You · save · yourself · or · you · remain · unsaved. · · ~Alice · Sebold~

More on the crawfish boil later, I promised a friend I'd go to their going away party today so we're going to get ready for that.

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Counseling Was Ordered For Soldier In Shooting

By James Dao and Lizette Alvarez

He was a career Army man who joined up because it was a steady job, but he had fallen into debt paying off a $1,500-a-month mortgage, his father said.
Now, just weeks from finishing his third tour in Iraq, Sgt. John M. Russell was in trouble with his commanding officer, who ordered him to turn in his gun and receive psychological counseling.

On Monday, after a confrontation with the staff at a clinic at Camp Liberty, a sprawling base on the outskirts of Baghdad, Sergeant Russell returned with a weapon, possibly wrestled away from his armed escort, and killed five people, Army officials said. It appeared to be the worst case of soldier-on-soldier violence among American forces in the six-year Iraq war.

Sergeant Russell, 44, of the 54th Engineering Battalion, based in Bamberg, Germany, has been charged with five counts of murder and one count of aggravated assault in the shooting, said Maj. Gen. David Perkins, a spokesman for the military in Iraq.

The dead included an Army officer and a Navy officer on the clinic staff, and three enlisted soldiers who were at the clinic.

On Tuesday, details of the shooting remained unclear, with the Army conducting both a criminal investigation and a review of how Sergeant Russell obtained a weapon. But the multiple strains on Sergeant Russell's life began to emerge in lengthy remarks by his father to a Texas television station.

In the interview, with the station, KXII, Wilburn Russell said his son had recently angered a commanding officer, who had "threatened" him.

When the officer ordered Sergeant Russell to undergo counseling and relinquish his weapon - a major rebuke in the military - he became nervous that the Army was "setting him" up to be discharged, Mr. Russell said.

Having recently built a house in Sherman, Tex., a town of about 37,000 people north of Dallas, Sergeant Russell was deeply anxious that he could lose not only his steady paycheck but also his military pension, his father said.

"If a guy actually goes to the clinic and asks for help, they think of him as a wimp and he's got something wrong with him and try to get rid of him,"
Mr. Russell said. "Well, he didn't go and ask voluntarily for help. They scheduled him in, and they set him up. They drove him out. They wanted to put as much pressure on him as they could to drum him out."

He added: "I think they broke him."

Sergeant Russell joined the Army National Guard in 1988 and the active duty Army in 1994, military records show.

A spokesman for the Army in Washington declined to comment on Mr. Russell's remarks, citing the continuing investigation. But earlier in the day, General Perkins said the Army had handled the case appropriately.

"The tools were all being used," General Perkins said. "They thought that he needed a higher level of care than the unit could provide, so they sent him to the clinic. I mean, you see, all the kind of things that we're taught to do were in place."

The Navy identified its dead officer as Cmdr. Charles Keith Springle, 52, of Wilmington, N.C., a licensed clinical social worker. The Army on Tuesday night had not released the names of the other shooting victims pending notification of their families.

The shooting has renewed debate over the stresses placed on troops that have deployed multiple times to Iraq and Afghanistan. Last year, the Army had about 140 confirmed suicides, a record since the service began tracking the statistic in 1980. Many experts say that repeat deployments to combat zones are a factor behind the higher rate, along with financial and marital problems.

Army studies and surveys show that multiple deployments and long deployments also contribute to higher rates of post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and marital problems.

It is unclear whether Sergeant Russell came under fire in Iraq or witnessed the death of a fellow soldier. Eight soldiers from the 54th Battalion have been killed in Iraq, data compiled by The New York Times show.

But Mr. Russell said that his son's job entailed salvaging and rebuilding robots that set off roadside bombs, and that as a consequence he probably saw "a lot of carnage and a lot of things that he shouldn't have seen, that nobody should've seen."

"It affects you," Mr. Russell said. "Nobody should have to go three times.
They should've realized that."

Still, experts point out that the number of cases of violence against soldiers by fellow soldiers is much lower in the current wars than in the Vietnam War.

Most soldiers in Iraq who visit combat stress control teams go voluntarily.
But some are ordered by their commanding officers to get help or be evaluated after their behavior prompts concern about their mental health, as happened in the case of Sergeant Russell.

"A lot of times when the command would refer it was usually because of problems, the soldier was acting out," said Ronald Parsons, a retired Army lieutenant colonel who served on a combat stress team at Camp Liberty and is now a nurse case manager for Veterans Affairs in Boston.

Camp Liberty is one of four bases that also offers soldiers a place to go when they need more intensive counseling and rest.

These so-called large restoration centers offer service members three hot meals and a cot to sleep in for up to four days to recharge. While they are there, they receive more rigorous care, including individual or group mental health counseling.

Soldiers who visit a clinic or restoration centers are asked to secure their weapons in a rack. Therapists typically have their unloaded weapons with them.

Sergeant Russell was at Camp Liberty's restoration center when the shooting occurred, although it is unclear whether he was in the restoration program or just seeking outpatient services.

It is unusual for a commander to take a soldier's weapon away in Iraq, and it is often prompted by concerns that the soldier said something about the possibility of suicide or harming somebody else.

Mental health specialists can also make the determination to take away a soldier's weapon.

The weapon would be returned only after a behavior health provider re-evaluated the soldier. If a soldier's mental health did not improve, the soldier could be put on medication, hospitalized or, ultimately, evacuated from Iraq.

Dr. Daniel Lonnquist, a clinical psychologist with the Department of Veterans Affairs who deployed twice to Iraq as part of a stress control team, said that if the situation did not improve within two weeks or a month, the soldier was usually shipped out.

"Most commanders would say, at some point, this soldier is not an asset to me," Dr. Lonnquist said.

Camp Liberty, a sprawling installation, has 14 behavioral health specialists, including two psychiatrists, who see about 500 patients a month.

Lt. Col. Edward Brusher, the deputy director of behavioral health proponency for the surgeon general, said in March that there was one provider for 640 service members in Iraq.

"There are currently enough behavioral health providers," Colonel Brusher said.

Alain Delaqueriere, Andrew W. Lehren, Anahad O'Connor and Campbell Robertson contributed reporting.

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I also want all of you to know that I do fight my weight!! Its a constant battle!! I feel like I am perfectly allowed to post something like that because the only way I have stayed somewhat thin (not really thin more like a bit curvy) is that I exercise at LEAST twice a week. So please don't say, "I hope you never have to struggle with something like obesity, bla bla bla" when I struggle with it every day. I know that exercise works because I see it work on a lot of people AND it has worked for me.

The only way to lose weight healthy-ly is diet and exercise. So please don't get angry with me when I get angry at people who want to lose weight by doing NOTHING.

Thank you.

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annoyed