Study puts spotlight on battlefield ethics

WASHINGTON -- More than one-third of the US soldiers and Marines in Iraq surveyed by the Army said they believe torture should be allowed if it helps gather important information about insurgents, the Pentagon disclosed yesterday.

About four in 10 said they approve of such illegal abuse if it would save the life of a fellow service member.

In addition, about two-thirds of Marines and half the Army troops surveyed said they would not report a team member for mistreating a civilian or for destroying civilian property unnecessarily.

"Less than half of soldiers and Marines believed that noncombatants should be treated with dignity and respect," the Army report stated.

About 10 percent of the 1,767 troops in the official survey -- conducted in Iraq last fall -- reported that they had mistreated civilians in Iraq, such as kicking them or needlessly damaging their possessions.

"They looked under every rock, and what they found was not always easy to look at," S. Ward Casscells, the assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, said of Army researchers who conducted the survey. The report noted that the troops' statements are at odds with the "soldier's rules" promulgated by the Army, which forbid the torture of enemy prisoners and state civilians must be treated humanely.

Major General Gale Pollock, the acting Army surgeon general, cast the report as positive news. "What it speaks to is the leadership that the military is providing, because they're not acting on those thoughts," she said. "They're not torturing the people."

But human rights activists said the report lends support to their view that the abuse of Iraqi civilians by US military personnel was not isolated to some bad apples at Abu Ghraib and a few other detention facilities, but instead was more widespread.

"These are distressing results," said Steven Shapiro, national legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union. "They highlight a failure to adequately train and supervise our soldiers."

The study also found that the more often soldiers are deployed, the longer they are deployed each time, and that the less time they spend at home, the more likely they are to suffer mental health problems such as combat trauma, anxiety, and depression. The results are particularly notable given that the Pentagon has sent soldiers and Marines to Iraq multiple times and recently extended the tours of thousands of soldiers from 12 to 15 months.

The authors of the Army document argued that the strains placed on troops in Iraq are in some ways more severe than those borne by the combat forces of World War II.

"A considerable number of soldiers and Marines are conducting combat operations every day of the week, 10 to 12 hours per day, seven days a week for months on end," wrote Colonel Carl Castro and Major Dennis McGurk, who are both psychologists. "At no time in our military history have Soldiers or Marines been required to serve on the front line in any war for a period of 6 to 7 months."

And although US casualties in Iraq are far lower than in the Vietnam War, for example, military analysts say Iraq can be a more stressful environment. In Vietnam, there were rear areas that were considered safe, but in Iraq there are no truly secure areas outside big bases. "The front in Iraq is any place not on a base camp" or a forward operating base, the report noted.