When Iraq vets bring a violent war home

By ROBERT L. JAMIESON Jr.
P-I COLUMNIST

Costs of the war in Iraq keep hitting home.

Billions fund the beleaguered effort overseas while millions of Americans in the states go without health insurance.

Military families are being wrenched apart when loved ones are deployed for multiple tours of duty, or worse, die in battle.

Some soldiers who do make it home aren't whole. They've lost limbs or parts of their skulls, or they have deep, lasting psychic scars.

Experts say as many as two out of three soldiers have witnessed or survived some kind of explosive trauma.

But now comes this emerging toll: Americans who fall victim to returning soldiers who commit violent acts apparently linked to the lingering effects of war.

On Sunday, The New York Times outlined 121 cases in which war vets either killed or were charged with killing after returning from Iraq or Afghanistan.

"In many of those cases," the report said, "combat trauma and the stress of deployment -- along with alcohol abuse, family discord and other attendant problems -- appear to have set the stage for a tragedy that was part destruction, part self-destruction."

Nine of the stories were from Washington. They include:

Kenneth M. Baginski, a 25-year-old soldier wounded in Iraq, who was recovering from combat injuries in Tacoma. In 2005, a bullet fired from his .357 went through a wall of a house and killed a woman. Baginski pleaded guilty to manslaughter.

Spc. Jamaal A. Lewis, who served with Special Forces in Afghanistan, was convicted for the September 2005 fatal shooting of two people outside a tavern in Lakewood. The prosecutor said at his court-martial that after Lewis returned from his deployment, he told a friend he wanted to shoot someone.

Spc. Brandon Bare was sent home early from Iraq to recuperate from injuries after a grenade attack. He underwent intensive outpatient psychological treatment and told counselors he was having a hard time controlling anger toward his wife.

In July 2005, after Bare saw his wife e-mailing a man, he stabbed her at least 70 times and carved a pentagram on her belly. With her blood, he wrote a message on the refrigerator: "Satan said she deserved it." He was convicted of murder in the Fort Lewis slaying.

We really shouldn't be surprised by any of this.

When you ask people to go to war, you can fully expect that a fraction will be incapable of turning off the killing switch.

This happens when soldiers return from hell.

Some of the soldiers had pre-existing psychological problems, the New York Times found. That ought to make us question how well the military screens who is fit for duty.

The other issue is that soldiers don't get enough help when they return, and that's the fault of a country that is better at sending soldiers to fight than helping them when the fighting is over. Think back to last year's scandal over the substandard care vets were getting at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

In 2005, I attended the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies conference in Toronto. One area of focus was war trauma, and experts from the British military talked about how they broadly screen returning soldiers for post-traumatic stress. The British approach minimizes the chances of any soldier being singled out from his or her unit as a person in need of mental assistance. That helps overcome stigmas.

The U.S. military would do well to use such methods, though even getting soldiers help -- as in Bare's case -- won't prevent all bloodshed.

But that's no excuse for a weak safety net.

To its credit, Congress, with leadership from Sen. Patty Murray, recently passed the Wounded Warriors Act, calling for a plan to diagnose and prevent post-traumatic stress, treat brain injuries and link soldiers with counseling.

It's a good step, but more needs to be done. The greatest casualty for our vets is to be forgotten, and a failure to act will only lead to more stories like Sgt. James Pitts.

Pitts confessed to drowning his wife in Lakewood in the spring of 2004, just weeks after returning from Iraq.

People wondered what could have triggered the slaying, but Pitts' father blamed the battlefield. He told the media, "I thank George Bush for making my son a killing machine. ... All he could talk about was how many people he killed over there. ... He came back a monster."