" Pentagon doctors estimate that 12 percent of the 1.5 million veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan suffer from PTSD. Newly revised Defence Department guidelines for service-members with "a psychiatric disorder in remission, or whose residual symptoms do not impair duty performance" say they may be considered for duty downrange. It lists post-traumatic stress disorder as a "treatable" problem.
Many believe President George W. Bush's newly announced plan to send 21,500 additional U.S. soldiers to Iraq will involve the redeployment of soldiers suffering from severe trauma. Press reports indicate Bush wants to implement his "surge" by speeding up previously scheduled redeployments and extending the tours of soldiers already in the field of battle.
That reality has increasing numbers of soldiers taking matters into their own hands.
Between Christmas and New Year's 2006, five U.S. soldiers committed suicide after being informed they'd been ordered to serve an additional tour in Iraq. In Iraq itself, the military announced on Dec. 30 that soldier Michael Crutchfield of Stockton, California killed himself north of the capital, Baghdad.
The day of his death, he e-mailed his foster brother and confidant, Johnny Sotello, to relate his pain to the remnants of his family still living in the area.
"As you know, there are more people waiting for me to pull this trigger than there are waiting on my return to the states," Crutchfield wrote in a portion of the message, quoted by the Stockton Record.
"I'm done hurting. All my life I've been hurting... end this pain," Crutchfield wrote at the end of his two-page message. "
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