NOT ANOTHER DAY

NOT ANOTHER DOLLAR

NOT ANOTHER LIFE

A wounded U.S. soldier is carried off of a C-17 transport airplane to an ambulance at Andrews Air Force Base, Md., April 20, 2010. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)

Used Up And Thrown Away

“Warehouses Of Despair, Where Damaged Men And Women Are Kept Out Of Sight, Fed A Diet Of Powerful Prescription Pills And Treated Harshly By Noncommissioned Officers”

“All They Do Is Make Things Worse”

“Many Soldiers At Fort Carson Complained That Discipline And Insensitive Treatment By Cadre Members Made Wounded Soldiers Feel As If They Were Viewed As Fakers Or Weaklings”

One Army Specialist “Said He Was Ordered To Perform 24-Hour Guard Duty Repeatedly Against The Orders Of His Doctor”

 [Here it is again.  Same old story.  Used up, thrown away, and the politicians couldn’t care less.  To repeat for the 3,543rd time, there is no enemy in Iraq or Afghanistan.  Their citizens and U.S. troops have a common enemy.  That common enemy owns and operates the Imperial government in Washington DC for their own profit.  That common enemy started these wars of conquest on a platform of lies, because they couldn’t tell the truth: U.S. Imperial wars are about making money for them, and nothing else.  Payback is overdue.  T]

[Thanks to SSG N (ret’d), Phil G & Clancy Sigal, who sent this in.]

April 24, 2010 By JAMES DAO and DAN FROSCH, The New York Times [Excerpts]

April 24, 2010 By JAMES DAO and DAN FROSCH, The New York Times [Excerpts]

COLORADO SPRINGS — A year ago, Specialist Michael Crawford wanted nothing more than to get into Fort Carson’s Warrior Transition Battalion, a special unit created to provide closely managed care for soldiers with physical wounds and severe psychological trauma.

A strapping Army sniper who once brimmed with confidence, he had returned emotionally broken from Iraq, where he suffered two concussions from roadside bombs and watched several platoon mates burn to death.  The transition unit at Fort Carson, outside Colorado Springs, seemed the surest way to keep suicidal thoughts at bay, his mother thought.

It did not work.

He was prescribed a laundry list of medications for anxiety, nightmares, depression and headaches that made him feel listless and disoriented.

His once-a-week session with a nurse case manager seemed grossly inadequate to him. And noncommissioned officers — soldiers supervising the unit — harangued or disciplined him when he arrived late to formation or violated rules.

Last August, Specialist Crawford attempted suicide with a bottle of whiskey and an overdose of painkillers. By the end of last year, he was begging to get out of the unit.

“It is just a dark place,” said the soldier, who is waiting to be medically discharged from the Army.  “Being in the W.T.U. is worse than being in Iraq.”

Created in the wake of the scandal in 2007 over serious shortcomings at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Warrior Transition Units were intended to be sheltering way stations where injured soldiers could recuperate and return to duty or gently process out of the Army.  There are currently about 7,200 soldiers at 32 transition units across the Army, with about 465 soldiers at Fort Carson’s unit.

But interviews with more than a dozen soldiers and health care professionals from Fort Carson’s transition unit, along with reports from other posts, suggest that the units are far from being restful sanctuaries.

For many soldiers, they have become warehouses of despair, where damaged men and women are kept out of sight, fed a diet of powerful prescription pills and treated harshly by noncommissioned officers.

Because of their wounds, soldiers in Warrior Transition Units are particularly vulnerable to depression and addiction, but many soldiers from Fort Carson’s unit say their treatment there has made their suffering worse.

Some soldiers in the unit, and their families, described long hours alone in their rooms, or in homes off the base, aimlessly drinking or playing video games.

“In combat, you rely on people and you come out of it feeling good about everything,” said a specialist in the unit. “Here, you’re just floating.  You’re not doing much.  You feel worthless.”

At Fort Carson, many soldiers complained that doctors prescribed drugs too readily.

 As a result, some soldiers have become addicted to their medications or have turned to heroin.

 Medications are so abundant that some soldiers in the unit openly deal, buy or swap prescription pills.

Heavy use of psychotropic drugs and narcotics makes it difficult to exercise, wake for morning formation and attend classes, soldiers and health care professionals said.

 Yet noncommissioned officers discipline soldiers who fail to complete those tasks, sometimes over the objections of nurse case managers and doctors.

At least four soldiers in the Fort Carson unit have committed suicide since 2007, the most of any transition unit as of February, according to the Army.

Drugs and Addiction

Sgt. John Conant, a 15-year veteran of the Army, returned from his second tour of Iraq in 2007 a changed man, according to his wife, Delphina. Angry and sullen, he reported to the transition unit at Fort Carson, where he was prescribed at least six medications a day for sleeping disorders, pain and anxiety, keeping a detailed checklist in his pocket to remind him of his dosages.

The medications disoriented him, Mrs. Conant said, and he would often wander the house late at night before curling up on the floor and falling asleep.

Then in April 2008, after taking morphine and Ambien, the sleeping pill, he died in his sleep.  A coroner ruled that his death was from natural causes. He was 36.

Mrs. Conant said she felt her husband never received meaningful therapy at the transition unit, where he had become increasingly frustrated and was knocked down a rank, to specialist, because of discipline problems.

“They didn’t want to do anything but give him medication,” she said.

Other soldiers and health care workers at Fort Carson offered similar complaints.

They said that most transition unit soldiers were given complex cocktails of medications that raised concerns about accidental overdoses, addiction and side effects from interactions.

“These kids change their medication like they change their underwear,” said a psychotherapist who works with Fort Carson soldiers and asked that his name not be used because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the transition unit.

“They can’t even remember which pills they’re taking.”

Some turned to heroin, which is readily available in the barracks, after becoming addicted to their pain pills, according to interviews with soldiers and health care professionals at Fort Carson.

“We’re all on sleep meds, anxiety meds, pain meds,” said Pfc. Jeffery Meier, who is in the transition unit and said he knew a dozen soldiers in the unit, including a recent roommate, who had used heroin. “The heroin is all that, wrapped into one.”

Jess Seiwert offers a cautionary tale. A staff sergeant and sniper who was knocked unconscious by roadside bombs in Iraq, he returned to Fort Carson in late 2006 with post-traumatic stress disorder, burns and a variety of aches. Prone to bouts of rage, he often drank himself to sleep and began abusing the painkiller Percocet.

Medical records show that Sergeant Seiwert’s captain thought he was a danger to his wife and needed inpatient psychiatric care. Instead, the sergeant was transferred into Fort Carson’s transition unit in 2008.

In a recent interview, Mr. Seiwert, now discharged from the Army, said he received minimal therapy in the unit but was given ample medication, including the painkillers he abused. “I should have been in inpatient rehab to get me off the drugs,” he said.

 Last summer, just months after being medically discharged, he badly beat his wife while bingeing on alcohol and Percocet. He pleaded guilty to a second-degree assault charge and is likely to face five years in prison.

‘Making Things Worse’

Like private outpatient clinics, Warrior Transition Units aim to provide highly individualized care and ready access to case managers, therapists and doctors.

But the care is organized in a distinctly Army way: noncommissioned officers, known as the cadre, maintain discipline and enforce rules, often using traditional drill-sergeant toughness with junior enlisted soldiers.

At the top of the command are traditional Army officers, not health care professionals: Brig. Gen. Gary Cheek, head of the Warrior Transition Command, was an artillery officer, and Colonel Grantham an intelligence officer.

Beneath them is what the Army calls its triad of care. Members of the cadre keep a close eye on individual soldiers, much like squad leaders in regular line units. Nurse case managers schedule appointments and assist with medications and therapy. And primary care managers — doctors, physicians’ assistants or nurse practitioners — oversee care and prescribe medicines.

The structure is intended to ensure that every soldier gets careful supervision and that Army values and discipline are maintained.

But many soldiers at Fort Carson complained that discipline and insensitive treatment by cadre members made wounded soldiers feel as if they were viewed as fakers or weaklings.

James Agee, a former staff sergeant who transferred into the transition unit after returning from his second tour of Iraq in 2008, said he frequently heard cadre members verbally abuse medicated soldiers who were struggling to get out of bed for morning formation or stay awake for all-night duty.

 “They would say, ‘These guys can’t do this because they are crazy,’ ” said Mr. Agee, who received a medical discharge from the Army.

 “It would make you feel like you were inferior.”

One Army specialist in the unit, who received diagnoses of post-traumatic stress syndrome and traumatic brain injury, said he was ordered to perform 24-hour guard duty repeatedly against the orders of his doctor.

The specialist, who asked to remain anonymous because he feared repercussions, said he experienced flashbacks to Iraq during the long hours by himself.

In many cases, the noncommissioned officers have made it clear that they do not believe the psychological symptoms reported by the unit’s soldiers are real or particularly serious.

At Fort Hood, Tex., a study conducted just before the shooting rampage there last November — which found that many soldiers in the Warrior Transition Unit thought their treatment relied too heavily on medication — also concluded that a majority of the cadre believed that soldiers were faking post-traumatic stress or exaggerating their symptoms.

Christina Perez, the wife of a transition unit soldier from Fort Carson, said she got into an ugly fight with a member of the cadre who was furious that she had gone over his head to request additional therapy for her husband, a sergeant first class who had sustained a brain injury during one of two tours in Iraq as a tank gunner.

 In a meeting, the noncommissioned officer shouted that Ms. Perez’s husband did not deserve his uniform and that he should give it to her instead, Ms. Perez said in a police complaint. No charges were brought.

 Eventually her husband, who has headaches and memory loss, was transferred to an inpatient psychiatric clinic in Denver while he awaits a medical discharge.

 “All they do is make things worse,” Ms. Perez said of the transition unit.

Last year, The Associated Press reported that the transition unit at Fort Bragg in North Carolina had a discipline rate three times as high as the 82nd Airborne Division, the base’s primary occupant.

Bureaucratic Delays

Sgt. Keith Nowicki was an intelligence analyst who was sent back early from his second deployment to Iraq in April 2008 because of severe post-traumatic stress disorder, said his wife, Ashley.  Assigned to the Fort Carson transition unit, he spent nearly a year waiting for his medical discharge.

Instead of getting the help he hoped for, he spent much of the time in the unit alone, growing increasingly angry, drinking heavily and abusing Percocet.

In early 2009, he separated from his wife. While on the phone with her in March 2009 he shot himself to death. He was due to be discharged at the end of the month.

Though Ms. Nowicki does not attribute her husband’s suicide to the long wait for his discharge, she said the slowness of the process and the lack of support from the transition unit added to his sense of hopelessness.

 “It was just a bunch of red tape,” Ms. Nowicki said. “He would spend days trying to track down his own medical records.”

Army officials acknowledged that wait times for medical discharges at Fort Carson had grown.

A major reason is that Fort Carson is part of a pilot program with the Department of Veterans Affairs in which the Army and the V.A. collaborate in evaluating soldiers’ injuries. The collaboration between the two bureaucracies is expected to speed up veterans benefits once a soldier leaves the Army, but it can lengthen the initial evaluation period, officials said.

Michael Crawford has been waiting more than a year for his medical discharge. As his anxiety and depression have worsened, so have his problems in the unit. His rank was recently reduced to private in punishment for overstaying leave and using marijuana.

 But things are looking up, his mother believes: he will be able to stay with her in Michigan while awaiting his discharge.

 His mother, Sally Darrow, has already seen one son commit suicide. She believes that Michael would become the second if he had to return to Fort Carson and the transition unit.

 “At home, with family and schoolmates, he’s dealing with things better,” Ms. Darrow said.

 “He’s not safe there.”

MORE:

“Instead Of Getting Medical Help, Adam Got Push-Ups”

“He Shot Himself Inside A Bathroom Stall With His Rifle”

“What Kind Of Leadership Is That?”

 Apr 25, 2010 By Kristin M. Hall - The Associated Press [Excerpts]

Spc. Adam Kuligowski’s problems began because he couldn’t sleep.

Last year, the 21-year-old soldier was working six days a week, analyzing intelligence that the military gathered in Afghanistan. He was gifted at his job and loved being a part of the 101st Airborne Division, just like his father and his great uncle.

But Adam was tired and often late for work. His eyes were glassy and he was falling asleep while on duty.  His room was messy and his uniform was dirty.

His father, Mike Kuligowski, attributes his son’s sleeplessness and depression to an anti-malarial medication called mefloquine that was found in his system.

[I]t can cause psychiatric symptoms such as anxiety, paranoia, depression, hallucination and psychotic behavior.

But instead of getting medical help, Adam got push-ups.

One time, he got angry, throwing his gun on the ground and telling his command to send him to jail.  He was given an Article 15 nonjudicial punishment for misconduct and assigned kitchen duty during his days off.

The final straw, his father said, was when his first sergeant threatened to take away his security clearance and take him off his intelligence job.

Adam wrote a note telling his dad, “Sorry to be a disappointment.”

Then he shot himself inside a bathroom stall with his rifle.

When the Army closed their investigation into the soldier’s suicide, his father said an investigator told him that the Adam’s problem was that he was unable to conform to a military lifestyle.  Mike Kuligowski did receive a personal note from the division’s commanding general: “We don’t know why this happened,” he wrote.

Kuligowski was not appeased.

“It reminds me that officers know absolutely nothing about the plights of the soldiers who are under their command,” he said. “What kind of leadership is that?”

IRAQ WAR REPORTS

U.S. Soldier Killed By IED In Diyala Province

April 27, 2010 United States Forces – Iraq PAO, RELEASE No. 20100427-A

CONTINGENCY OPERATING BASE SPEICHER, Iraq –

Soldier Killed in Improvised Explosive Device blast:

A United States Division-North Soldier was killed in Diyala province.

Resistance Action

04/27/2010 By HAMID AHMED Associated Press Writer & April 27 (Reuters)

BAGHDAD—An overnight mortar attack killed two Iraqi soldiers Tuesday at a security station in a neighborhood of northern Baghdad, police and hospitals officials said. 

Another 14 people, including an army colonel, were wounded in the 1 a.m. attack on the joint Iraqi army-police office in the capital's Hurriyah area, the officials said.

Three mortar shells hit the security station, according to two Iraqi police officials.

It was the second big attack in Hurriyah in less than a week.

*************************************

Also Tuesday, insurgents in a speeding car opened fire on an Iraqi soldier in the northern city of Kirkuk, police said.  Kirkuk police Col. Ahmed Shameran identified the victim as Khalil Ibrahim, a 27-year-old army lieutenant who was attending Kirkuk University.

In the northern city of Mosul, a drive-by shooter targeted a police checkpoint late Tuesday, killing one policeman and wounding another, said a police official who also spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.

*************************************

Guerrillas fired on a police checkpoint using guns with silencers, killing a police officer and wounding another in western Mosul, 390 km(240 miles) north of Baghdad, police said. The police returned fire, wounding a child and a man, the source added.

MOSUL - A roadside bomb wounded a police officer when it struck a police convoy in western Mosul, police said.

AFGHANISTAN WAR REPORTS

Foreign Occupation “Service Member” Killed Somewhere Or Other In Afghanistan:

Nationality Not Announced

Apr 27 Associated Press

On Tuesday, a foreign service member was killed in eastern Afghanistan in a small-arms attack. NATO did not release the service member's name or nationality.

Insurgents Attack Compound Providing Logistical Support To Foreign Forces In Kandahar;

Heavy Casualties Reported In Two Hour Battle

Destroyed vehicles at the Supreme logistics compound in Kandahar April 28, 2010. The insurgent attack killed four people and wounded at least 30.  REUTERS/Stringer

Apr 27 By NOOR KHAN and DEB RIECHMANN, Associated Press Writers & Apr 28, 2010 DPA

Kandahar Police Chief Sher Mohammed Zazai said militants detonated explosives near the city in an attack targeting a compound providing logistical support to foreign forces.

At least four security personnel and two bombers were killed late Tuesday in blasts and a two-hour battle that followed, said Zalmai Ayubi, spokesman for the provincial governor.

Taliban bombers carried out the attack at the security firm's compound outside the provincial capital, also called Kandahar, said Sardar Mohammad Zazai, the provincial police chief.

The base is located 2 kilometres west of Kandahar city's airfield, the main base for U.S. and other foreign troops in the region.

More than 30 guards and civilians working at the security firm's base were injured in the attack.

In a statement posted on its website Wednesday, the Taliban took responsibility for the attack, saying three of its bombers stormed the main compound of Supreme, a logistics and private security company that transports supplies for foreign troops in southern Afghanistan.

The statement claimed that 15 security personnel were killed and 60 injured while nearly 60 vehicles were destroyed and eight oil tankers burned on the site.

“The First Time That Clash Has Been Reported Between Militants And Police In Badakhshan Considered A Peaceful Province”

27.04.2010 Xinhua

Police have arrested seven Taliban insurgents in the relatively peaceful Badakhshan province in northeast Afghanistan, an official said Tuesday.

"A unit of Police came in contact with Taliban rebels in Wardoj district yesterday as a result of the gun battle seven rebels were captured," spokesman for provincial administration Abdul Marouf Rasikh told Xinhua.

In the clash lasted for several hours one police officer was killed and two others including a militant and a police constable sustained injuries.

Days ago Taliban militants gunned down a police officer in Wardoj district.

This is the first time that clash has been reported between militants and police in Badakhshan considered a peaceful province in Afghanistan.

Meantime, Taliban purported spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid in talks with media via telephone from unknown location confirmed the clash and claimed that three-hour gun battle with security forces left seven police dead, a claim rejected by Marouf as baseless.

U.S. OCCUPATION RECRUITING DRIVE IN HIGH GEAR;

RECRUITING FOR THE ARMED RESISTANCE THAT IS

A foreign occupation soldier from the USA puts his hands on the body of an Afghan citizen without consent during a patrol April 27, 2010 in the Maiwand District of Kandahar Province.  (AP Photo/Julie Jacobson)

Foreign occupation soldiers from the USA make a daily practice of publicly humiliating Afghan citizens. 

This encourages self-respecting honorable Afghans to kill them.

[Fair is fair.  Let’s bring 80,000 Afghan troops over here to the USA. 

[They can kill people at checkpoints, bust into their houses with force and violence, bomb and butcher their families, overthrow the government, put a new one in office they like better and call it “sovereign,” and “detain” anybody who doesn’t like it in a military prison endlessly without any charges being filed against them, or any trial.

[Those Afghans are sure a bunch of backward primitives. 

[They actually resent this help, have the absurd notion that it’s bad their country is occupied by a foreign military dictatorship killing them wholesale, and consider it their patriotic duty to fight and kill the soldiers sent to grab their country. 

[What a bunch of silly people. 

[How fortunate they are to live under a military dictatorship run by Barrack Obama.  Why, how could anybody not love that?  You’d want that in your home town, right?]

ENOUGH OF THIS SHIT;

ALL HOME NOW

A soldier from the U.S. Army's 4-23 Infantry Battalion, 5th Stryker Brigade Combat Team eats tinned meat during a break at an Afghan National Police (ANP) compound in Helmand April 26, 2010.  REUTERS/Tim Wimborne

An interpreter helps a U. S Marine from 6 Marines, after he fell into a canal during patrol in the Karez-e-Sayyidi area, in the outskirts of Marjah district, Helmand province, April 26, 2010.  REUTERS/Asmaa Waguih

SOMALIA WAR REPORTS

Pirates Flee As Resistance Forces Advance:

“They Would Not Tolerate The Actions Of The Pirates”

4.26.10 Mareeg Online & GAROWE ONLINE

Fighters from Somalia’s insurgent group of Al-Shabaab has advanced to Harardhere, a central Somali coastal town famously known as a notorious pirate haven, forcing pirates to flee with hijacked ships and crews to another neighboring pirate stronghold.

According to reports that reached Garowe Online, hundreds of Al-Shabaab fighters streamed from the central town of Eldhere in the Galgadud region late Sunday, heading east towards Harardhere in south central region of Mudug.

Tension and fear has mounted in the town after the news of al Shabaab troop movement reached the people.

Somali pirates, who are holding at least six vessels and more than 90 people hostage in the town, are said to have retreated with some hijacked vessels and crew to Hobyo, another pirate stronghold about 108 kilometers to the north in Mudug region in central Somalia.

The al Shabaab fighters reached Villages 30 kilometers south of Harahrdhere and are reportedly heading to the town.

The spokesman of al Shabaab, Sheikh Ali Mohamud Rage, said last month that they would not tolerate the actions of the pirates.

“They used to tell us that they are defending the Somali coast from illegal fishing and those dump toxic waste in our waters, but now they have started to hijack commercial Somali boats,” Sheikh Ali told reporters in Mogadishu last month.

The pirates hijack commercial and fishing ships in the Somali coast and the Gulf of Aden and get large ransom of money.

The Islamist insurgent group has been advancing in central Somalia in recent days, taking over control of three towns, including Eldhere in the Galgadud region from the archrival, pro-government Sufi group, Ahlu-Sunna Wal-Jama'a

Explosion Convulses New Foreign Troops Base In Mogadishu;

Eight Occupation Soldier Killed

4/27/2010 (Sh. M. Network)

MOGADISHU

A bomber has been targeted to a new military base for the African Union troops AMISOM [translation: foreign occupation troops] at the former business bank in the Somali capital Mogadishu, witnesses, officials told Shabelle radio on Tuesday.

Reports say that the explosion was carried out by a bomber traveling a vehicle filled with explosive things and exploded at the outside of the bank where the AMISOM troops made new base in Shangani district in Mogadishu causing more casualties.

Witnesses said that the