Shootings highlight troops' stress
- Source: Global Times
- [08:02 November 09 2009]
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Thursday's carnage at the US Fort Hood military base, where a Muslim army doctor is said to have killed 13 people in a shooting spree, was a ticking time-bomb that could explode again, observers said.
"There's a lot more of this out there, potentially. Anyone coming back from war with PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) could do the same thing," said Matthis Chiroux, a former US Army sergeant who refused to go to Iraq. "We're talking about nightmares yet unseen here."
About 20 percent of the more than 1.6 million US troops who have fought in Iraq and Afghanistan suffer from PTSD, and the US military has come under fire for failing to give soldiers and their families adequate treatment for the condition.
Major Nidal Malik Hasan, 39, a psychiatrist and specialist in combat stress who was about to be sent to Afghanistan against his wishes, also wounded 30 people in Thursday's rampage at the sprawling Fort Hood Army base in Texas.
Many are asking why Hasan had opened fire on his fellow soldiers, while others questioned why the military hadn't noticed that the psychiatrist was himself in need of help.
Hasan reportedly got a "poor" rating while at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, and Ann Wright, a retired US Army colonel and former diplomat, told AFP that "one of his clients said he thought the psychiatrist was in as bad shape as he was."
"This man was a psychiatrist and was working with other psychiatrists every day, and they failed to notice how deeply disturbed someone right in their midst was," said Selena Coppa, an active-duty soldier who is also an activist for Iraq Veterans Against the War.
