Military Still Deploys Medically Unfit Soldiers to Iraq War

June 6, VCS in the News:
Military Still Deploys Medically Unfit Soldiers to Iraq War

Lisa Chedekel and Matthew Kauffman


Hartford Courant (Connecticut)

Jun 05, 2008

Paul Sullivan, executive director of Veterans for Common Sense, said he was frustrated, but not surprised, that the military is not following its own pre-deployment screening rules. "First, it costs money. Second, they don't have the staff to do it," Sullivan said. "The military's out of troops, and the military is broken. ... They've knowingly sent unfit soldiers into combat since the start of the war, and they're still doing it."

GAO Report: Military 'Inconsistent' On Medical Records Reviews

June 5, 2008 - The military is not routinely reviewing the medical records of troops being sent to war despite a policy that calls for such a check before service members are deemed mentally fit to deploy, congressional investigators said in a new report.

In the report, the Government Accountability Office said that although the Department of Defense, or DoD, had taken some "positive steps" to improve the mental-health screening of deploying and returning troops, "unfortunately, DoD's policies for reviewing medical records during the pre-deployment health assessment are inconsistent."

"Because of DoD's inconsistent policies," the investigators said, "providers determining if ... service members meet DoD's minimum mental health standards for deployment may not have complete medical information."

The accountability office reviewed changes approved 18 months ago in the way troops are screened for mental-health status before and after deploying to war.

The defense department in late 2006 adopted a policy, in response to congressional legislation, that tightened pre-deployment screening by setting limits on when troops with mental-health problems may be sent to war and retained in combat.

The legislation was prompted by a series of stories in The Courant that found troops' mental illnesses were being missed or ignored during pre-deployment screenings. Some of those troops committed suicide in Iraq.

The congressional investigators noted that the military's 2006 policy called for a "medical record review" of all deploying troops, but they said health care providers at several military bases they visited "were unaware that [a review] was required as part of the pre-deployment health assessment." Their report recommends that the military abide by the policy and require a record review for all deploying troops.
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http://www.veteransforcommonsense.org/index.cfm/page/article/id/10311