"Rogue" Soldier Update

[Staff Sergeant Robert] Bales is a highly decorated soldier and trained sniper who had served four tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.

[...]

What precisely happened to the "good, fun guy" – as Bales's neighbours described him – will be the focus of his defence amid suggestions both from officials and his own lawyer, John Henry Browne, that they would suggest that post traumatic stress disorder may have been a contributory factor.

[...]

The picture of Bales that is emerging is a long way from the man who spoke to the Northwest Guardian three years ago after the battle of Zarqa in Iraq, when he insisted that what differentiated soldiers like him from those they were fighting was the ability to distinguish between combatants and civilians. "I've never been more proud to be a part of this unit than that day," Bales said in that article. "We discriminated between the bad guys and the non-combatants, and then afterwards we ended up helping the people who three or four hours before were trying to kill us.

"I think that's the real difference between being an American as opposed to being a bad guy, someone who puts his family in harm's way like that." If there was any hint that Bales was suffering problems, it was not picked up. He had been charged with assault in 2002 and asked to attend an anger management course, while in 2008 he is reported to have fled the scene of a car crash.

And in the end, and by his own criteria, it appears that Bales became one of the bad guys.

  UK Guardian

Wait a minute. “Became” one of the bad guys? Not suffering problems. Assault, anger management class, fled the scene of an accident (or, at least I'm supposing it was an accident). Do those things paint a picture of a “good guy”?  (Not to mention someone who sees himself and his fellow Americans as the good guys "as opposed to being a bad guy.")

I'd think the “hint” of problems would be any of that list of things immediately following the statement that there wasn't any hint of problems. I don't know if it's me or the reporter who's having a disconnect here, but I think it's the reporter.

The killings in Afghanistan have come amid escalating concern over an epidemic of suicides and PTSD among US military veterans of the decade-long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Last Wednesday another Iraq veteran, Abel Gutierrez, killed himself after murdering his 11-year old sister and his mother after police said "he just snapped" having suffered nightmares and periods of aggression since his return to the US.

[...]

[A]ccording to a recent study by the US Armed Forces Health Surveillance Centre in Silver Spring, Maryland, PTSD during a third deployment is double the rate, among male members of the armed forces, than that found after a single combat deployment. While its incidence appears to decline in fourth deployments, that is only because of the significant dropout after three tours of those already diagnosed with problems.

And the drop dead of those whose luck ran out on that fourth deployment.