...On June 15, 2003, Sgt. Frank "Greg" Ford, a counterintelligence agent in the California National Guard's 223rd Military Intelligence (M.I.) Battalion stationed in Samarra, Iraq, told his commanding officer, Capt. Victor Artiga, that he had witnessed five incidents of torture and abuse of Iraqi detainees at his base, and requested a formal investigation. Thirty-six hours later, Ford, a 49-year-old with over 30 years of military service in the Coast Guard, Army and Navy, was ordered by U.S. Army medical personnel to lie down on a gurney, was then strapped down, loaded onto a military plane and medevac'd to a military medical center outside the country...
... After Ford raised the torture allegations, Artiga immediately said Ford was "delusional" and ordered a psychiatric examination, according to Ford. But that examination, carried out by an Army psychiatrist, diagnosed him as "completely normal."
A witness, Sgt. 1st Class Michael Marciello, claims that Artiga became enraged when he read the initial medical report finding nothing wrong with Ford and intimidated the psychiatrist into changing it. According to Marciello, Artiga angrily told the psychiatrist that it was a "C.I. [counterintelligence] or M.I. matter" and insisted that she had to change her report and get Ford out of Iraq.
Documents show that all subsequent examinations of Ford by Army mental-health professionals, over many months, confirmed his initial diagnosis as normal...
...Col. C. Tsai, a military doctor who examined Ford in Germany and found nothing wrong with him, told a film crew for Spiegel Television that he was "not surprised" at Ford's diagnosis. Tsai told Spiegel that he had treated "three or four" other U.S. soldiers from Iraq that were also sent to Landstuhl for psychological evaluations or "combat stress counseling" after they reported incidents of detainee abuse or other wrongdoing by American soldiers...
This is a ploy Klinger should have tried. Want out of the Army? Just tell the truth.
In a world gone mad, it's the sane who are strapped to gurneys and pumped with thorazine. You don't think we've lost all touch with reality? Consider this reaction to truth tellers the military can't control;
The Red Cross Finds Detainee Abuse in Guantánamo. They describe it as "psychological and sometimes physical coercion tantamount to torture."
How has the government responded? Feds: Evidence From Torture Is OK.
If you're government property, and dare to speak of war crimes, you're hospitalized. If you're a civilian, you're told abuse and torture of "the enemy" doesn't matter. We've got a war to fight, after all. Welcome to the mad world of Dr. Strangelove.
Strap me down now, get that IV flowing, and fly me the hell out of here, please!
J.
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