"Soldiers with high levels of anger, who had experienced high levels of combat or who screened positive for mental health symptoms were nearly twice as likely to mistreat noncombatants," Major General Gale Pollock, the acting army surgeon general, told reporters at a press conference.
The most common mistreatment reported by soldiers and marines was that of insulting non-combatants in their presence, the report said. The survey showed that 55 per cent of US army soldiers, and only 40 per cent of marines, would report a fellow serviceman for killing or injuring an innocent non-combatant. The survey, which shows increasing rates of mental health problems for troops on extended or multiple deployments in Iraq, was the first to include questions on ethics and ethical training. As such, the report stresses the findings cannot be compared "with any other group of military personnel".
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Comment:
Oh, boy. This is exactly what I've been saying all along. I'd been planing on finding some statistics on the relation between longer/multiple tours of duty and mistreatment of civilians, but I hadn't expected it to be this bad. We simply cannot expect to bring peace to either of these two countries unless we stop making them want to kill us. The full report will be posted in the Documents section.
3 comments:
Scary, isn't it?
Just for being a good journamist/blogger, can we get one other source in this? The RWer's will just ignore this because it's from alJazzera.
An old adage from the hills of America goes "If you threaten my mother or my moonshine still I will rewrite the rules of engagement". Protection of the tribe is not to be put in the hands of the meek.
The original source is on the documents page.
FGO,
The report specifically dealt with incidences unrelated to "protecting the tribe". Hurting someone you know to be an innocent civilian just out of spite does nothing to make America any safer. In fact, the exact opposite happens, since the Iraqis have that adage, too (minus the part about the moonshine).
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