Is there something wrong with Joint Base Lewis-McChord?

Is there something wrong with Joint Base Lewis-McChord?

Actually, yes but there is something wrong with the military as a whole. After tracking these reports across the country, there has been something seriously wrong, a multitude of excuses, too many claims of changing and not enough real change that proves they understand any of this. All we've seen are more reports on things going wrong.

One month of "good reports" on military suicides usually has mention of an increase in attempted suicides in the same article. The next month, the "suspected suicides" turns out to be deemed military suicides and then we know the startling truth. After all these years, the military still doesn't get it. They just keep producing the same failed programs, pulling stunts like redeploying men and women clearly in need of help with a bunch of pills. They continue to redeploy men and women over and over again when the Army released a study years ago clearly stating redeployments increased the risk of PTSD by 50% but then scratch their heads wondering why so many need help to heal.

Lewis-McChord has problems but so does the military as a whole. Lewis-McChord just managed to have the most reports coming out about it so far.

Is Lewis-McChord really 'most troubled base in the military'?
BY CHRISTIAN HILL AND ADAM ASHTON
MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS
TACOMA, Wash. — Is there something wrong with Joint Base Lewis-McChord?

The question attracted wide media attention last week after a soldier stationed there for the last decade, 38-year-old Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, 38, allegedly killed 16 Afghan civilians, including nine children, in a March 11 rampage. Reports have surfaced that trauma and stress from multiple combat tours, possibly mixed with alcohol, might have sent the married father of two over the edge.

Some connected the massacre to other problems at the base south of Tacoma, Wash.: a record number of suicides, several investigations into the treatment of soldiers diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, a "kill team" convicted of murdering civilians for sport in Afghanistan and a string of other crimes involving present and past soldiers.

They resurrected a label given by the military newspaper Stars and Stripes in 2010: the "most troubled base in the military."

Gen. David Rodriguez, the head of U.S. Forces Command at Fort Bragg, N.C., called the headlines "unfortunate" and said the entire Army faces challenges sending soldiers on multiple combat deployments.
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Afghan shooting suspect called to duty again and again
By Peter Henderson and Bill Rigby
TACOMA, Washington
Sun Mar 18, 2012
(Reuters) - Robert Bales built a life around a call to arms. A call that emanated from the ashes of the World Trade Center in New York and took him to the mayhem of faraway Iraq and Afghanistan. A call he may have heard one time too many.

The 38-year-old U.S. Army staff sergeant suspected of gunning down 16 Afghan civilians, including nine children, had struggled to make financial ends meet and was disappointed at being sent back into a war zone for a fourth time rather than an easier posting in Germany or Hawaii.

Bales was a high school football star from Ohio who enlisted in the Army after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. He married Karilyn Primeau in 2005 and soon they moved into a four-bedroom house near a clear Seattle lake. The couple had two children, but Bales was absent for three tours in Iraq, where he was commended for valor. His wife, a public relations executive, blogged enthusiastically about their life.

Today, his family has the lake house on the market for less than they paid for it and a second home, with a mortgage larger than its market value, has been abandoned for two years, a red notice from the city warning it is uninhabitable.
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