NYT: Army Acts to Curb Abuses of Injured Recruits

Army Acts to Curb Abuses of Injured Recruits
By RALPH BLUMENTHAL
Published: May 12, 2006


Pfc. Mathew Scarano, left, who died, and his mother, Christen.

LAWTON, Okla. — The Army has shaken up a program to heal recruits injured in basic training after soldiers and their parents said troops hurt at Fort Sill were punished with physical abuse and medical neglect.

The program, which treated more than 1,100 injured soldiers last year at five posts, normally returns three-fourths of its patients to active duty, according to Army statistics. But at Fort Sill, recruits said, injuries were often subject to derision, ignored or improperly treated.

Two soldiers in the program have died since 2004, one or possibly both of accidental overdoses of prescription drugs. The latest death, in March, remains under investigation, the Army said.

"I am an inmate," one soldier, Pfc. Mathew Scarano of Eureka, Calif., wrote in a letter home in January two months before he died. "I sometimes ask those friends of mine with jailhouse tattoos if they'd rather be back in jail, or here. So far, they are unanimous — jail."

Commanders acknowledge problems with the Physical Training and Rehabilitation Program, and they have ordered changes here at the Field Artillery Center and at the other training centers. For the first time, as a result of the Fort Sill problems, a medical professional is to head each program....

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/12/us/12training.html?hp&ex=1147406400&en=f5a77975778d7cff&ei=5094&partner=homepage

:kick:

vote it up DU!

What the hell is wrong with these people?! They were basically torturing injured soldiers! Have our entire armed forces been utterly corrupted?

This sickens me... I just don't understand how this can be happening...