Veterans for Common Sense

Veterans for Common Sense highly recommends this well-written documentary about how poorly our Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans are being treated.  As the Houston Chronicle editorial board wrote on December 14, 2008, “Since the start of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and all of the resulting harms to soldiers, civilians, economies and constitutional principles, no segment of society has been more abused and neglected than returning U.S. military veterans.” 

January 2009 – The War Comes Home is the first book to systematically document the U.S. government’s neglect of soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Aaron Glantz, who reported extensively from Iraq during the first three years of this war and has been reporting on the plight of veterans ever since, levels a devastating indictment against the Bush administration for its bald neglect of soldiers and its disingenuous reneging on their benefits.

Glantz interviewed more than one hundred recent war veterans, and here he intersperses their haunting first-person accounts with investigations into specific concerns, such as the scandal at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. This timely book does more than provide us with a personal connection to those whose service has cost them so dearly. It compels us to confront how America treats its veterans and to consider what kind of nation deifies its soldiers and then casts them off as damaged goods.

To learn more about the book and to place an order, please visit Aaron Glantz’ web site: http://www.aaronglantz.com/

Reviews of “The War Comes Home” —

“A breathtaking rebuke to government hypocrisy and an overdue contribution to gaining critical public awareness of this official neglect.” – Publishers Weekly

“Aaron Glantz is one of the truly outstanding young journalists of our times.”  – Bob McChesney, author of Rich Media, Poor Democracy, and founder of Free Press

“One of the many scandals of the war in Iraq is how the administration has betrayed our returning servicemen. I’m grateful that the facts surrounding these tragedies are finally being exposed.” – Paul Haggis, Academy-Award-winning director of Crash and In the Valley of Elah, screenwriter of Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima

“A must-read for those who claim to support our troops.” – Robert G. Gard, Lt. General, U.S. Army (ret.)

“The treatment by the Bush Administration of America’s returning veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is one of the saddest chapters in American history. This story is painfully documented by Aaron Glantz. This book is a must-read for anyone who wants to make the phrase, ‘Support the Troops,’ more than a slogan.” – Former US Senator Max Cleland

“A fitting tribute to what these men and women fought and risked their lives and well-being for.” – Gerald Nicosia, author of Home to War

“This superbly documented and eloquent book is a clarion call for honesty, compassion, outrage, and an end to the lies that cause so much suffering in far-off countries and in our own nation.” – Norman Solomon, author of War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death

“Aaron Glantz draws on his eyewitness experiences of reporting in Iraq to bring the courage and the suffering of our troops into vivid relief. The War Comes Home exposes how physical and mental injuries plague our returning servicemen and what we can do about it.” – Linda Bilmes, coauthor of The Three Trillion Dollar War

“Weep, America, cringe, America. We talk a good game about honoring all those who go into harm’s way for our sake and caring for those who get physically and psychologically broken, but do we go beyond fine words and a few gold-plated flagship medical facilities? Are we walking the walk? Are we getting it right? Aaron Glantz is in our face on the military treatment facilities, the VA, and civilian society at large.” – Jonathan Shay, MD, PhD, author of Achilles in Vietnam and Odysseus in America. MacArthur Fellow

“Aaron Glantz reports on the human cost of war, what it does physically and emotionally to those young men and women who carry out industrial slaughter. He rips apart the myths we tell ourselves about war and illustrates, in painful detail, the dark psychological holes that those who have been through war’s trauma endure and will always endure. He reminds us that the essence of war is not glory, heroism, and honor but death.” – Chris Hedges, former New York Times foreign correspondent, author of War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning

“We should all be reading people like Greg Palast and Aaron Glantz.” – Al Kennedy, The Guardian (UK)

About The Author: Aaron Glantz, an independent journalist whose work has appeared in The Nation and The Progressive and on Democracy Now!, is the author of How America Lost Iraq.

December 23, 2008 – Scottish scientists have found that being intelligent is of little advantage in the front line of battle.

A study conducted by history and psychology experts at Edinburgh University has found that Scottish soldiers who lost their lives in the Second World War were more intelligent than those who survived.

Of 491 Scottish servicemen that the study found had taken IQ tests when aged 11 and who had been killed in the war, 470 (96per cent) had an average IQ of 100.8.

However, several thousand survivors who had taken the same test averaged 97.4.

It is thought the higher death rate for smarter individuals may help to explain studies which found a dip in intelligence among Scottish men directly after the war.

Mental health expert Professor Ian Deary, director of the Edinburgh University’s Centre for Cognitive Ageing and Cognitive Epidemiology, which led the study, said the phenomenon might be attributable to the nature of the Second World War, in that it was fought more with the mind than muscle compared with previous conflicts.

The results, published in the journal Intelligence, seem to contradict dozens of other studies that show clever people typically outlive their less intelligent counterparts.

“We wonder whether more skilled men were required at the front line, as warfare became more technical, ” Prof Deary said. The experts said the study should be expanded to consider naval and air force personnel records in order to examine more fully the complex relationship between IQ and survival expectancy during active service in the Second World War.

Researchers used the Scottish Mental Survey of 1932 to get records of intelligence test scores for a group of children born in 1921 and linked them to UK Army personnel records and Scottish National War Memorial data.

The tests were intended to measure skills in maths and verbal reasoning along with spatial skills. Previous research indicated that childhood IQs accurately predict intelligence later in life.

“No other country has ever done such a whole-population test of the mental ability of its population, ” said Prof Deary. A previous study had found a drop in average intelligence among Scots men after the war.

The researchers also found that low-ranking soldiers comprised 60per cent of all deaths and their IQs as assessed on their childhood tests averaged 95.3. Officers and non-commissioned officers comprised roughly 7per cent and 20per cent of war deaths respectively. Officers scored on average 121.9, raising the average IQ for those who had died, whereas noncommissioned officers had an average score of 106.7.

The 1947 Scottish Mental Survey, involving more than 70,000 schoolchildren, was sponsored by the Scottish Council for Research in Education.

Part Two of Three Parts

January 4, 2009 – Gregory Kamm of Las Vegas did close combat on the streets of Fallujah, Iraq, in 2004. He didn’t think he’d have to fight just as hard to find a job in Las Vegas in 2008, after completing earlier this year his third deployment.

Kamm, 25, is one of many veterans back from Iraq or Afghanistan struggling to reintegrate into the recession-wracked civilian workplace.

Kamm, wife Corinne, and 1-year-old son Skyler have two special applications pending, beyond the numerous job apps. One is for a food allotment through the federal Women Infants Children program, the other for food stamps.

As of mid-December, the Kamms were dangerously behind on the rent for their tiny North Las Vegas apartment. They risked eviction until a local church provided financial aid.

The Kamms are behind on their car payment, too. So the dealership that granted the loan has electronically “locked” the vehicle until the Kamms pay up. Gregory Kamm takes the bus to file job applications and attend job interviews. Corinne is also looking for work.

“The economy is bad in Las Vegas. We’re all tourist-related,” Gregory Kamm acknowledges.

Kamm has almost eight years of honorable service in military security, as an active-duty Marine and then as Army Reservist. He returned in April from Iraq, this time with the Army Reserves 314th Combat Sustainment Support Battalion.

Before deploying with the reserves, he had notified his civilian employer, a casino that caters to locals, of his departure. Federal law requires employers to take back workers after they serve in the military, if properly notified.

Kamm did get rehired into the casino’s security department — which fulfilled the letter of the federal law. But other job conditions had drastically changed.

According to Kamm, during the four months he worked at the casino this time around, the new security chief was ineffectual and abusive. The veteran also felt the casino was jeopardizing public safety by running short security crews during graveyard shifts in order to save money.

How safe is it, Kamm asks, for two guards to attempt “to handle 512 intoxicated adults that don’t speak English?” He is referring to a popular weekly event marketed to Hispanics, held in a space rated to hold 512 occupants.

Kamm didn’t only think about his concerns. To express them in person, he says he went to the property’s human resources office twice, and once to the casino’s offsite corporate headquarters.

Kamm quit abruptly Oct. 27, after a supervisor told the soldier that he, with three years cumulative on the payroll, was outranked by a newer hire with less experience. Kamm figured that if he didn’t find work right away, unemployment pay would kick in. He believed he had quit for “just cause.”

Turns out, casino reps later told the state unemployment insurance division they had no record of Kamm contacting human resources to complain about his work conditions.

Unfortunately, Kamm created no paper trail to prove otherwise, so the state found him ineligible for unemployment benefits. He says he wouldn’t have quit without a new job lined up, if he had understood that in Nevada, his status as a recently returned veteran did not guarantee him unemployment pay.

To make matters worse, Kamm says the temporary military pay he got this autumn, for attending a mandatory two-week leadership training after he made sergeant, is now counting against his family in the food-stamp application process.

To date, the soldier estimates he has applied for a job at every Strip hotel’s security department, at multiple security companies and at businesses outside his expertise, including a cabinetry company in Henderson, which would also require a lengthy bus commute.

Kamm’s job struggle is not isolated. Other local veterans who served in Iraq or Afghanistan also are reporting job snags. Some can’t find work at all; others find the prior job or employer has altered in ways that put the veteran at a disadvantage.

Pfc. Nicole Cranor of the Nevada Army National Guard’s 72nd Military Company got back from Iraq in September. As of late November she had not located permanent work. She has a suspicion, but no proof, that companies don’t want to hire a young, relatively inexperienced Guardswoman who may have to re-deploy. But federal law only addresses returning employees; it doesn’t prevent a prospective employer from holding a job candidate’s continuing military obligation against him or her.

Veterans who return to Nevada can apply for unemployment benefits, says Lynn Baird, a spokesman from the state’s Southern Nevada unemployment claims office.

“Just because you’ve worn the proud flag of America on your sleeve, it doesn’t make it harder, or less hard,” to qualify for benefits, he says.

Completing a tour of active duty — 90 days or more — for the Guard or Reserves is equivalent to being laid off, in the eyes of Nevada unemployment officials.

Many returning veterans qualify for unemployment if they don’t find jobs, Baird says. But not all veterans do, because the receipt of Nevada benefits is based on the applicant’s work history up to 18 months prior. A veteran who deployed for only a short time, but did not work at all in the civilian period preceding deployment — perhaps because he or she was a student — may not have accumulated past earnings to be eligible for unemployment.

A returning soldier who lands a job and then quits, as Kamm did, is a different story, according to Baird, who did not comment on Kamm’s case.

Self-employed soldiers face unique challenges when they reenter the civilian workplace. At least one soldier with the 314th lost his livelihood, according to 1st Sgt. Wesley Deegan, who is in the same division. The soldier owned a small landscaping outfit that was doing fine when he went overseas in April 2007. By the time he returned in April 2008, it was out of business. The economy had soured during his absence, and he could not shore up the company from long distance.

Thomas Grande, 32, found his job in maintenance at the Forum Shops secure, at the same pay, when he returned in September from duty in Iraq with the Nevada Army National Guard 72nd Military Police Company. But the job description was entirely new.

Before deploying, Grande had coordinated tenant improvements at the mall, which is attached to Caesars Palace. He enjoyed the challenging work, which involved “lots of (safety) rules and regulations they have to follow.” While Grande was overseas, those duties were absorbed into a different level of management. So he is supervising a group of employees who maintain the heating and cooling systems.

At first Grande was bummed. “I lost my (work) cell phone. I lost my (work) e-mail.” But he has since come to terms with the change: “No. 1, I’m home alive. No. 2, I have a job. With the economy as bad as it is, I’m just glad I have a job.”

Sharon Dixon, 50, returned from deployment to Iraq in late 2003, well before the present economic downturn. She returned to the same large employer, the public utility now known as NV Energy.

Before going to Iraq, she had supervised employees who took customer cash. While serving with the 72nd Military Police Company, she was injured in an IED explosion. When she got back, she found herself uncomfortably startled at the end of the shift, whenever employees dropped a heavy cash drawer at her work station.

Eventually, Dixon transferred to her present position as an executive assistant, in which she no longer deals with cash drawers. But with memory and concentration problems that have developed since she served, Dixon finds herself stretched learning the new computer software programs required for the position.

Empathy of co-workers and supervisors toward the side issues that veterans face is finite. Bottom line, the private sector wants employees to perform, according to Dixon.

“Still today, I’ll sit and the tears will come,” she says of her frustration at her slowed pace of computer learning. “But I jump back in the game.”

The 10 Best American Movies

January 4, 2009 – It’s Top Ten time again, and like everyone else I have a list, in my case a list of the 10 best American movies ever. Here it is, with brief descriptions and no justifications. Only the first two films are in order. The others are all tied for third.

Number One: The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), directed by William Wyler. Regarded as producer Sam Goldwyn’s masterpiece, this deeply felt study of soldiers coming home after World War II boasts career-best performances by Fredric March (who won an Oscar), Myrna Loy, Teresa Wright, Dana Andrews, Virginia Mayo, Cathy O’Donnell, Hoagy Carmichael and the amazing Harold Russell (two Oscars), a double amputee and first- and last-time (non)actor who played a double amputee.

The movie is filled with thrilling and affecting scenes – the moment when Milly Stephenson (Loy) realizes that the person at the door is her husband, Al (March), who has come back a day before he was supposed to; the moment when Homer Parrish (Russell) waves goodbye to his two new friends and his parents see the hooks that are now his hands for the first time; the moment when Fred Derry (Andrews) hoists himself into a military plane like the one he flew in so many times and hears in his mind the engines of the other dead planes surrounding him in rows. The three intertwined stories are resolved with a measure of optimism, but with more than a residue of disappointment and bitterness. Al Stephenson is still a drunk. Fred Derry is still poor and without skills. Homer Parrish still has no hands.

VCS Note: We highly encourge people of all ages to watch this timeless film to better understand the readjustment needs of our current combat veterans. We hope one day a screen writer, film producer, and studio will make an updated version.

Stanley Fish is the Davidson-Kahn Distinguished University Professor and a professor of law at Florida International University, in Miami, and dean emeritus of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He has also taught at the University of California at Berkeley, Johns Hopkins and Duke University. He is the author of 10 books. His new book on higher education, “Save the World On Your Own Time,” has just been published.

January 3, 2009 – The destruction of the Army’s reputation will be one of the most lasting of Tony Blair’s legacies.

As we enter the year when the last British troops leave Iraq, further evidence is emerging of just what an abject failure Britain’s military intervention in Iraq has been. Despite the bravery of many individual soldiers, the only real success of the Government has been the extent to which it has managed to hide from view how, thanks to its catastrophic misjudgements, this has been the one of the most humiliating chapters in the history of the British Army.

In recent weeks, drawing on a wealth of published and unpublished sources, my colleague Dr Richard North has been compiling the first comprehensive account of this story, for a book to be published this summer as our troops beat their final inglorious retreat. Like any tragedy, it is a story which has unfolded through five main acts or stages,

Stage one began in April 2003 when, after 40,000 British troops took part in the US-led invasion, Britain was given the responsibility of restoring order in the predominantly Shia south-east of the country centred on Basra. We began with hubris, imagining we would be welcomed by the local population as liberators and that, such was our experience in Northern Ireland, establishing order would be no problem, Almost immediately, however, our troops came under sporadic attacks by armed militias, notably the “Mahdi Army’’ run by a militant cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr. Having dismantled the structures of authority and reduced our troop numbers to 11,000, we had nothing like enough men to fulfil our legal duty under the Geneva Convention to maintain public order and safety.

Stage two began with the fateful decision in late 2003, endorsed by General Mike Jackson as head of the Army, to deploy 178 Snatch Land Rovers as our chief patrol vehicle. The intention, as part of the attempt to ”win hearts and minds’’, was to avoid using armoured Warriors in favour of vehicles looking less aggressive. In 2004 Muqtada’s Mahdi Army launched a conventional uprising in several cities, including Baghdad, provoking a massive US response which led to its defeat. In Basra and the south, therefore, the Mahdi Army resorted to guerrilla tactics, notably roadside bombs which caused havoc with the hopelessly unprotected Land Rovers. By summer 2005, as yet more soldiers died, the British were forced to suspend Snatch patrols. As the cities of Basra and Al-Amarah to the north came under militia control, this was where the British lost the confidence of an increasingly terrorised population,

Stage three in 2006 centred on the extraordinary, largely unreported drama surrounding Al-Amarah and the nearby base at Abu Naji, our largest after Basra. Unable to keep control over the city, the British hunkered down in Abu Naji, subjected to constant mortaring which they had neither the men nor the equipment to deal with. In August we retreated, supposedly handing over to the Iraqi army, only for the base to be triumphantly looted by the Mahdi Army, which by the end of October had turned Al-Amarah into a vast bomb-making factory, supplying insurgents all over Iraq.

Stage four in 2007 saw the Americans launch their spectacularly successful ”surge’’ to the north, with 20,000 additional men, equipped with the properly mine-protected vehicles the British so tragically lacked. Now impotently confined to just four bases in Basra, under constant attack, the British could do no more than protect the convoys needed to supply them. Forced to abandon one base after another, in September they retreated to Basra airport. In effect, for the British the war was over.

The fifth and final stage came in March 2008, when the Iraqi government and the US Army, frustrated by the failure of the British to carry out their responsibilities, and determined to end the flow of weaponry out of Al-Amarah, launched the operation known as ”the Charge of the Knights’’.

Entering Basra in overwhelming force, they routed the Mahdi Army, restoring the city to peaceful normality. Last June, Iraqi and US forces similarly liberated Al-Amarah. It was made clear to the British that their presence in Iraq was no longer relevant.

The British Army had entered Iraq in 2003 with a reputation as ”the most professional in the world’’. Six years later it will leave, having failed to fulfil any of its allotted tasks and having earned the contempt of the Iraqis and the Americans after one of our most humiliating defeats in history.

The fault for this lies almost entirely with Tony Blair, abetted by one or two very senior military commanders, who failed at any point after the invasion to provide the men and equipment needed to carry out the task to which Blair had vaingloriously agreed. The price paid has been measured partly in the deaths and injuries of our men – but above all it has been in that destruction of the Army’s reputation which will be one of the most painful and lasting legacies of the Blair era.

A Focus on Violence by Returning G.I.’s

January 2, 2009, Fort Carson, Colorado — For the past several years, as this Army installation in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains became a busy way station for soldiers cycling in and out of Iraq, the number of servicemen implicated in violent crimes has raised alarm.

Nine current or former members of Fort Carson’s Fourth Brigade Combat Team have killed someone or were charged with killings in the last three years after returning from Iraq. Five of the slayings took place last year alone. In addition, charges of domestic violence, rape and sexual assault have risen sharply.

Prodded by Senator Ken Salazar, Democrat of Colorado, the base commander began an investigation of the soldiers accused of homicide. An Army task force is reviewing their recruitment, medical and service records, as well as their personal histories, to determine if the military could have done something to prevent the violence. The inquiry was recently expanded to include other serious violent crimes.

Now the secretary of the Army, Pete Geren, says he is considering conducting an Army-wide review of all soldiers “involved in violent crimes since returning” from Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a letter sent to Mr. Salazar in December. Mr. Geren wrote that the Fort Carson task force had yet to find a specific factor underlying the killings, but that the inquiry was continuing.

Focusing attention on soldiers charged with killings is a shift for the military, which since the start of the war in Iraq has largely deflected any suggestion that combat could be a factor in violent behavior among some returning service members.

Maj. Gen. Mark Graham, the Fort Carson commander, said, “If they had a good manner of performance before they deployed, then they get back and they get into trouble, instead of saying we will discipline you for trouble, the leadership has to say, Why did that occur, what happened, what is causing this difference in behavior?”

General Graham, whose oldest son, Jeff, was killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq a year after another son, Kevin, committed suicide, has made mental health a focus since taking command of Fort Carson in 2007. “I feel like I have to speak out for the Kevins of the world,” he said.

The inquiry, the general added, is “looking for a trend, something that happened through their life cycle that might have contributed to this, something we could have seen coming.”

Last January, The New York Times published articles examining the cases of veterans of the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan charged with homicide after their return. At the time, it counted at least 121 such cases. In many of them, combat trauma and the stress of deployment appeared to have set the stage for the crimes.

At Fort Carson, at least four of the accused killers from the Fourth Brigade Combat Team, Fourth Infantry Division were grappling with post-traumatic stress disorder and several had been injured in battle.

One was John Needham, a 25-year-old private from a military family in California, whose downward spiral began when he sustained shrapnel wounds in Iraq and tried to commit suicide. This September, after being treated for stress disorder and receiving a medical discharge from the Army, Mr. Needham was charged with beating his girlfriend to death.

“Where is this aggression coming from?” asked Vivian H. Gembara, a former captain and Army prosecutor at Fort Carson until 2004, who wrote a book about the war crimes she prosecuted in Iraq. “Was it something in Iraq? Were they in a lot of heavy combat? If so, the command needs to pay more attention to that. You can’t just point all of them out as bad apples.”

The Fourth Combat Brigade, previously called the Second Combat Brigade, fought in Iraq’s fiercest cities at some of the toughest moments. Falluja and Ramadi, after insurgents dug into the rubble. Baghdad and its Sadr City district, as body counts soared. By 2007, after two tours, the brigade, which numbers 3,500, had lost 113 soldiers, with hundreds more wounded. It is now preparing for a tour in Afghanistan this spring.

Most Fort Carson soldiers have been to Iraq at least once; others have deployed two, three or four times.

Kaye Baron, a therapist in Colorado Springs who treats Fort Carson soldiers and families, said, “It got to the point I stopped asking if they have deployed, and started asking how many times they have deployed.”

Ms. Baron added, “There are some guys who say, ‘Why do I have to get treatment for P.T.S.D.? I just have to go back.’ ”

While most soldiers returning from war adjust with minor difficulties, military leaders acknowledges that multiple deployments strain soldiers and families, and can increase the likelihood of problems like excessive drinking, marital strife and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Domestic violence among Fort Carson soldiers has become more prevalent since the Iraq war began in 2003. In 2006, Fort Carson soldiers were charged in 57 cases of domestic violence, according to figures released by the base. As of mid-December, the number had grown to 145.

Rape and sexual assault cases against soldiers have also increased, from 10 in 2006 to 38 as of mid-December, the highest tally since the war began. Both domestic violence and rape are crimes that are traditionally underreported.

Fort Carson officials say the increased numbers do not necessarily indicate more violence. Karen Connelly, a Fort Carson spokeswoman, said the base, whose population fluctuates from 11,000 to 14,500 soldiers, is doing a better job of holding soldiers accountable for crimes, encouraging victims to come forward and keeping statistics.

Even so, Col. B. Shannon Davis, the base’s deputy commander, said the task force was examining these trends. “We are looking at crime as a whole,” he said.

The killings allegedly involving the nine current or former Fourth Brigade soldiers have caused the most consternation. The first occurred in 2005, when Stephen Sherwood, a musician who joined the Army for health benefits, returned from Iraq and fatally shot his wife and then himself.

Last year, three battlefield friends were charged with murder after two soldiers were found shot dead within four months of each other. Two of the accused suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, and all three had been in disciplinary or criminal trouble in the military. One had a juvenile record and been injured in Iraq.

The latest killing was in October, when the police say Robert H. Marko, an infantryman, raped and killed Judilianna Lawrence, a developmentally disabled teenager he had met online. Specialist Marko believed that on his 21st birthday he would become the “Black Raptor” — half-man, half-dinosaur, a confidential Army document shows. The Army evaluated him three times for mental health problems but cleared him for combat each time.

Senator Salazar, President-elect Barack Obama’s choice to be secretary of the interior, called for the Fort Carson inquiry, saying the killings raised questions about what role, if any, combat stress played.

“It’s a hard issue, but it’s a realistic issue,” he said.

Since arriving at Fort Carson, General Graham has spoken openly about mental health, particularly post-traumatic stress disorder, calling it an act of courage, not frailty, to ask for help.

His 21-year-old son, a top R.O.T.C. cadet, hanged himself in 2003 after battling depression. He had stopped taking his antidepressants because he did not want to disclose his illness, fearing such an admission would harm his chances for a career as an Army doctor, General Graham said.

“He was embarrassed,” the general said.

He added: “I feel it every day. We didn’t give him all the care we should have. He got some care, but not enough. I’ll never be convinced I did enough for my son.”

At Fort Carson, in cases of dishonorable discharge, General Graham asks whether the soldier might be struggling with combat stress disorder.

He has sometimes opted instead to grant medical discharges, which entitle veterans to benefits. All Fort Carson soldiers who seek medical attention are now asked about their mental health and, if necessary, referred for treatment.

Still, some sergeants view stress disorder skeptically and actively discourage treatment, some therapists and soldiers say.

Billie Gray, 71, who until recently worked at a base clinic helping soldiers with emotional problems, said “that was the biggest problem at Fort Carson today: harassment” and “the very fact they are harassed made their mental status worse.”

Ms. Gray said she believed she was fired in October for being an outspoken advocate for mental health treatment. Base officials declined to comment, citing privacy reasons.

Colonel Davis, the deputy commander, acknowledged that sergeants had been reprimanded for discouraging treatment. “We have had to take corrective action,” he said, “but fewer and fewer times.”

John Wylie Needham, one of the accused killers whose case is now being examined by the task force, was “cracking up” in Iraq, he told his father in an e-mail message. Yet, he felt he had to fight to get help, his father said in an interview.

In October 2006, during his first week in Iraq, Private Needham, a California surfer, watched a good friend die from a sniper bullet. Months later, he was blasted in the back by shrapnel from a grenade. To cope with his growing anxiety, he stole Valium and drank liquor. Caught twice, he was punished with a reduction in rank, a fine and extra work, a confidential Army document shows. Eventually, he was prescribed medication, but he wrote to his father, Mike Needham, that it did not help.

Private Needham became angry at the way other soldiers reacted to the fighting, and he did not hide it. “They seemed to revel in how many people they had killed,” said a friend in his unit who spoke on condition of anonymity.

In September 2007, Private Needham tried to kill himself with a gun, the Army document states, but another soldier intervened. Mike Needham, a veteran, said that rather than treating his son, the Army disciplined him for discharging a weapon and confined him to barracks. The Army declined to comment.

“I’m stressed to the point of completely losing it,” Private Needham wrote to his father in October 2007. “The squad leader brushed me off and said suck it up.”

He added, “They keep me locked up in this room and if I need food or water I have to have 2 guards with me.”

The Army evacuated Private Needham to Walter Reed Army Medical Center to treat his back and his post-traumatic stress disorder. But a month later, he was back at Fort Carson.

“The first words out of the Mental Health Authority was, ‘we are severely understaffed,’ ” Mr. Needham said in an e-mail message to an officer at Walter Reed. “If you’re suicidal we can see you twice a week, otherwise once a week.”

Fort Carson assured Mike Needham that his son was receiving proper care. But during his son’s visit home during the Thanksgiving break, Mr. Needham found him smearing camouflage-colored makeup on his face and frantically sharpening a stick with a kitchen knife.

“He was a total mess,” Mr. Needham said.

He was treated at a California naval hospital until last July when he received a medical discharge from the Army. While Private Needham was in the early stages of getting help from a Veterans Administration clinic, he spent his days depressed and often drinking at his father’s condominium.

Then last summer, Private Needham met Jacqwelyn Villagomez, a bubbly 19-year-old aspiring model who saw him as a kindred spirit, said Jennifer Johnson, who had helped raise her. Her mother had died of AIDS when she was 6 and her father had left the family. Ms. Villagomez, “who saw the good in everyone,” had recently kicked a heroin habit, Ms. Johnson said.

“She thought she could save him,” Ms. Johnson said. But a month later, the police say, Private Needham beat Ms. Villagomez to death in his father’s condominium.

Mr. Needham said the Army handled his son’s case poorly, but Ms. Johnson finds it hard to muster sympathy for him.

“I’m sure what happened to him was awful,” she said. “I’m sure he saw some horrible things that altered him. But this is a 200-pound guy who beat up this 95-pound little girl. It’s disgusting.”