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Sunday, May 14, 2006

You'd almost think this was an extermination policy
Posted by Jill | 7:06 AM
If the Admininstration doesn't want people to think they're trying to exterminate mentally ill soldiers in order to prevent the inevitable rash of homeless veterans, perhaps it's time to send the Bens Shapiro and Ferguson and the rest of the 101st Fighting Keyboarders to Iraq.

Because right now the military is violating its own deployment rules by sending men obviously not mentally fit for combat into the breach:

U.S. military troops with severe psychological problems have been sent to Iraq or kept in combat, even when superiors have been aware of signs of mental illness, a newspaper reported in its Sunday editions.

The Hartford Courant, citing records obtained under the federal Freedom of Information Act and more than 100 interviews of families and military personnel, reported numerous cases in which the military failed to follow its own regulations in screening, treating and evacuating mentally unfit troops from Iraq.

In 1997, Congress ordered the military to assess the mental health of all deploying troops. The newspaper, citing Pentagon statistics, said fewer than 1 in 300 service members were referred to a mental health professional before shipping out for Iraq as of October 2005.

Twenty-two U.S. troops committed suicide in Iraq last year. That number accounts for nearly one in five of all noncombat deaths and was the highest suicide rate since the war started, the newspaper said.

The paper reported that some service members who committed suicide in 2004 or 2005 were kept on duty despite clear signs of mental distress, sometimes after being prescribed antidepressants with little or no mental health counseling or monitoring. Those findings conflict with regulations adopted last year by the Army that caution against the use of antidepressants for "extended deployments."

Although Defense Department standards for enlistment disqualify recruits who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, the military also is redeploying service members to Iraq who fit that criteria, the newspaper said.


They're doing this because not enough chickenhawks like Ben Ferguson are enlisting. And why should they? Why should they become cannon fodder for this war when they can stay here, snug in their beds every night, and have syndicated radio shows in which they crow about their support for the war effort?

After all, you can be a Yankees supporter without playing on the field, right? And war is the same as a baseball game, right?
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