New York Times Special Report: 121 Veterans Of Iraq And Afghanistan Charged With Killing Upon Returning Home

New York Times:

Late one night in the summer of 2005, Matthew Sepi, a 20-year-old Iraq combat veteran, headed out to a 7-Eleven in the seedy Las Vegas neighborhood where he had settled after leaving the Army.

This particular 7-Eleven sits in the shadow of the Stratosphere casino-hotel in a section of town called the Naked City. By day, the area, littered with malt liquor cans, looks depressed but not menacing. By night, it becomes, in the words of a local homicide detective, "like Falluja."

Mr. Sepi did not like to venture outside too late. But, plagued by nightmares about an Iraqi civilian killed by his unit, he often needed alcohol to fall asleep. And so it was that night, when, seized by a gut feeling of lurking danger, he slid a trench coat over his slight frame -- and tucked an assault rifle inside it.

Read the whole story: New York Times

Comments

[Tator]

This bogus story has now been totally debunked. You are safer with the vets than the normal public.

As always the Liberal NYT tries to smear the troops (No Liberals you do not support the troops).

This was a story made up to spoon feed the moonbats. ..and like always they bought it hook line and sinker

SUCKERS!!

[dax49]

i wish i could say that the nyt still had any relevance, but with bill kristol on the pay roll, its like listening to fox. sorry

[rollingdivision]

There are no, zero statistics to support the claim that these numbers of killings (all sorts were included to pump up the numbers) are in any way out of the ordinary for a random population of this size, let alone for the same demographics. If these highly educated researchers had data to support these claims they would be presented. They don't present the data because the data does not exist.

Phillip Carter at Intel Dump sums up the NYT article nicely. "So, basically, the reporters went trolling on Lexis-Nexis and other databases to find "murder" within the same paragraph as "veteran" or "soldier," and built a front-page story around that research. They compared the pre-war numbers to the post-war numbers and found that, voila!, there's a difference. And then it looks like they cherry-picked the best anecdotes out of that research (including the ones where they could get interviews and photos) to craft a narrative which fit the data.

The article makes no attempt to produce a statistically valid comparison of homicide rates among vets to rates among the general population. Nor does it rely at all on Pentagon data about post-deployment incidents of violence among veterans. It basically just generalizes from this small sample (121 out of 1.7 million Iraq and Afghanistan vets, not including civilians and contractors) to conclude that today's generation of veterans are coming home full of rage and ready to kill.

I've got a one-word verdict on this article and its research: bullshit."

[SirReal1]

The "arguments" taking place on this thread are very discouraging and in large part are counterproductive to resolving any problem that MAY exist.

Does anyone here have a belief that this entire issue should be looked at with a degree of factual information, and that we should then develop a plan on how to attempt to resolve the problem based upon those facts?

Some of the assertions, by both sides of the political spectrum, made on this thread, defy logic and rationale in an effort to support their premise. Few, if any, offer any facts.

Is there even a possibility we could agree on at least a "basic list of facts" and thereby at least frame the debate in rationale terms?

My list includes:

Soldiers returning with PTSD, Head Trauma, and disorders from exposure to toxins are a problem that our society needs to provide assistance for.

Comprehensive Medical, Psychological, and Spiritual assessments for EVERY Soldier returning to the U.S. should be done, WITHOUT imposing any preconceived stigma upon the Soldiers.

Assistance, in any of the three areas mentioned above, should be provided to any Veteran of a Foreign War, for the remainder of their lives, upon their request.

Any "reports" of "Numbers of Vets" doing this or that, should be balanced by "realistic comparisons" with numbers within the General (and comparable) population.

These data SHOULD BE collected, reviewed, analyzed, and reported on a regular basis, without bias, and made available to the public, so that a REASONED debate on the issues can take place.

Anything less than the above is just noise for the purpose of obfuscation, diversion, political slant, or to promote controversy.

Individual BELIEFS, unsupported by facts, as a premise to the debate, serve no useful purpose.

[StatueOfLiberal]

Just think about the Blackwater mercenaries who are allowed all the steroids and drugs they can possibly consume.

They spray families with bullets in a "roid rage", then when they come back home, they live next door to you and me.

[samuraijack]

How much of this is due to the armed forces lowering their standards to fill the rolls? think about it. Sticking men and women into this shithole of a war and expecting them to come home "whole" is stupid. We use them and throw them away.

[Chrisa]

America hates its soldiers. Many Americans think that they're just fist pumping 18 year olds who play too many video games. Others just don't care about them and never make sure they get any medical care. 1/3 of the homeless are veterans. Why join the military at all when even your own country hates you?

[MajorKong]

Too many people in this country think that war is really, really cool.

[hglindquist]

I'm sure it has been mentioned before on this thread ... but I would like to take a moment and comment that these murders are only the tip of the huge problem surrounding PTSD in our returning warriors.

Of the many lies and obfuscations foisted on we the people about the Iraq war by the Shrub administration, "We support the troops" is probably the most reprehensible.

[Wrong2bRight]

Jesus look at those statistics.

That means that 1 out of every 661 murders are committed by a soldier. (us average of 18,000 murders annually)

So if you break that down, 1 out of every 210 people in the US are in the military (1.46 million active duty). That means that a solder is 3 times as likely to not commit a murder as a citizen.

[nellie]

Articles like this remind me of just how angry I am about the Iraq occupation. I tend to forget, what with the election and primaries and going to work every day. I don't forget about Iraq. I forget how strong I feel about it. This article has brought me back to center.

And it's about exactly what angers me most. The heartless disregard for lives and families, the careless way our vets have been tossed into a nightmare, the lies that were told to get them there, the disrespect, the shrugging off of Iraqi deaths, the shrugging off of PTSD.

By our leadership.

The public has called for a stop to this. And nothing happens. Is anyone we elected listening? Is anyone we elected as angry as I am?

[Trumbull]

This issue goes beyond PTSD. Soldiers are being dispensed Amphetamine by medics in Iraq. They come home hooked.
http://jtaplin.wordpress.com/2008/01/12/ptsd-or-methamphetamine/

[pennyfortheguy]

If you kill some person for a man (or an ideal), that is but one death.
If you teach a man to kill, he can kill for a lifetime.

This's been proven.
It's worked for fisherman since time memorial.

[robinhood1]

Did we think these unfortunate souls were going to go back to their jobs in investment banking after they had finished defending America for a couple of years? Puleeze! I feel sorry for the 18 year olds who sign up for such adventures, only to come back with serious mental or physical ailments. In a few years, many of them will be the new homeless on the streets of America. Investment banker wanabees don't volunteer for duty in Iraq. They apply to colleges like Harvard and Yale, looking forward to the day when they can pull down their seven figure salaries, get their very own co-op at 740 Park Avenue and a summer home in the Hamptons. Life is still good in America if you are rich.

[robodweeb]

And I went up there, I said, "Shrink, I want to kill. I mean, I wanna, I wanna kill. Kill. I wanna, I wanna see, I wanna see blood and gore and guts and veins in my teeth. Eat dead burnt bodies.

I mean kill, Kill, KILL, KILL." And I started jumpin up and down yelling, "KILL, KILL," and
he started jumpin up and down with me and we was both jumping up and down yelling, "KILL, KILL."

And the sargent came over, pinned a medal on me, sent me down the hall, said, "You're our boy."

- Arlo Guthrie many years ago