Short On Soldiers, Army Returns Injured Service Members To War Zone

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U.S. Sends Wounded Troops Back To Iraq

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo., Jan. 19, 2008

(AP) -- The Denver Post, quoting internal Army e-mails and a Fort Carson soldier, reported that troops had been deployed to Kuwait en route to Iraq while they were still receiving medical treatment for various conditions.

Fort Carson's top general Maj. Gen. Mark Graham said most of the 79 soldiers remain in Iraq, while about a dozen are in Kuwait, the newspaper reported in Friday editions. A few returned to the United States because of inadequate rehabilitation available in theater, Graham said.

Congressional investigators also are reviewing allegations that medically unfit soldiers have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan to shore up lagging troop numbers.

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Col. John Hort, commander of Fort Carson's 3rd Brigade Combat Team, said the 79 soldiers were among 130 who had been judged temporarily unfit for war duty, The Gazette reported.

The 79 were deemed able to perform limited duties such as straightening out paperwork at bases in Kuwait because their conditions, including sleep disorders and broken bones, could be treated by doctors in the Middle East as easily as in Colorado, he said.

Hort needed the troops so he could send other soldiers into the streets of Baghdad's suburbs.

"Those soldiers could perform limited duty that could allow healthy soldiers to perform more strenuous tasks," Hort told The Gazette from Iraq.

GAO investigators have identified other cases of unfit soldiers being deployed from Fort Drum in New York and Fort Stewart and Fort Benning in Georgia, said Brenda Farrell, director of defense capabilities and management investigations for the GAO, a nonpartisan congressional agency that audits federal programs . . .


report: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/01/19/national/main3731718.shtml?source=mostpop_story


"My personal opinion is, is that as the war goes on, you'll see more and more soldiers with (limitations)." -- Maj. Gen. Mark Graham

[thunder rising]

1. And it get's the injured mistreated ignored soldiers out of the US where the rules of engagement

are different. Paperwork shuffle, "So you say you have a medical profile?" "I don't have anything here at all."

[Why Syzygy]

2. Rec'd

Like most results of our pathetic dictator's DECISIONS, this leaves me speechless.

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3. .

[spanone]

4. supporting the troops

will the nightmare ever end?

[tabasco]

5. Where's the freepers?

Sitting on the couch cheerleading war on Iran.