so...US Gen. Chiarelli Rejects ‘Medicated’ Army Claim

prepare for the unmitigated bullshit-like the one over Agent Orange and Depleted Uranium.


http://www.hmforces.co.uk/news/articles/3490-us-gen-chiarelli-rejects-medicated-army-claim

The Army is not drugging its troops to cope with combat, Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Chiarelli said during an Aug. 8 interview on ABC’s “This Week with Christiane Amanpour.”

Chiarelli, referencing a July Army report showing a sharp increase in Soldier suicides and an increase in serious crimes committed by GIs, said the study’s claim that “data would suggest becoming more dependent on pharmaceuticals to sustain the force” is a concern. The report continues: “In fact, anecdotal information suggests that the force is becoming increasingly dependent on both legal and illegal drugs,” with about one-third of Soldiers on some kind of prescription drug.

Chiarelli acknowledged that more than 106,000 Soldiers were on prescription medication for three weeks or more last year — including antidepressants and anti-anxiety medication. But he said the drugs were authorized by U.S. Central Command’s medical personnel, rejecting Amanpour’s comment that the report “raises the specter of a significant number of people out there, heavily armed, afraid, under fire, IEDs , and drugged.” “But we know,” Chiarelli said, “that the drugs we’re talking about are cleared by CentCom surgeons for Soldiers to be taking when they’re down-range. So we’re not sending any Soldier into harm’s way who is taking any drug that we feel would somehow endanger him or some others.”

http://www.jointogether.org/news/headlines/inthenews/2009/armys-approach-to-drug.html

Army's Approach to Drug Treatment Criticized
January 23, 2009

While more returning U.S. soldiers struggle with addiction to painkillers prescribed by Army doctors to treat their combat injuries, the U.S. Army's approach to treating addicted soldiers is drawing increasing criticism, the Associated Press reported Jan. 21.

In the six years since the start of the war in Iraq, use of legal painkillers like Percocet, Vicodin, and OxyContin by injured troops has increased nearly 70 percent. Surveys reveal that more soldiers are struggling with prescription drug addiction and are seeking help from Army doctors and counselors.


http://www.vawatchdog.org/10/nf10/nfapr10/nf042610-2.htm

-clip-
More than 2 million American military members have served in the nation's ongoing conflicts, and many are returning home deeply troubled by their experiences. About a third suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), traumatic brain injury, depression or other mental illness. At least a fifth struggle with drug or alcohol dependency.

Mental illness and substance abuse are the greatest predictive factors for incarceration in America. And that has put thousands of veterans on a collision course with the nation's criminal justice system.

I call bullshit. I'm curious how much Big Pharma is making on these occupations.

http://www.military-quotes.com/forum/soldiers-say-drug-use-increasing-t29199.html

Stress, repeated tours of duty, and the availability of illicit drugs, alcohol and medications contribute.
By Anne Usher, Cox News Service
WASHINGTON - It was a particularly intense firefight, recalled Ben Schrader, a former cavalry scout in Iraq.
"It lasted all day - bullets whizzing by your ear, seeing people with AKs," the 26-year-old from Denver said. He remembered firing his M-4 rifle at insurgents and watching them drop to the pavement. "It's something you have to live with every day."
In the few hours of rest between 20-hour patrols, he said, his comrades drowned out the combat stress with a variety of substances at their disposal: alcohol, hashish, pills.
"It got so bad that some people were drinking Listerine," Schrader said, adding that he had kept clean. He said others sniffed household products such as Dust-Off, the canned compressed air used to clean computers.
Drug use rising
TV footage of soldiers getting high became an oft-repeated image of the American experience in Vietnam. Drug use in Iraq is not described as being on such a large scale - nor is there the insubordination that marked many drafted soldiers in Vietnam.
But soldiers and veterans groups say drug use is an increasing problem in Iraq, where illicit drugs and alcohol are readily available and prescription medications are generously handed out by medics.
Reliable statistics on soldiers using banned substances are hard to come by. In Afghanistan, just 75 drug cases have been reported - half involving marijuana or hashish and half involving Valium - since the U.S.-led invasion in October 2001, data from a Freedom of Information Act request show. The Pentagon has not answered a separate request for figures on the war in Iraq.
Military officials acknowledge that alcohol and drug abuse is a problem, as it is in American society.
"It's out there, without a doubt," said Army Command Sgt. Maj. Daniel Wood, the senior enlisted man in Afghanistan.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/12/world/americas/12iht-alcohol.4885466.html

In Iraq, American military finds it has an alcohol problem
By Paul von Zielbauer
Published: Monday, March 12, 2007
In May 2004, Specialist Justin Lillis got drunk on what he called "hajji juice," a clear Iraqi moonshine smuggled onto an army base in Balad by civilian contractors. He began taking potshots with his M-16 service rifle.

"He shot up some contractor's rental car," said Phil Cave, a lawyer for Lillis, 24. "He hopped in a Humvee, drove around and shot up some more things. He shot into a housing area" and at soldiers guarding the base entrance.

Six months later, at an army base near Baghdad, after a night of drinking a stash of illegal whiskey and gin, Specialist Chris Rolan of the 3rd Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division, pulled his 9mm service pistol on another soldier and shot him to death.

In March 2005, in one of the most gruesome crimes committed by U.S. troops in Iraq, a group of 101st Airborne Division soldiers in Mahmudiya raped a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and killed her and her family after drinking several cans of locally made whiskey supplied by Iraqi Army soldiers, military prosecutors assert.

Strictly forbidden by the American military in Iraq and Afghanistan, alcohol has been involved in a number of crimes committed by soldiers there. Alcohol- and drug-related charges were involved in more than a third of all army criminal prosecutions of soldiers in the two war zones — 240 of the 665 cases resulting in convictions, according to records obtained by The New York Times through a Freedom of Information Act request. Seventy-three of those 240 cases involved some of the most serious crimes committed there, including murder, rape, armed robbery and assault, records of convictions show.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1811858,00.html

clip


Using drugs to cope with battlefield traumas is not discussed much outside the Army, but inside the service it has been the subject of debate for years. "No magic pill can erase the image of a best friend's shattered body or assuage the guilt from having traded duty with him that day," says Combat Stress Injury, a 2006 medical book edited by Charles Figley and William Nash that details how troops can be helped by such drugs. "Medication can, however, alleviate some debilitating and nearly intolerable symptoms of combat and operational stress injuries" and "help restore personnel to full functioning capacity."

Which means that any drug that keeps a soldier deployed and fighting also saves money on training and deploying replacements. But there is a downside: the number of soldiers requiring long-term mental-health services soars with repeated deployments and lengthy combat tours. If troops do not get sufficient time away from combat — both while in theater and during the "dwell time" at home before they go back to war — it's possible that antidepressants and sleeping aids will be used to stretch an already taut force even tighter. "This is what happens when you try to fight a long war with an army that wasn't designed for a long war," says Lawrence Korb, Pentagon personnel chief during the Reagan Administration.



Read more: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1811858,00.html#ixzz0wDFWKK9s

I mean, when has the military ever lied to us before?

knee torn second deployment-waited 5 months in germany for surgery-drank like a fish,popped pills...and went back 2 more times...you f^cking lying bastard!!

"Troops are a benefit-vets are a cost"