefits -- if any -- they should get as a result.
Some of the soldiers said they have waited six hours a day for an appointment without seeing a doctor. Others described waiting weeks or months without getting a diagnosis or proper treatment.
The soldiers said professional active duty personnel are getting better treatment while troops who serve in the National Guard or Army Reserve are left to wallow in medical hold.
"It is not an Army of One. It is the Army of two -- Army and Reserves," said one soldier who served in Operation Iraqi Freedom, during which she developed a serious heart condition and strange skin ailment.
A half-dozen calls by UPI seeking comment from Fort Stewart public affairs officials and U.S. Forces Command in Atlanta were not returned.
Soldiers here estimate that nearly 40 percent of the personnel now in medical hold were deployed to Iraq. Of those who went, many described clusters of strange ailments, like heart and lung problems, among previously healthy troops. They said the Army has tried to refuse them benefits, claiming the injuries and illnesses were due to a "pre-existing condition," prior to military service.
Most soldiers in medical hold at Fort Stewart stay in rows of rectangular, gray, single-story cinder block barracks without bathrooms or air conditioning. They are dark and sweltering in the southern Georgia heat and humidity. Around 60 soldiers cram in the bunk beds in each barrack.
Soldiers make their way by walking or using crutches through the sandy dirt to a communal bathroom, where they have propped office partitions between otherwise open toilets for privacy. A row of leaky sinks sits on an opposite wall. The latrine smells of urine and is full of bugs, because many windows have no screens. Showering is in a communal, cinder block room. Soldiers say they have to buy their own toilet paper.
They said the conditions are fine for training, but not for sick people.
"I think it is disgusting," said one Army Reserve member who went to Iraq and asked that his name not be used.
That soldier said that after being deployed in March he suffered a sudden onset of neurological symptoms in Baghdad that has gotten steadily worse. He shakes uncontrollably.
He said the Army has told him he has Parkinson's Disease and it was a pre-existing condition, but he thinks it was something in the anthrax shots the Army gave him.
"They say I have Parkinson's, but it is developing too rapidly," he said. "I did not have a problem until I got those shots."
First Sgt. Gerry Mosley crossed into Iraq from Kuwait on March 19 with the 296th Transportation Company, hauling fuel while under fire from the Iraqis as they traveled north alongside combat vehicles. Mosley said he was healthy before the war; he could run two miles in 17 minutes at 48 years old.
But he developed a series of symptoms: lung problems and shortness of breath; vertigo; migraines; and tinnitus. He also thinks the anthrax vaccine may have hurt him. Mosley also has a torn shoulder from an injury there.
Mosley says he has never been depressed before, but found himself looking at shotguns recently and thought about suicide.
Mosley is paying $300 a month to get better housing than the cinder block barracks. He has a notice from the base that appears to show that no more doctor appointments are available for reservists from Oct. 14 until Nov. 11. He said he has never been treated like this in his 30 years in the Army Reserves.
"Now, I would not go back to war for the Army," Mosley said.
Many soldiers in the hot barracks said regular Army soldiers get to see doctors, while National Guard and Army Reserve troops wait.
"The active duty guys that are coming in, they get treated first and they put us on hold," said another soldier who returned from Iraq six weeks ago with a serious back injury. He has gotten to see a doctor only two times since he got back, he said.
Another Army Reservist with the 149th Infantry Battalion said he has had real trouble seeing doctors about his crushed foot he suffered in Iraq. "There are not enough doctors. They are overcrowded and they can't perform the surgeries that have to be done," that soldier said. "Look at these mattresses. It hurts just to sit on them," he said, gesturing to the bunks. "There are people here who got back in April but did not get their surgeries until July. It is putting a lot on these families."
The Pentagon is reportedly drawing up plans to call up more reserves.
In an Oct. 9 speech to National Guard and reserve troops in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Bush said the soldiers had become part of the backbone of the military.
"Citizen-soldiers are serving in every front on the war on terror," Bush said. "And you're making your state and your country proud." |
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US Soldiers Fail To Report For Flights Back To Iraq |
by AFP
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
21 Oct 2003
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WASHINGTON - At least 28 soldiers have failed to report for flights back to Iraq after two weeks of leave in the United States or to call ahead with an explanation, US military spokesmen said.
The military sought to play down the no-shows, noting that they represented only a tiny fraction of the more than 1,300 Iraq-based soldiers who have been given two weeks of leave since the program began September 25.
"I don't think anybody here at this level is in a panic over the situation," said Major Pete Mitchell, a spokesman for the US Central Command.
The US Army Human Resources Command has reported that 28 soldiers have not shown up for their flights back to Iraq and have failed to call to give a reason for their absence, according to Joe Burlas, an army spokesman.
A small number of those people have been given emergency extensions of their leave because of family problems or other reasons, he noted.
"In all cases, the circumstances will be investigated," Mitchell said. But he added: "We're not seeing this as a chronic, overwhelming problem here."
Soldiers based in Iraq are flying out of the country at a rate of 279 a day under the program, which was designed to ease the pressure of year-long deployments in a combat zone on soldiers and their families.
Those arriving in the United States come through Baltimore/Washington International Airport, where they are given instructions on the time and date of their return flight. They are also told to notify army officials ahead of time if for some reason they cannot make the flight.
No soldiers have been declared absent without leave (AWOL) yet, a decision which must be taken by their commanders in Iraq, Burlas said.
"As of yesterday (Monday), no commander had done that," he said.
When soldiers fail to report for duty, the army will typically try to contact them at their leave address, he said.
A soldier will be carried on the roster as AWOL for 30 days before he or she is classified as a deserter, he added.
Copyright 2003 AFP
http://www.afp.com |
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Curtains Ordered For Media Coverage Of Returning Coffins |
by Dana Milbank
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
21 Oct 2003
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Since the end of the Vietnam War, presidents have worried that their military actions would lose support once the public glimpsed the remains of U.S. soldiers arriving at air bases in flag-draped caskets.
To this problem, the Bush administration has found a simple solution: It has ended the public dissemination of such images by banning news coverage and photography of dead soldiers' homecomings on all military bases.
In March, on the eve of the Iraq war, a directive arrived from the Pentagon at U.S. military bases. "There will be no arrival ceremonies for, or media coverage of, deceased military personnel returning to or departing from Ramstein [Germany] airbase or Dover [Del.] base, to include interim stops," the Defense Department said, referring to the major ports for the returning remains.
A Pentagon spokeswoman said the military-wide policy actually dates from about November 2000 -- the last days of the Clinton administration -- but it apparently went unheeded and unenforced, as images of caskets returning from the Afghanistan war appeared on television broadcasts and in newspapers until early this year. Though Dover Air Force Base, which has the military's largest mortuary, has had restrictions for 12 years, others "may not have been familiar with the policy," the spokeswoman said. This year, "we've really tried to enforce it."
President Bush's opponents say he is trying to keep the spotlight off the fatalities in Iraq. "This administration manipulates information and takes great care to manage events, and sometimes that goes too far," said Joe Lockhart, who as White House press secretary joined President Bill Clinton at several ceremonies for returning remains. "For them to sit there and make a political decision because this hurts them politically -- I'm outraged."
Pentagon officials deny that. Speaking on condition of anonymity, they said the policy covering the entire military followed a victory over a civil liberties court challenge to the restrictions at Dover and relieves all bases of the difficult logistics of assembling family members and deciding which troops should get which types of ceremonies.
One official said only individual graveside services, open to cameras at the discretion of relatives, give "the full context" of a soldier's sacrifice. "To do it at several stops along the way doesn't tell the full story and isn't representative," the official said.
A White House spokesman said Bush has not attended any memorials or funerals for soldiers killed in action during his presidency as his predecessors had done, although he has met with families of fallen soldiers and has marked the loss of soldiers in Memorial Day and Sept. 11, 2001, remembrances.
The Pentagon has previously acknowledged the effect on public opinion of the grim tableau of caskets being carried from transport planes to hangars or hearses. In 1999, the then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army Gen. Henry H. Shelton, said a decision to use military force is based in part on whether it will pass "the Dover test," as the public reacts to fatalities.
Ceremonies for arriving coffins, not routine during the Vietnam War, became increasingly common and elaborate later. After U.S. soldiers fell in Beirut, Grenada, Panama, the Balkans, Kenya, Afghanistan and elsewhere, the military often invited in cameras for elaborate ceremonies for the returning remains, at Andrews Air Force Base, Dover, Ramstein and elsewhere -- sometimes with the president attending.
President Jimmy Carter attended ceremonies for troops killed in Pakistan, Egypt and the failed hostage rescue mission in Iran. President Ronald Reagan participated in many memorable ceremonies, including a service at Camp Lejeune in 1983 for 241 Marines killed in Beirut. Among several events at military bases, he went to Andrews in 1985 to pin Purple Hearts to the caskets of marines killed in San Salvador, and, at Mayport Naval Station in Florida in 1987, he eulogized those killed aboard the USS Stark in the Persian Gulf.
During President George H.W. Bush's term, there were ceremonies at Dover and Andrews for Americans killed in Panama, Lebanon and aboard the USS Iowa.
But in early 1991, at the time of the Persian Gulf War, the Pentagon said there would be no more media coverage of coffins returning to Dover, the main arrival point; a year earlier, Bush was angered when television networks showed him giving a news briefing on a split screen with caskets arriving.
But the photos of coffins arriving at Andrews and elsewhere continued to appear through the Clinton administration. In 1996, Dover made an exception to allow filming of Clinton's visit to welcome the 33 caskets with remains from Commerce Secretary Ronald H. Brown's plane crash. In 1998, Clinton went to Andrews to see the coffins of Americans killed in the terrorist bombing in Nairobi. Dover also allowed public distribution of photos of the homecoming caskets after the terrorist attack on the USS Cole in 2000.
The photos of coffins continued for the first two years of the current Bush administration, from Ramstein and other bases. Then, on the eve of the Iraq invasion, word came from the Pentagon that other bases were to adopt Dover's policy of making the arrival ceremonies off limits.
"Whenever we go into a conflict, there's a certain amount of guidance that comes down the pike," said Lt. Olivia Nelson, a spokeswoman for Dover. "It's a consistent policy across the board. Where it used to apply only to Dover, they've now made it very clear it applies to everyone."
© 2003 The Washington Post Company |
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Pentagon Says It Will Call Up Added Reserves |
by Thom Shanker
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
22 Oct 2003
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WASHINGTON, Oct. 21 — Senior Pentagon officials said Tuesday that more National Guard and Reserve forces would be notified in coming weeks that they might have to serve in Iraq next year. The announcement was made amid complaints from Congress and the families of part-time troops about the stress of lengthy deployments.
Gen. Peter Pace of the Marines, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the current thinking was that no additional reservist combat brigades, each numbering 5,000 troops, would be alerted beyond those already told they will serve.
"I am sure that we are not looking at any more combat units from the Guard or Reserve other than those already notified," General Pace said at a news briefing. "That does not mean that there is not going to be more Reserves and Guard. There will be units that do logistics and the like that need to be notified."
That work, called combat support and combat service support, is critical to operations. Such duty in Iraq often subjects troops to front-line fire.
General Pace said that recommendations would go to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld in two to three weeks and that no final determination had been made on numbers of reservists or on overall required forces for Iraq next year.
Pentagon officials said that Mr. Rumsfeld was briefed on the troop rotation plans as recently as Saturday and that the call-ups of support troops from the Guard and Reserves could affect dozens of units with hundreds of members in each.
Those officials emphasized that the anticipated call-up would be smaller than it would be if additional full combat brigades had to be mobilized. Large-scale alerts and mobilizations risk further protests from Capitol Hill and from families of those part-time soldiers whose lives are interrupted by a return to military service for 12-month tours on the ground in Iraq.
Some Pentagon planners said they had considered ways to avoid any additional call-up of National Guard and Reserve forces but realized that, at a minimum, logistics units would be required in the next rotation of forces for Iraq.
For rotation next year, the Pentagon has activated 10,000 troops from the Arkansas and North Carolina Guards and notified 5,000 from Washington that they may be needed.
The final decision on how many troops go to Iraq will depend on the number of other foreign troops available next spring, on the size and effectiveness of Iraq's new military forces and on the violence on the ground, Pentagon officials have said.
If American combat troops are needed to replace American forces due to come home in the spring, current plans call for a mix of fresh Army and Marine active duty forces, Pentagon officials said.
Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company |
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