Not enough staff for injured soldiers

The House Armed Services Committee acknowledged that the improvements of centers provided for injured soldiers trying to transition back into civilian and military life, but insisted that the Army’s efforts have fallen short, particularly in staffing.

During a visit to Fort Hood, Texas in June 2008, the committee noticed a severe shortage of staff. After the discovery of inadequate care at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, the Army issued the Army Medical Action Plan (AMAP) to improve facilities and services in June 2007.

Since the AMAP began, the number of soldiers in transition has doubled. In June 2007, there were 6,000 soldiers, but a year later, 12,000. As these numbers increase, the care centers are unable to keep up with the AMAP staffing standards. The AMAP ratio of squad leaders to soldiers is one to 12 and nurses to soldiers is one to 18. The shortage of nurses in the centers is a problem, said Lt. Gen. Michael D. Rochelle, Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel. In Fort Hood, the number of nurses required by AMAP is 74, but the committee staff counted 38 on its visit.

Rep. John M. McHugh (R-N.Y.) said the point of the hearing was to address the shortfalls of transition programs and learn from mistakes. Lt. Gen. Robert Wilson, Assistant Chief of Staff for Installation Management, cited the 35 sites under his command where wounded, ill, and injured soldiers are being treated.

Maj. Gen. David Rubenstein, Deputy Surgeon General of the U.S. Army, said that if the staff is overwhelmed with soldiers, the plan is to fall back on civilian companies, which is currently being done.

Soldiers killed in Iraq, but not by guns

Cheryl Harris and Larraine McGee lost their two sons in Iraq, but they were not killed in combat; they were electrocuted because of faulty electrical equipment built and maintained by Kellogg, Brown, and Root (KBR) contractors. Before the Senate Democratic Policy Committee, the mothers told their tragic stories about the reckless and complacent behavior of KBR employees that lead to their sons’ deaths.

Harris’ son, Staff Sgt. Ryan Maseth, was electrocuted while taking a shower in his barracks at the Radwaniyah Complex in Iraq in 2008. McGee’s son, Stagg Sgt. Christopher Everett, died while power-washing a Humvee in Al Taqqadum, Iraq in 2005. 13 soldiers have been electrocuted to death because of KBR contractor incompetence and lack of accountability.

At first, Army officials could not answer Harris when she asked how her son was killed, Harris said. The building’s main circuit panel, the secondary panel, and the water tank were not grounded, Harris said. Shockingly, KBR’s electrician had known about these hazards 11 months before her son was killed. According to Harris, in October 2004, another soldier in Iraq died in almost the exact same way. The Army report about Sgt. Christopher Everett’s death stated that the generator supplying electricity to the power washer was improperly grounded.

Debbie Crawford, former KBR electrician, noted that when she was working in Iraq, basic tools such as electrical tape and wire nuts were sometimes scarce. Many KBR employees supervising the electrical contractors did not have any electrical experience at all. At one point, Crawford noticed a ground wire, which is supposed to protect people from getting electrocuted, being used as a “hot” wire, mentioned it to her foreman, and he told her to “make it work and don’t worry about.” Nobody asked to see her license, checked her job references, or gave her a qualification test when she applied for the job.

Rachel McNeill, former heavy construction equipment operator in Iraq, said that when she first got to Iraq, soldiers in her house had been shocked in the shower. KBR was in charge of maintenance and repairs. In order to fix the water heater, McNeill was supposed to submit a work order, which would take days to go through. But an electrician from another platoon fixed it in half an hour.

Getting to know the Department of Defense (Again)

By Meredith MacKenzie

I was born on Hahn AFB in Germany during the Cold War. I was baptized by an Air Force chaplain. For most of my life my father has been an F-16 Fighter pilot and my mother the most understanding and enduring of military spouses. All of my father’s friends went by names like “Fuzz,” “Mad Dog,” and “Chairman.” I have waited at an airport many times with that “Welcome Home Daddy!” sign. I understand every phrase from military life from “hurry up and wait” to the alphabet soup of TDY and the SOP and I will never forget the ROE my dad made me sign in order to get my learner’s permit.

As an Air Force brat, I thought that I understood America’s military. I mean, I come from a military family, the military helped pay for my education, my favorite college team (after my alma mater, of course) is the Fighting Falcons. But being on the ground, on base, even my own failed attempt to join AFROTC in college, could not have prepared me for getting to know the Department of Defense all over again.

As the TRNS Pentagon correspondent I had the chance over the last week to travel with the Secretary of Defense to Mexico City, Ft. Bliss, Texas, and the largest Army vehicle depot in the country at Texarkana. It was my first time traveling with a government entourage and I want to tell my fellow citizens that there is no better way to travel. I imagine that only the President or the Secretary of State travel in more style than Secretary Gates.

It was the contrast between our great accommodations (which the journalists themselves pay for) and the convenience of riding in a police escorted motorcade and the drab brown surroundings of Ft. Bliss that stuck out to me. I thought I knew what military life was about-- turns out that I know military life in an officer’s family. My family has never had to live on base, my father has never had a 15-month hardship deployment, and he certainly has never had three of them.



The bulk of America’s military are the enlisted men and women who serve in active duty. Only in the insulated rings of the Pentagon do officers outnumber enlisted. It is the enlisted soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines who do the daily work of the military. By and large these are people who have not attended a four-year university. They have families which they began at a young age. They enlist and give control over their lives to an institution. Then they go to Iraq and Afghanistan and then they go back.

There are 34,000 active troops in Afghanistan and 150,000 in Iraq. The new Yankee Stadium could be filled twice with the men and women serving in theater. And this is just one part of the vastness of America’s Defense Department. The sheer size of America’s military/industrial complex is staggering. Considering the $550 billion base operating budget, the 23,000 employee population of the Pentagon and the millions of members of the Army, Air Force, Navy, Marines, Coast Guard, as well as their respective Reserves and National Guards; it is not too much of a stretch to believe, as one colonel told us, that the combined territory of White Sands Missile Range, Yuma Proving Grounds and Ft. Bliss is larger than Rhode Island.

We toured a factory in Texarkana that puts out one Humvee every 24 minutes. We met with a colonel responsible for transitioning over 200 wounded soldiers to their homes or new units a month. We witnessed an enlistment ceremony where 45 young people (and they were young) enlisted and another 30 soldiers reenlisted. This ceremony at Ft. Bliss occurs monthly.

Sure everything is bigger in Texas, but these are just numbers from that one post, there are more than 250 U.S. military installations all over the world. Looking at the enormous scope of the nation’s defense it is no wonder that Sec. Gates, whom the Pentagon staff refer to as simply “the Boss,” is a big picture thinker. As the local press in Texas and a class of sergeant majors at Ft. Bliss discovered, Gates is the wrong man to ask about the details of a soldier’s pension or home loans. Gates simply can’t be expected to know all those details.

Over the past few months, in hearings and press conferences about what Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Mike Mullen has called “stress on the force,” I have felt concern about the long and repeated tours of duty. I have wondered what it does to the psyche of the young men of my high school graduating class. I have read carefully Joseph Stiglitz evaluation of a $3 trillion war. But at Ft. Bliss I met a psychologist who gave me a real idea of the cost of this war.

Dr. John E. Fortunato is the resilience and restoration program director in a prototype program at Ft. Bliss. He works with severe cases of post traumatic stress disorder, all of whom want to return to duty. Through an intensive 35 hours a week in therapy, Dr. Fortunato uses alternative medicine, psycho analysis, and biofeedback techniques to help soldiers become fit for duty. He says that it is his job to heal the wound that does not show and help these soldiers deal with the price of killing.

He told us the story of one soldier who had trouble in therapy. They pushed him and intensified therapy until finally he broke down in tears telling the hardest of his stories. What he said to the therapists, represents the real cost of this war. “No one knows,” he gasped through his tears, “No one know the price, the price you pay when you shoot a man so close his blood splashes back on your flack jacket.”

The money for the war comes from American taxpayers and their children, the decisions about funding are made in the air conditioned rooms of Congress, the war is administrated by top brass and career civil servants like Secretary Gates, the cost is estimated at $12 billion a month. But the price of this war is paid by men and women who enlist and serve in the U.S. military.

Committee hears testimony on Army modernization

The U.S. Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Airland heard testimonies today on Army modernization. Lieutenant General Stephen M. Speakes and Lieutenant General N. Ross Thompson III offered testimony that "focuses on the Army modernization strategy, which is informed both by lessons learned from the wars in Iraq Afghanistan and the Army's operational concept of full-spectrum operations, recently unveiled in the revised Field Manual (FM) 3-0, Operations," reads the testimony.

The witnesses continued to thank the subcommittee and the U.S. Congress for their continued support, but emphasized that funding for modernization programs is the "cornerstone" to their operations.

Testimony on the army budget reveals challenges and future of conflict

The House Armed Services Committee held a hearing on the 2009 Army Budget request. Present were Chairman Ike Skelton (D-MO), ranking member Duncan Hunter (R-CA) and maybe 15 other members. Testifying were Secretary of the Army Pete Geren and Gen. George Casey Chief of Staff for the Army.

In his opening statement Geren said that Army is stretched, but not hollow. He emphasized that this was the most capable fighting force he had seen in his career. Casey and chairman Skelton said that they foresaw a future of prolonged and constant dynamic conflict worldwide.

The big emphasis from the witnesses was to defend the budget and highlight the four priorities of the Armyspending: sustain the troops in theater, prepare for future conflict, reset the balance of the force interms of troop deployment and equipment and transform the nature of the force to meet future challenges.

To prepare and transform the army needs to train for both counterinsurgency and what Casey called "full spectrum" operations. But current deployment rotations do not allow for this kind of training as troops are 15 months out and only 12 months home. Both witnesses said that these need to be evened out to a one to one ratio. They want to increase home time not only for rest and families but also for this strategic training.

Both witnesses repeated that the Army is stressed and that it is unbalanced. Geren said that he was hopeful that the 09 budget would help grow the army because as he said, "we are too small to meet the commitments we have."