CW2 Nicholas Johnson, CW2 Don Viray, SPC Dean Shaffer, and SPC Chris Workman died on Thursday, April 19th when their Blackhawk helicopter crashed in Helmand Province, Afghanistan while en route to pick up Afghan National Police officers who had been wounded in a suicide bomb attack at their checkpoint. They were assigned to A Company, 2/25 Aviation.
Yesterday was a worry day; today is a waiting day. If my luck holds, tomorrow will be a guilt day. This is the first of these sequences for this deployment. It’s unlikely that it will be the last.
It’s another beautiful day in Honolulu. Most of the 117 days since my wife got on the plane to go back to Kandahar have been beautiful. Most of the next 250 or so days will also be beautiful.
Thursday night was not a beautiful night in Afghanistan. It was, as Snoopy would type, a dark and stormy night. First reports suggest that this was likely a factor in the crash of a UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter in Helmand Province. The helicopter was one of two that were on a CASEVAC mission. They were en route to an Afghan National Police checkpoint that had just suffered a suicide bombing that killed four police officers and wounded seven more. The first news reports indicated that survivors were considered “unlikely”. Later reports confirmed the deaths of the four American soldiers onboard.
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Republican presidential candidates Michelle Bachamann wants my wife to be fired from her current job.
Bachmann undoubtedly doesn't know who my wife is, and probably doesn't know or understand exactly what my wife's job is, but Bachmann definitely wants my wife's job to be done by someone else. Bachmann does not, it would appear, care if the person who replaces her is better qualified or even as qualified as my wife. She simply wants to make sure that whoever replaces my wife has - and was born with - one thing.
A penis.
Yes, you read that right. Michelle Bachmann, a woman who wants to be the Commander-in-Chief of the United States Military, has publicly come out against women in combat. She did so last week, and the media seems to have managed to completely miss this.
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In today's Atlanta Journal Constitution, Army spouse Elisabeth Kadlec writes:
When we married our spouses, I am sure that none of us were signing up to be single parents. But in essence that is what we become. Many people I know, like my husband, have already been deployed more than three times, and will go again. Most of these deployments are to Iraq or Afghanistan. It always amazes me when people ask me if my husband has to go back. I even laugh at this question!
I think it shows that the public has no idea how many troops make up the armed forces and how many are deployed at a time. Somehow, that message has been lost when we talk about the war. I am pretty much resolved that my husband will be deployed almost every other year. You can only imagine what this does to a family, and how important it is to us that smart decisions are being made for military members.
I don't know Ms. Kadlec, but I sure do know a hell of a lot of people like her - enough to know that she is far from the only military spouse who will be voting Obama this year. She understands, as does every member of every Army family, that the current deployment tempo cannot go on forever, or even for much longer, without causing long-term damage to the army as a whole.
In other news, updates here will be fewer and farther between than normal this week. I'll be spending most of my free time working at the Obama campaign's Pensacola office.
The following quote is taken verbatim from the transcript of an interview that President Bush did with Politico.com yesterday. I'm presenting it without any further comment, because there really isn't a hell of a lot than can be said - and we're still stuck with the shallow little twit for the next 251 days:
Q Mr. President, you haven't been golfing in recent years. Is that related to Iraq?
THE PRESIDENT: Yes, it really is. I don't want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the Commander-in-Chief playing golf. I feel I owe it to the families to be as -- to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal.
Back at the beginning of April, ATA airlines suddenly went out of business. With no prior warning, they filed for bankruptcy and suspended all flights. This decision was sparked by FedEx's still unexplained decision to drop ATA from the group of airlines that they use to fulfill their military charter contracts as of October 1st.
Before going belly-up, ATA did a lot of military charter business. So much, in fact, that the loss of the carrier means that troops are still facing delays of several days in coming home from the war zone. Apparently, FedEx has been unwilling to suck up the extra costs that they'd face if they brought in another carrier to make up the lost flights.
Of course, the military authorities don't seem to think this is actually a problem:
According to Sgt. Douglas DeMaio, an Army Central Command spokesman, the entertainment offerings on base in Kuwait keep most troops happy while they wait for flights.
That's right. You may not have seen your family for 15 months, and you may be stuck in Kuwait for another week just because there's no airplane to take you home, but it's all good - you can play Donkey Kong while you're waiting.
Good job, guys. Take another $1.93 out of petty cash, and buy another magnetic ribbon for your SUV.
It's been just over 5 years since the start of the Iraq war, and we've just passed another of those morbid little milestones that get so much attention in the press. This particular milestone has a nice round number on it - 4,000 - which apparently makes it somehow more important, or significant, or something than less neat numbers like 2526, or 3981, or 1135. The media's spent a little while circling over the battlefield, waiting for the 4,000th American corpse to hit the ground. The milestone arrived and passed more or less on schedule, and the media will settle back down and wait for the next round number. But these numbers, round or otherwise are nonsense. They're worse than meaningless. They allow us to care about this war on cue for some fraction of a news cycle. But by the time we've gone to the fridge, grabbed a beer, and slapped our fat asses back down on the sofa, things have moved on to the story of the drug-addled starlet's custody fight with her 5th ex-husband. In six or seven months, when the number's climbed to another round increment, the press will spare a few more minutes of air time and remind us to care again briefly. Between now and then, most of the deaths will be back below the fold on page A-39.
Somehow or another, I doubt that the parents of the 3683rd soldier to die are somehow injured less than the parents of the 4,000th. I doubt that the parents of the 4010th will feel any differently. And, of course, American soldiers aren't the only ones who have died in the course of this disaster. We don't know how many Iraqis have died. Every estimate that's been published so far has been the subject of some controversy, because the different estimates aren't in complete agreement with each other. After five years, the whole country is still so comprehensively screwed that it's not possible to safely conduct the censuses and surveys needed to come up with an answer that everyone can agree with. The survivors of the family that becomes the collateral damage from an American air strike don't mourn any less than the family of the American soldier killed by friendly fire.
Every single person who has died in this war leaves behind a hole. Their absence is felt by their families, by their friends, by their colleagues, no matter who they were or why they fought.
And those aren't the only holes that are left.
Back on January 29th, NPR aired a story that claimed that the Army had taken steps to keep Veterans Administration workers from helping soldiers with their Army disability paperwork. Since then, there have been some new revelations, including a document that indicates that the Army Surgeon General was at best ignorant of all the facts, and at worst dishonest, when he was first interviewed by NPR. After listening to the NPR stories, and (more importantly) reading the documentary evidence they presented, I think that their report clearly illuminates some serious problems with the care of wounded troops. These problems are serious. They need to be addressed very quickly. But they're not necessarily the same problems that NPR decided to focus the bulk of their attention on.
The story began with a January 29th report by NPR correspondent Ari Shapiro. Shapiro reported on allegations that a group from the Army had told Veterans affairs workers at Ft. Drum to stop helping soldiers contest portions of the Army paperwork that can determine how the Army rates the soldier's medical condition. The paperwork in question is referred to as a "narrative summary", and is a detailed description of the soldier's medical condition.
A narrative summary is usually written by a doctor assigned to the same unit as the soldier, based on the entire medical history of the person involved. This document is an absolutely critical part of the Army's medical separation process. The wording of this document has a great deal of influence over how disabled the Army considers the soldier to be. That, in turn, determines whether the Army will medically discharge or medically retire the soldier. The distinction between "discharged" and "retired" is the difference between whether the soldier gets a one-shot severance package or a lifetime of retirement benefits. In short, it's a high-stakes document.
It's safe to say that 2007 wasn't the best year of US Army 1st Lt. Elizabeth Whiteside's life. She started off the year with a bullet wound to her torso that damaged, among other things, one lung, her liver, and her spleen. She ended her year as an outpatient at Walter Reed, waiting for her superiors to decide whether or not she would have to stand court-martial for inflicting that wound upon herself. In between, she had to recover from her physical wounds, learn to deal with the inner demons that led to them, she had to deal with superior officers who believed that she would be more appropriately handled as a criminal than a patient, and cope with a system that constantly threatened soldiers with mental illness with discharge and no benefits. It's not entirely clear that 2008 is going to be a better year for her. On Tuesday, the Army announced that they were dropping all charges against her. At the time of that announcement, she was in intensive care, recovering from a second failed attempt to take her own life.
In the note that she wrote before swallowing whatever pills she had around her, she said that she was "very disappointed in the Army". It's hard to find any reason for her not to be disappointed. The Army's treatment of her has been absolutely abysmal. Unfortunately, the same can be said for many other soldiers and veterans. Although the Army has been working to improve mental health care, the system is not where it needs to be, and faces no shortage of hurdles along the way.
According to the December 2, 2007 Washington Post article that first presented Lt. Whiteside's case to the public, there were a number of things that happened in Iraq that may have contributed to her mental illness and suicide attempt. I'm not going attempt to discuss that, or, for that matter, the exact actions she took in Iraq that her commanders at Walter Reed felt were so egregious as to warrant criminal prosecution. No matter what happened in Iraq, the things that happened when she returned to Walter Reed very clearly demonstrate some of the problems that the Army is having when it comes to handling mental health issues.
The problem that Lt. Whiteside's case illustrates most clearly involves the attitude that too many career combat arms officers have toward soldiers with mental health issues: they're an excuse, not an illness.
Via today's Daily Kos Cheers and Jeers, I learned about a story in yesterday's Denver Post that details allegations that the Army is deploying troops who should be left at home (I missed Olbermann's take on it last night). According to the article, commanders are deploying soldiers who don't meet basic medical standards. The article focuses on a couple of cases, with one - the case of Master Sgt. Denny Nelson - getting the most attention. Master Sgt Nelson suffered a serious injury to his foot prior to deployment, and was not supposed to run, jump, or lift more than 20 pounds. That's a bit of a problem if he's going to go somewhere he might need to run or jump - like, say, a base that is occasionally subjected to mortar and rocket attacks.
Reading that article, I had the strangest sense of deja vu. It was like I'd read that article before - probably because I almost did. Back in March, a remarkably similar same appeared at Salon.com. In that instance, Master Sgt. Ronald Jenkins, who had a spine injury, was the featured soldier and the unit was the 3rd Brigade of the 3rd Infantry. This time, it's Master Sgt. Nelson, and the 3rd Brigade of the 4th Infantry. Aside from that, the biggest difference between the two stories is the 9 month difference in time. I commented on the Salon story in detail when it came out, and virtually everything I wrote then applies equally well to the current case.
The underlying cause of all of these problems is easy to spot, but very, very worrying:
The. Army. Is. Broken. And. It's. Gonna. Get. Worse.
This is not news, but it bears repeating - if only to stave off the inevitable accusations that it's all the Democrats' fault when the full extent of the problem becomes apparent over the next several years.
The sometime blog of a perennial late bloomer with wide-ranging interests and the attention span of a concussed mayfly.
The opinions expressed here are the authors alone, and do not necessarily reflect those of any of his employers (past, present, or future).
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