Killed by the U.S. Army

[BrklynLiberal]

Killed by the U.S. Army

By JoAnn Wypijewski, AlterNet. Posted May 9, 2006.

Private First Class Matthew Scarano, all of 21-years-old, was killed sometime between 9 PM Saturday and 4:45 AM Sunday, March 19, 2006. But he wasn't killed by any insurgent force. He wasn't in Iraq or Afghanistan or even, despite his rank and year-plus of service, active in the United States Army. Matthew Scarano died in his bunk, in the barracks of Bravo Battery 95th, Fort Sill, Oklahoma.

The Army officially lists his cause of death as "still under investigation" but he was as surely a casualty of the War on Iraq as any of the 2,400 US soldiers killed in action. In 2005 he had injured his shoulder during basic training, and on March 1 of that year entered the netherworld of Fort Sill's Physical Training and Rehabilitation Program, or PTRP. It is estimated that 15 percent to 37 percent of men and 38 percent to 67 percent of women sustain at least one injury due to the rigors of basic training. Although Fort Sill's is believed to be the worst, the Army has PTRP units also at Fort Knox, Fort Jackson, Fort Leonard Wood and Fort Benning.

More than a year after he entered PTRP, Scarano was still there, no closer to being healed but still subject to the restrictive rules and routine humiliations associated with basic training, still plagued by what he described in an email of March 7, 2006, as "chronic, piercing and sometimes debilitating pain." The Army considered PFC Scarano a trainee; he and the 39 other soldiers in PTRP at Fort Sill considered themselves prisoners.

<snip>

Shortly before Scarano's death, the inspector general at Fort Sill had been forced to undertake an internal investigation of the program for assault and abuse of soldiers, inadequate medical attention, command irresponsibility and overall incompetence. To that list (which I should note is unofficial) they may now add negligence and wrongful death. As of the end of March, the Army wouldn't comment on its investigation or on what killed Scarano, although I did receive a pro forma response saying the matter was "still under investigation." But in the week prior to his death, his comrades in the PTRP barracks say, Army doctors had doubled the dose of his pain medication, Fentanyl, an analgesic patch 80 times more potent than morphine, whose advertised possible side effects include difficulty breathing, severe weakness and unconsciousness.

<snip>

Before reviewing the most egregious abuses recently visited upon injured recruits at Fort Sill, it is necessary to understand the benchmark for normal at PTRP. As deVarennes neatly puts it, "Imagine basic training that never ends." By the old Army standard, the nine weeks of basic training will "break you down to build you up." Lately there have been some changes in that approach, driven by Army psychologists who reckoned that breaking the spirit accomplishes little beyond creating emotional wrecks or sadists. No longer are new recruits regularly addressed as "ladies" or "shitsacks" or subjected to the "shark attack" of drill sergeants screaming top volume into their ears on the bus the moment they arrive. But the regimen of absolute control and arbitrary rules is unchanged, which is why it is time-limited and why even the most hardened soldier will tell you, "Hell, no, I wouldn't want to do it again".

more.....

http://www.alternet.org/rights/35192/

[0007]

1. They treat the soldiers like shit

[Kailassa]

2. And this is where these men are sent to recover.

If anyone in an Australian jail was treated like this, there'd be an outcry. The way these guys are being treated is a hideously cruel injustice.

Right before the first Family Weekend at the end of January, the drill sergeant ordered the men to clean and wax the floor of their barracks. After they did it once, moving the heavy bunks and wall lockers in and out of the room, he declared the job inadequate and ordered that they get down on their knees with small scrapers and remove every speck of old wax. Out and in went the furniture again. A soldier with a herniated groin dared not slack off in the moving operation lest he and everyone else incur extra abuse for his offense.

One night another drill sergeant, by the name of Bullock, decided to have some fun with the soldiers and give them a taste of sleep deprivation, ordering them to line up in formation outside every hour from 10 PM to 2 AM. After each line-up they could not simply fall on their bunks fully dressed for the next time because he ordered that they present themselves in different apparel. Soldiers on sleep medication were pulled from their beds by their comrades and hustled into line, since if everyone did not appear at formation, everyone would be punished. Drill Sgt. Bullock is apparently still good standing.

<snip>

a soldier who'd been sitting on watch at the mental ward, whom deVarennes nicknamed Pvt. Gopher, committed his own small act of defiance in front of Drill Sgt. Langford and was ordered to "take a knee," meaning to genuflect. As he'd recently had knee surgery, he told Langford that he wasn't able to do that, whereupon the drill sergeant kicked his legs out from under him, sending him to the floor screaming. A first sergeant on the scene ordered the others to turn away, and told them they didn't see anything. Earlier some of them had tried to report abuses to the medical center, to mental health counselors, to highers-up. Now they'd been ordered to shut up, meaning any action they might contemplate would be in violation of a direct order. Almost identical language--"You didn't see shit"--was used at Abu Ghraib, whose abuses the easy cruelty and indifference to suffering at Fort Sill help put into perspective.

<snip>

On April 21, the parent of a soldier at Fort Sill's PTRP wrote deVarennes: "The inadequate health care continues. My son during physical therapy had a 50 lbs weight dropped on his head, ended up luckily with only 8 staples in his scalp. No further tests were done on this and since has been suffering with crippling headaches which drop him to his knees. ... The depression has gotten out of hand as has the verbal and psychological abuse causing it. I have written to all the representatives, congress and the president and not one has responded either verbally or in writing. Obviously the Government has no desire to take care of their own."

http://www.alternet.org/rights/35192/

They only person these recruits have had speaking up for them has been DeVarennes, the mother of one. She has struggled to try to find someone who gives a damn, but even John Kerry's office will not answer her.

Please everyone kick this, it needs to be heard.

[genieroze]

3. This is obscene.

[BrklynLiberal]

4. kicked for more attention. These guys are OUR soldiers!!!!!!