The U.S. Army is ordering soldiers at Fort Benning classified as "medically unfit to fight" to war in Iraq, Salon reports, asking aloud if it is an "isolated incident or a trend."
"As the military scrambles to pour more soldiers into Iraq," writes Mark Benjamin for Salon, "a unit of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division at Fort Benning, Ga., is deploying troops with serious injuries and other medical problems, including GIs who doctors have said are medically unfit for battle. Some are too injured to wear their body armor, according to medical records."
Benjamin cites recent cases of troops at Fort Benning whose medical profiles were "downgraded ... without even a medical exam, in order to deploy them to Iraq."
In fact, writes Benjamin, some of the affected soldiers he interviewed "are already gone," with others set to fly to Iraq within a week. 3rd Infantry Division officials, according to Benjamin, deny the claims.
One veterans activist expressed his concerns about the moves involving medically unfit troops and thinks that "the possibility that physical profiles may have been altered improperly has the makings of a scandal," writes Benjamin.
"It smacks of an overstretched military that is in crisis mode to get people onto the battlefield," Benjamin quotes the activist.
Excerpts
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Report_Army_ordering_injured_soldiers_to_0312.html
