The Army investigates itself again and comes up short

[babylonsister]

The Army investigates itself again

Why is the Army sending sick troops back into combat? You won't learn the answer from a new internal report.

By Mark Benjamin


April 23, 2009 | "I would be going basically as a number," Spc. Lincoln Smith told me. "They don't have enough people." That was March 2007. We were sitting on Smith's sofa in his girlfriend's cramped apartment just outside the gates of Fort Benning, Ga.

Smith was slated to go to Iraq the next day as an Army truck driver, though the sleep apnea and narcolepsy that developed after his first Iraq tour were so bad doctors had written "No driving of military vehicles" on his records.

Smith was one of eight soldiers interviewed by Salon that March in Georgia who claimed the Army was sending them to Iraq despite injuries so bad some couldn't wear body armor.

The story caused an uproar. House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton, D-Mo., asked the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, to investigate. Pete Geren, then acting Army secretary, told a Senate panel, "These allegations are serious and any allegations of that sort, I can assure you, we are going to follow up on and investigate.”

It turns out Geren, who is now the Army secretary, did order an investigation -- but not until over a year later. And the investigation he ordered did not address the central allegation made by soldiers, which is that the Army sends sick soldiers back into battle because it is desperate for warm bodies.

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http://www.salon.com/news/primary_sources/2009/04/23/army_medical/