from The American Prospect:
What Happened to Mental Health Care for Vets?
The debate over the subject of suicide, and the treatment of soldiers and veterans, continues in Washington. Meanwhile, veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are killing themselves at an alarming rate. Tara McKelvey | February 22, 2008 | web only
Andreas-Georg ("Andrew") Pogany was trained at the U.S. Army Intelligence Center in Fort Huachuca, Arizona, to interrogate high-level terrorism suspects in Iraq. But one evening in September 2003 in Samarra, he fell apart. That night, he saw the corpse of an Iraqi man cut in half by a Bradley cannon during a battle. Afterward, Pogany began shaking, barely able to catch his breath. He sat for hours in a dark room in a military compound with his hand on a weapon. If someone opened the door, he was prepared to shoot.
The following day, he told a team sergeant he did not feel strong enough to work. "He took me outside, and he told me I was a fucking coward, and if it was up to him he would shoot me in the head," says Pogany, 36, on a December evening at a restaurant called Racine's in downtown Denver, four years after the incident. Pogany has broad shoulders and grey hair at the temples, and he wears heavy silver rings on both hands. He does not look like someone who is easily thrown off balance. When he talks about his conversation with the military officer, though, he stares into the distance. "He was like General Patton. Short of slapping me with his glove, he did it all," he says.
Pogany was soon facing charges of cowardice, a crime punishable by death in a military court. He told his less-than-supportive military attorney: "Go pound sand." Then he hired a Colorado Springs-based civilian lawyer and showed that he had been suffering from side effects of a military-issued, anti-malarial drug called Lariam while he was in Iraq.
On Nov. 6, 2003, less than six weeks after he experienced his "drug-induced, psychiatric breakdown," as he says, a CNN segment titled "Heroes and Cowards in War" appeared on television. Army Private Jessica Lynch was held up as a hero; Pogany was described as a coward. Yet things have changed over time. In April 2007, Lynch testified before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that the Army exaggerated her role in fighting off Iraqi insurgents, turning her into "little girl Rambo" in order to pump up enthusiasm for the war. Meanwhile, Pogany, though he's far from the battlefield in Iraq, has emerged as a hero. At Army posts and in military communities across the country, he is trying to help save people who have returned from the war with mental and emotional problems. ...........(more)
The complete piece is at:
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=what_happened_to_mental_health_care_for_vets 
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