Baghdad killings reflect U.S. Army stress crisis

There are no quick answers here. There are no easy answers either. Iraq and Afghanistan will go on for a long time before all the troops are out. The mistakes made were made because the Bush administration would not listen to reason. Now, it's too late for far too many. This will take this entire nation to address what is happening to our troops and make sure they have what they need. This we can do and the answer to their problems is all of us.

Baghdad killings reflect U.S. Army stress crisis
By MARTIN SIEFF
Published: May 12, 2009 at 11:36 AM
WASHINGTON, May 12 (UPI) -- The tragedy at Camp Liberty, near Baghdad, where an American soldier shot and killed five U.S. personnel and wounded three others, has been at least six years in the making.

Army Sgt. John Russell was arrested after the shooting deaths at a stress counseling center outside Baghdad. He was serving with the 54th Engineer Battalion in southern Iraq. Russell had shown significant signs of stress and had his weapon taken from him before being sent to the stress treatment center.

The second point is that when controversial Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, his deputy Paul Wolfowitz and their team ran the Pentagon, they received a great deal of criticism for allegedly neglecting the well-being of American combat soldiers. The U.S. Army medical system, including its showcase institution of Walter Reed Army Medical Center, was the subject of embarrassing press exposes that led current Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Rumsfeld's successor, to fire his secretary of the Army and the head of Walter Reed. When current President Barack Obama took office, he also acknowledged the need to prioritize post-combat and post-service care for U.S. military veterans by appointing a widely admired and respected former Army chief of staff, four-star Gen. Eric Shinseki, as the Cabinet-level head of the Veterans Affairs Department.

The underlying cause of the growing stress on U.S. soldiers and Marines and their families has been the burden of dual and simultaneous ongoing wars since the invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

Rumsfeld and his planners never dreamed that 130,000 to 160,000 U.S. troops would be tied down in Baghdad over the next six years fighting an ongoing Sunni Muslim insurgency. The security situation in Iraq improved tremendously from January 2006 to January 2007 after Gates appointed Gen. David Petraeus to run operations there. However, since President Obama confirmed his plans to phase down U.S. troop levels in Iraq over the next year and a half to 30,000 troops, levels of violence, especially through suicide bombers, have been rising there again. And Obama has been moving to fulfill his campaign pledge to increase U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan.

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Baghdad killings reflect U.S. Army stress crisis