Stress tests

At first I did not pay much attention to the story of the soldier in Camp Liberty, Baghdad, who went on a rampage and shot five of his fellow soldiers. But this Time Magazine story aroused my respectful suspicion. The piece implies, but never states, that street gangs within the military led to the shooting.

That evidence-free assertion didn't sit well with me. The Time story reeked of misdirection.

Now the truth begins to emerge. The shooter was Army Sgt. John Russell of the 54th Engineer Battalion. Officers, concerned that Russell was losing control of himself, had taken away his weapon before bringing him to a Combat Stress Center.

So where did Russell get the gun he used to commit murder? The latest report says that he managed to take a weapon away from the escort leading him away from the Center. He went back to the building and shot two medical officers along with three other soldiers.

Russell's father, speaking to the press, made some interesting revelations not carried by most news accounts:

"John has forfeited his life. Apparently, he said (to his wife), 'My life is over. To hell with it. I'm going to get even with 'em,'" said the elder Russell, 73.

His father said the younger Russell, an electronics technician, was at the stress center to transfer out of active duty. He said his son was undergoing stressful mental tests that he didn't understand were merely tests, "so they broke him."

If you are treating or diagnosing a soldier who may be going off the deep end, do you subject the guy to "stressful mental tests"? Tests that might be mistaken for reality? That doesn't make sense.

Wilburn Russell said his son e-mailed his wife in Germany early this month, telling her officers threatened him during what he called the two worst days of his life.

"His life was over as far as he was concerned," said the elder Russell, who didn't know whether his son was being disciplined or facing a discharge. "He loved the military."

Those two days are key. So why aren't we hearing more about what occurred? Why is there nothing about those "two days" in this New York Times account, or in most other news stories dealing with this incident?

Most of the published accounts I've seen make no mention of this disturbing communication with the wife. See, for example, this WP piece.

Why did officers threaten him? And why are stories like this talking about the stresses of repeated deployments -- stresses that are very real, obviously -- without once mentioning Russell's strange reference to two hellish days?

The NYT does reveal one pertinent detail:

But Mr. Russell said that his son’s job entailed salvaging and rebuilding robots that set off roadside bombs, and that as a consequence he probably saw “a lot of carnage and a lot of things that he shouldn’t have seen, that nobody should’ve seen.”

“It affects you,” Mr. Russell said. “Nobody should have to go three times. They should’ve realized that.”

One cannot read these words without imagining the bodies of children, women, accidental victims. Can it be that America still produces young men who -- despite years of exposure to torture porn and Hit Man-style video games and gore-as-entertainment -- actually retain the ability to feel disgust and remorse?

I don't know what drove Russell over the edge. Right now we can only make guesses, based on such clues as we can gather. We must also hope that the military doesn't try to create a false scenario, as it did in the cases of Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman.

One thing's for sure: We can rule out the 18th Street Gang. And we should ask Time why they tried to sell that story to us.