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bd popeye

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US Navy conducting massive 2 CSG excersise in the Persian Gulf

CVN-69 & CVN-74 are conducting excersises in the Persain Gulf.

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Carrier Stennis joins Eisenhower for exercises in Persian Gulf
By JACK DORSEY, The Virginian-Pilot
© March 27, 2007 | Last updated 2:12 PM Mar. 27

The carrier John C. Stennis arrived in the Persian Gulf today, joining the Norfolk-based carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower to begin dual-carrier operations, marking the first time their air arms have operated together while deployed with the 5th Fleet, officials said in a news release.

“This exercise demonstrates the importance of both strike groups’ ability to plan and conduct dual task force operations as part of the U.S. longstanding commitment to maintaining maritime security and stability in this region,” the release said.

“Two air wings from the aircraft carriers will conduct air warfare exercises while the surface components will conduct exercises in three general disciplines: anti-submarine, anti-surface and mine warfare.”

The carrier Eisenhower strike group consists of about 6,500 sailors and 50 aircraft. The carrier is accompanied by the guided-missile destroyers Mason and Ramage and guided-missile cruiser Anzio.

They left Norfolk in October for what is expected to be a seven-month tour in support of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Stennis left its homeport of Bremerton, Wash., Jan. 16 for a regularly scheduled deployment and began operating alongside coalition maritime forces in the region Feb. 19, according to the 5th Fleet.

In addition to the Norfolk-based ships accompanying the Eisenhower, another Norfolk-based amphibious group also is in the region.

That includes nearly 3,000 sailors aboard seven ships in the Bataan Expeditionary Strike Group. They left in early January along with about 2,200 Marines from Camp Lejeune, N.C., and New River, N.C.

It consists of the amphibious assault ship Bataan, amphibious transport ship Shreveport, guided missile destroyer Nitze, guided missile cruiser Vella Gulf and the attack submarine Scranton, all based in Norfolk; the dock landing ship Oak Hill, based at the Little Creek Naval Amphibious Base in Virginia Beach; and the guided missile frigate Underwood, based at Mayport, Fla

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U.S. Navy launches huge show of force in Persian Gulf

By JIM KRANE, Associated Press
© March 27, 2007

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — The U.S. Navy today began its largest demonstration of force in the Persian Gulf since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, led by a pair of aircraft carriers, including the Norfolk-based Dwight D. Eisenhower, and backed by warplanes flying simulated attack maneuvers off the coast of Iran.

The maneuvers bring together two strike groups of U.S. warships - attached to the carriers John C. Stennis and Eisenhower - and more than 100 U.S. warplanes to conduct simulated air warfare in the crowded Gulf shipping lanes.

The U.S. exercises come just four days after Iran's capture of 15 British sailors and marines who Iran said had strayed into Iranian waters near the Gulf. Britain and the U.S. Navy have insisted the British sailors were operating in Iraqi waters.

U.S. Navy Cmdr. Kevin Aandahl said the U.S. maneuvers were not organized in response to the capture of the British sailors — nor were they meant to threaten the Islamic Republic, whose navy operates in the same waters.

He declined to specify when the Navy planned the exercises.

Aandahl said the U.S. warships would stay out of Iranian territorial waters, which extend 12 miles off the Iranian coast.

A French naval strike group, led by the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle, was operating simultaneously just outside the Gulf. But the French ships were supporting the NATO forces in Afghanistan and not taking part in the U.S. maneuvers, officials said.

Overall, the exercises involve more than 10,000 U.S. personnel on warships and aircraft making simulated attacks on enemy shipping with aircraft and ships, hunting enemy submarines and finding mines.

"What it should be seen as by Iran or anyone else is that it's for regional stability and security," Aandahl said. "These ships are just another demonstration of that. If there's a destabilizing effect, it's Iran's behavior."
 

bd popeye

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CVN-70 San Diego bound after major re-fit

Not only that but as many as 19 other ships will transfer to San Diego in the next few years.

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Vinson will join Reagan, Nimitz at North Island
By Steve Liewer
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
March 30, 2007

The Pentagon is expected to announce today the transfer of a third aircraft carrier to North Island Naval Air Station, said Navy officials and a noted military analyst.

The Carl Vinson, formerly based in Bremerton, Wash., would move to San Diego in 2009 or early 2010 after it completes its current overhaul in Virginia.

The number of ships stationed at San Diego Naval Base at 32nd Street is expected to increase significantly by the time the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson arrives. It will be based at North Island Naval Air Station.

Loren Thompson, an analyst with the libertarian Lexington Institute in Arlington, Va., said he learned of the pending shift yesterday from a source close to the Navy's top brass. Two Navy officers confirmed the news, but requested anonymity because Pentagon policy forbids them from commenting before an official announcement is made.

The news brought smiles to the faces of local business and political leaders and former military officials. Many of them have spent the past year lobbying for San Diego to get a third carrier and other naval ships.

“I'm not completely surprised, but I'm gratified,” San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders said. “It helps the entire region. It has a huge economic impact.”

Pete Hedley, past president of the San Diego Military Advisory Council, said: “It will be a significant plus for San Diego. Carrier home-porting equates to a Super Bowl, every year.”

The move would again make San Diego a three-carrier town, as it was for much of the Cold War era and from 2001 to early 2005, when the John C. Stennis moved to Bremerton to fill the Vinson's slot.

“North Island is ready for it. They've got the nuclear facilities, and they've got the space,” said John Nyquist of Coronado, a retired vice admiral who served as a flag officer aboard the Vinson in the mid-1980s.

The Vinson's transfer is part of a larger shift of Navy forces from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific to counter possible threats in places such as China and North Korea. The Pentagon formalized that strategy a year ago in its Quadrennial Defense Review, which included plans to bring a carrier and several submarines from the East Coast to the West Coast.

In addition, the Navy wants to consolidate a growing chunk of its Pacific fleet in San Diego.

“This is emblematic of something broader,” Thompson said. “San Diego is one of the two largest concentrations of naval power in the world. When you put the Vinson there, you get economies of scale and efficiencies you don't get elsewhere.”

The other major naval hub is in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia.

Forty warships are stationed at the San Diego Naval Base at 32nd Street, Point Loma Naval Base and North Island. That number will rise considerably by the time the Vinson arrives.

Ten mine-warfare ships are slated to move from Ingleside, Texas, and the first of four new Littoral Combat Ships is scheduled to arrive in San Diego this summer. Three Arleigh Burke-class destroyers and two attack submarines are on the San Diego delivery list within the next year, too.

In largely under-the-radar but fierce campaigning this past year, San Diego business and political leaders have competed with officials from several other cities over the Vinson's future home port.

Some lobbyists touted Guam and Pearl Harbor because those ports are much closer to potential hot spots in the Western Pacific. Pearl Harbor's backers included Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Bremerton's congressman, Democratic Rep. Norm Dicks, argued that the Vinson should return to Puget Sound – which is also home to the carrier Abraham Lincoln, in Everett, Wash. – because its proximity to nuclear maintenance facilities would save money.

But many analysts saw San Diego as the leading candidate all along because of its metropolitan qualities and significant support infrastructure for the Navy. The city and its network of military bases are big enough to absorb what amounts to a new small town of 3,000 to 5,000 people.

“It's the logical place to put the Vinson. The facilities at North Island are comprehensive and modern,” said Bill Cassidy, a Navy official during the Clinton administration and a consultant to local business leaders in recent years.

Julie Meier Wright, chief executive of the San Diego Regional Economic Development Corp., guided the region's efforts through 15 years of a federal process called Base Realignment and Closure. San Diego County's military installations were left largely unscathed amid downsizing in many other parts of the nation.

“We made a very strong case for the strong presence of the Navy in San Diego,” Wright said. “Every round in the BRAC has solidified the role of San Diego for the military in general, and the Navy/Marine Corps in particular.”

In January, the Greater San Diego Chamber of Commerce released a study showing that Pentagon spending supports nearly one in every five jobs from San Ysidro to Oceanside. It estimated the military's annual economic impact at $20 billion – about 65 percent of it from the Navy

Scott Alevy, the chamber's spokesman, said an additional aircraft carrier is worth $2 billion in economic benefits.
“We provide the Navy a warm-water port with easy access” and widespread appreciation for the military, Alevy said. “I think when the Navy sees that sort of environment, that's the kind of place they want their ships to be.”

But in traffic-choked Coronado, next to North Island, not everyone relishes the idea of thousands more sailors driving across the busy San Diego-Coronado Bridge to the base.

Last week, Coronado residents packed a City Council meeting to debate a resolution over whether to support the presence of a third carrier. The council voted unanimously in favor of the Vinson's transfer, but only after Navy officials pledged to help the city find money for to ease congestion.

“The issue in Coronado is always traffic,” said Nyquist, who spoke at the meeting in support of the Vinson shift. “The council feels good about the way the Navy is going to support them.”

Sanders said he would work with Coronado on the traffic issue. He's glad there are still two years to get ready before the Vinson and its crew arrive.

“It'll give us time to plan a big welcome,” he said.

Staff writer Rick Rogers contributed to this report
 

BLUEJACKET

Banned Idiot
Gates says Guantanamo trials lack international credibility

US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday that trials of war on terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba lack international credibility because of the taint of past treatment of detainees.

But Gates said "hard core" detainees who have vowed to attack the United States should never be released and he suggested that the Congress and administration consider passing laws to deal with problem of their long term detention.

"My own view is that because of things that happened earlier at Guantanamo there is a taint about it," Gates said.

He said he had pressed to get trials moved to the United States "because I felt that no matter how transparent, no matter how open the trials, if they took place in Guantanamo in the international community they would lack credibility."

Gates comments in testimony before a House appropriations subcommittee come as the Pentagon is reviving trials of war on terror suspects by special military commissions at Guantanamo.

In the first such case under a new law authorizing the military trials, Australian David Hicks pleaded guilty this week to a charge of material support for terrorism.

Prosecutors have pressed charges against two other detainees at Guantanamo, but they have not been referred to trial yet by the Pentagon official who oversees the commissions.

Gates said he favored the closure of Guantanamo when he became defense secretary in December.

"The reality is there are people at Guantanamo we would like to turn back to their home countries, and their home countries won't take them," he said.

"There are also some number of people at Guantanamo that frankly, based on their own confession, should never be released," he said.

"I don't know if the military prison system provides the capacity to keep them, but I know that there are some people down there who if we release them have made very clear they will come back and attack this country," he said.

Gates said there were less than a 100 "hard core" prisoners among the 385 now being held at Guantanamo.

What to do with them over the long term is "an area where there needs to be some dialogue between the Congress and the administration," he said.

"Is there a way statutorially to address the concerns about some of these people who really need to be incarcerated forever, but doesn't get them involved in a legal system where there is the potential of them being released?" he asked.

"Frankly, I just don't know the answer to that," he said.

Democrats have pressed for action on Guantanamo's future and some have proposed moving detainees to US military prisons in the United States.

"Determining where to lock up these hard-core detainees over the long-term, so as to ensure that they cannot return to the battlefield, is the question," said Representative Ike Skelton (news, bio, voting record).

Skelton, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, also called for a swift Supreme Court review of the new law authorizing the military trials to ensure that future convictions are iron clad.

"The bottom line is that we must prosecute those who are terrorists with the full force of the law, but we must also make sure that the convictions stick," he said. "Certainty of convictions must go hand in hand with tough prosecutions."
Copyright © 2007 Agence France Presse.

Terror suspect 'tortured by US'
A Saudi man held in US custody for five years has told a military hearing he was tortured into confessing a role in the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000.
Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, 41, said he had faced years of torture after his arrest in 2002, a Pentagon transcript from the closed-door hearing said.

Mr Nashiri said he made up stories to satisfy his captors, the transcript said, but gave no details of torture.

He was among 14 "high-value" detainees moved to Guantanamo Bay in September.


One time they tortured me one way, and another time they tortured me in a different way
Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri transcript


The 14 men were previously held in secret CIA prisons but are now being detained in a maximum security wing in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The US has accused Mr Nashiri of being the leader of al-Qaeda's operations in the Gulf at the time of the attack in Yemen, which killed 17 US sailors and almost sunk the warship.

He was tried in absentia in a Yemeni court in September 2004 and sentenced to death.

Interrogators 'happy'

Mr Nashiri's testimony was given at a military tribunal held at Guantanamo to determine his status as an "enemy combatant" on 14 March, AFP news agency reports.

"From the time I was arrested five years ago, they have been torturing me," the transcript of his hearing read.

"It happened during interviews. One time they tortured me one way, and another time they tortured me in a different way.

According to his testimony he eventually "confessed" to playing a key role in the bombing of the USS Cole.

"I just said those things to make the people happy," the transcript read.

"They were very happy when I told them those things."

Among the apparent confessions contained in the transcript, Mr Nashiri told his interrogators that he met al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden several times and received significant amounts of money from him.

Story from BBC NEWS:
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How can that prison operate for long when the new US DefSec. himself is against it?
 

bd popeye

The Last Jedi
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USS Nimitz CVN-68 deploys for the 20th time

Nimitz and it's strike group has deployed . For CVN-68 this is the ships 20th major deployment in it's 32 year history. Awesome. Count em

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Nimitz Carrier Strike Group Deploys to U. S. Central Command
Story Number: NNS070403-03
Release Date: 4/3/2007 2:53:00 PM

From USS Nimitz Public Affairs Office

USS NIMITZ, At Sea (NNS) -- More than 6,000 Sailors and Marines attached to the USS Nimitz (CVN 68) Carrier Strike Group (CSG) deployed from their homeport of San Diego on April 2.

The Nimitz CSG will join the USS John C. Stennis (CVN 74) CSG and relieve the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN 69) CSG, currently operating in the Persian Gulf.

Nimitz’s arrival will continue the current two-carrier presence in the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility, demonstrating the U.S. resolve to build regional security and bring long-term stability to the region.

While deployed, the Nimitz CSG will work closely with allies to support Operation Enduring Freedom, Operation Iraqi Freedom and to conduct Maritime Security Operations (MSO).

“We’re ready to fight the war on terrorism and support troops on the ground in Afghanistan and Iraq,” said Capt. Michael Manazir, Nimitz commanding officer.

This is the fifth deployment for Interior Communications Electrician 1st Class (SW) David Wilson, Nimitz's Combat Systems Department. He knows every deployment can be unpredictable.

“You can’t really say 'this is what’s going to happen,' 'this is what you’re going to experience'; they’re all different,” said Wilson.

This is the Nimitz’s third deployment to the Central Command area of operations in four years. In mid-2005, the Nimitz CSG operated in the supported operations in Iraq and throughout the region. In 2003, the carrier flew combat missions over Iraq and supported combat operations during an eight-month deployment.

The Nimitz CSG, commanded by Rear Adm. Terry Blake, is comprised of Commander, Carrier Strike Group (CCG) 11, Carrier Air Wing (CVW) 11 and Destroyer Squadron (DESRON) 23. It includes the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Nimitz; guided-missile cruiser USS Princeton (CG 59); guided-missile destroyers USS Higgins (DDG 76), USS Chafee (DDG 90), USS John Paul Jones (DDG 53), and USS Pinckney (DDG 91); two detachments from the Helicopter Anti-Submarine Squadron Light (HSL) 49 “Scorpions,” and Explosives Ordnance Disposal Unit 11, Det. 15.
 
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BAE Systems said it has won a multi-ship, multi-option (MSMO) contract to maintain all US Destroyer (DDG-51) Class ships homeported or visiting San Diego.

The five-year contract includes execution planning, drydocking and pierside maintenance, repair and alteration work for seventeen ships, if all options are exercised, said BAE.

Financial details were not disclosed.

BAE said it is now prime contractor on eight Navy MSMO contracts, across its San Diego, Norfolk and Hawaii shipyards, with the new award a follow-on to San Diego's existing Destroyer MSMO contract.

All work will be performed at BAE Systems' San Diego Ship Repair facility and will be completed by 2011, added the firm.

Sounds like a lot of potential work - that on top of the
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that it has won a contract to produce the deck gun for the USN's fourth littoral combat ship.
 

SampanViking

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This is an article published in Harpers Magazine last week by a Ken Silverstein.
I do not know the author or the publication so I cannot put any kind of "health" warning with it.

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“No one with a brain in his or her head thinks that the U.S. Army isn’t now progressively starting to come apart.”

These are the words of retired General Barry McCaffrey, in a memo about his recent trip to Iraq that he sent last week to colleagues at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, where he now teaches. The memo, which Stars and Stripes and Military Times, among others, have written about, says that “readiness ratings” are unraveling for the Army and Marine Corps. “Ground combat equipment is shot in both the active and reserve components. Army active and reserve component recruiting has now encountered serious quality and number problems. In many cases we are forced to use US contractors to substitute for required military functions…Waivers in US Army recruiting standards for: moral turpitude, drug use, medical issues, criminal justice records, and non-high school graduation have gone up significantly. We now are enlisting 42 year old first term soldiers.”

McCaffrey notes that some combat units “are being returned to action…with only 7-12 months of stateside time to re-train and re-equip” and that as many as nine National Guard combat brigades will be called up for an involuntary tour this coming year. “Many believe that this second round of involuntary call-ups will topple the weakened National Guard structure--which is so central to US domestic security,” he writes.

McCaffrey praises General David Petraeus, the new commander of American forces in Iraq, and says that a stable Iraq is still a possible outcome. But he's generally gloomy about the overall situation, saying that the war has left the United States “in a position of strategic peril” and the whole operation “is on the edge of unraveling as the poor Iraqis batter each other to death with our forces caught in the middle.” Meanwhile, even as the U.S. and its allies kill and capture large numbers of enemy combatants, “the armed insurgents, militias, and al-Qaida in Iraq without fail apparently regenerate both leadership cadres and foot soldiers. Their sophistication, numbers, and lethality go up—not down — as they incur these staggering battle losses.”
 

bd popeye

The Last Jedi
VIP Professional
This is an article published in Harpers Magazine last week by a Ken Silverstein.
I do not know the author or the publication so I cannot put any kind of "health" warning with it.

Harpers has been around since 1850. I would say it's pretty crediable.
 

bd popeye

The Last Jedi
VIP Professional
13,000 National Guard troops called for duty in Iraq

Personally, I do not agree with the deployment of National Guard troops in this fashion.

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PAWHUSKA, Okla. - National Guard Staff Sgt. Gabe Robinson knows he will be married only a matter of months before he's likely to redeploy to Iraq, but considers himself lucky he's been home since 2004.

Still, he worries about being injured.

"It's always in your mind," said Robinson, 32, who plans to marry in May. "Anyone who says they don't think about that, they are lying."

The Oklahoma City resident is among the 13,000 National Guard troops in Oklahoma, Indiana, Arkansas and an as-yet unspecified state expected to be notified soon that they could be sent to Iraq around the first of next year, military officials say.

"There's always going to be some apprehension out there," said Capt. Brad Hanna, a chaplain in the Oklahoma National Guard who served in Afghanistan. "We're not in the position of making policy; all we can do is be ready to do what we're called to do."

As the body count increases in Iraq, some governors have begun to voice concerns about the military's heavy use of National Guard troops.

Oklahoma Gov. Brad Henry said the Pentagon is, in effect, reinstating the draft on the backs of National Guard units. Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe said redeploying National Guardsmen from his state would be "stretching our citizen soldiers thin." North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley said he's worried about morale and readiness.

National Guard deployments also can be hard on some small towns.

Pawhuska, a town of 3,500 people 60 miles northwest of Tulsa, will lose a member of its school board in the next National Guard deployment.

Sgt. 1st Class Earl Smith, 53, works full time for the National Guard at a tiny armory that is scheduled for closure under Pentagon downsizing plans. For him, the possibility of a deployment means his plans for military retirement are on hold.

If the orders stand, he will take about two dozen soldiers to Iraq next year on a security mission.

Members of Smith's unit work at car dealerships, construction sites and factories. One is recently unemployed.

This time next year, they could be in a desert half a world away from their home towns, behind the wheel of an armored vehicle or manning a .50-caliber machine gun.

Staff Sgt. Andrew Armstrong, a 36-year-old iron worker who's been in the guard about 16 years, said the not knowing has everybody on edge. But leaving his family and his job for at least a year is part of his duty. "Somebody's gotta do it," he says.

Capt. Chris Rogers, of Cary, N.C., served in Iraq with the 30th Brigade Combat Team in 2004. He says he hasn't given much thought to the possibility of returning.

"I don't really think about it," Rogers said. "I know it's part of the job. If we're called to go back, we'll go back."

Many folks in Pawhuska, as in many small towns, support the troops. But some find themselves questioning the mission and why more of their employees, Little League coaches and leaders are going over there.

"Seems like all we've done is spend a bunch of money and got a bunch of people hurt," said Pawhuska resident Jerry Slinkard.

Leaning on the tailgate of a pickup, Slinkard shoots the breeze with two buddies outside The Greek's, a popular cafe on the main drag of this town.

Between dips of chewing tobacco, they use the word "Vietnam" to describe what's happening over there.

War always takes its toll on a small town, said Bristow native Louis Harding, a veteran of World War II and Korea.

He remembers the major troop deployments in both wars that turned thriving Oklahoma communities into ghost towns seemingly overnight. He knows the same thing could happen again.

"We accepted it, of course," recalls Harding, 81. "We really didn't know what we were getting into."

Associated Press writers Estes Thompson in N.C., Tom Murphy in Indianapolis and Andrew DeMillo in Little Rock, Ark., contributed to this report.
 

BLUEJACKET

Banned Idiot
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Army Is Cracking Down on Deserters
By PAUL von ZIELBAUER
Army prosecutions of desertion and other unauthorized absences have risen sharply in the last four years, resulting in thousands more negative discharges and prison time for both junior soldiers and combat-tested veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Army records show.

The increased prosecutions are meant to serve as a deterrent to a growing number of soldiers who are ambivalent about heading — or heading back — to Iraq and may be looking for a way out, several Army lawyers said in interviews. Using courts-martial for these violations, which before 2002 were treated mostly as unpunished nuisances, is a sign that active-duty forces are being stretched to their limits, military lawyers and mental health experts said.

“They are scraping to get people to go back, and people are worn out,” said Dr. Thomas Grieger, a senior Navy psychiatrist. Though there are no current studies to show how combat stress affects desertion rates, Dr. Grieger cited several examples of soldiers absconding or refusing to return to Iraq because of psychiatric reasons brought on by wartime deployments.

At an Army base in Alaska last year, for example, “there was one guy who literally chopped off his trigger finger with an axe to prevent his deployment,” Dr. Grieger said in an interview.

The Army prosecuted desertion far less often in the late 1990s, when desertions were more frequent, than it does now, when there are comparatively fewer.

From 2002 through 2006, the average annual rate of Army prosecutions of desertion tripled compared with the five-year period from 1997 to 2001, to roughly 6 percent of deserters, from 2 percent, Army data shows.

Between these two five-year spans — one prewar and one during wartime — prosecutions for similar crimes, like absence without leave or failing to appear for unit missions, have more than doubled, to an average of 390 per year from an average of 180 per year, Army data shows.

In total, the Army since 2002 has court-martialed twice as many soldiers for desertion and other unauthorized absences as it did on average each year between 1997 and 2001. Deserters are soldiers who leave a post or fail to show up for an assignment with the intent to stay away. Soldiers considered absent without leave, or AWOL, which presumes they plan to return, are classified as deserters and dropped from a unit’s rolls after 30 days.

Most soldiers who return from unauthorized absences are punished and discharged. Few return to regular duty.

Officers said the crackdown reflected an awareness by top Army and Defense Department officials that desertions, which occurred among more than 1 percent of the active-duty force in 2000 for the first time since the post-Vietnam era, were in a sustained upswing again after ebbing in 2003, the first year of the Iraq war.

At the same time, the increase highlights a cycle long known to Army researchers: as the demand for soldiers increases during a war, desertions rise and the Army tends to lower enlistment standards, recruiting more people with questionable backgrounds who are far more likely to become deserters.

In the 2006 fiscal year, 3,196 soldiers deserted, the Army said, a figure that has been climbing since the 2004 fiscal year, when 2,357 soldiers absconded. In the first quarter of the current fiscal year, which began Oct. 1, 871 soldiers deserted, a rate that, if it stays on pace, would produce 3,484 desertions for the fiscal year, an 8 percent increase over 2006.

The Army said the desertion rate was within historical norms, and that the surge in prosecutions, which are at the discretion of unit commanders, was not a surprise given the impact that absent soldiers can have during wartime.

“The nation is at war, and the Army treats the offense of desertion more seriously,” Maj. Anne D. Edgecomb, an Army spokeswoman, said. “The Army’s leadership will take whatever measures they believe are appropriate if they see a continued upward trend in desertion, in order to maintain the health of the force.”

Army studies and interviews also suggest a link between the rising rate of desertions and the expanding use of moral waivers to recruit people with poor academic records and low-level criminal convictions. At least 1 in 10 deserters surveyed after returning to the Army from 2002 to mid-2004 required a waiver to enter the service, a report by the Army Research Institute found.

“We’re enlisting more dropouts, people with more law violations, lower test scores, more moral issues,” said a senior noncommissioned officer involved in Army personnel and recruiting. “We’re really scraping the bottom of the barrel trying to get people to join.” (Army officials agreed to discuss the issue on the condition that they not be quoted by name.)

The officer said the Army National Guard last week authorized 34 states and Guam to enlist the lowest-ranking group of eligible recruits, those who scored between 16 and 30 on the armed services aptitude test. Federal law bars recruits who scored lower than 16 from enlisting.

Desertions, while a chronic problem for the Army, are nowhere near as common as they were at the height of the Vietnam War. From 1968 to 1971, for instance, about 5 percent of enlisted men deserted.

But the rate of desertion today, after four years of fighting two ground wars, is “being taken much more seriously because we were losing so many soldiers out of the Army that there was a recognized need to attack the problem from a different way,” said an Army criminal defense lawyer.

In interviews, the lawyer and two other Army lawyers each traced the spike in prosecutions to a policy change at the beginning of 2002 that required commanders to welcome back soldiers who deserted or went AWOL.

Before that, most deserters, who are often young, undistinguished soldiers who have fallen out of favor with their sergeants, were given administrative separations and sent home with other-than-honorable discharges.

The new policy, ordered by the secretary of the army, effectively eliminated the incentive among squad sergeants to urge returning AWOL soldiers to stay away for at least 30 days, when they would be classified as deserters under the old rules and dropped from the roll.

But some unit commanders, wary of scrutiny from their superiors, go out of their way to improperly keep deserted soldiers on their rosters, and on the Army’s payroll, two officers said in interviews. To counter that, the Army adopted a new policy in January 2005 requiring commanders to formally report absent soldiers within 48 hours.

Such problems are costly. From October 2000 to February 2002, the Army improperly paid more than $6.6 million to 7,544 soldiers who had deserted or were otherwise absent, according to a July 2006 report by the Government Accountability Office.

Most deserters list dissatisfaction with Army life or family problems as primary reasons for their absence, and most go AWOL in the United States. But since 2003, 109 soldiers have been convicted of going AWOL or deserting war zones in Iraq or Afghanistan, usually during their scheduled two-week leaves in the United States, Army officials said.

With the Iraq war in its fifth year, a new subset of deserter is emerging, military doctors and lawyers said: accomplished soldiers who abscond reluctantly, as a result of severe emotional trauma from their battle experiences.

James, a 26-year-old paratrooper twice deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, went AWOL in July after being reassigned to Fort Bliss, Tex., an Army post in the mountainous high-desert region near El Paso.

“The places I was in in Iraq and Afghanistan look exactly like Fort Bliss,” said James, who agreed to talk about his case on the condition that his last name not be printed. “It starts messing with your head — ‘I’m really back there.’ ”

In December, he and another deserter, Ronnie, 28, who also asked that his last name not be used, tried to surrender to the authorities at Fort Bliss. A staff sergeant told them not to bother, James said.

James and Ronnie, who both have five years of service, suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder and abuse alcohol to self-medicate, said Dr. David M. Walker, a former Air Force psychiatrist who has examined both men.

With help from lawyers, James and Ronnie returned to Fort Bliss on Tuesday. They were charged with desertion and face courts-martial and possibly a few months in a military brig.

“If I could stay in the military, get help, that’s what I want,” said Ronnie, who completed an 18-month combat tour in Kirkuk, Iraq, with the 25th Infantry Division in 2004.

The Army said combat-related stress had not caused many soldiers to desert.

Major Edgecomb, the spokeswoman, said more than 80 percent of the past year’s deserters had been soldiers for less than three years, and could not have been deployed more than once.

Morten G. Ender, a sociologist at the United States Military Academy at West Point, said soldiers’ decisions to go AWOL or desert might come in response to a family crisis — a threat by a spouse to leave if they deploy again, for instance, or a child-custody battle.

“It’s not just that they don’t want to be in a war zone anymore,” Dr. Ender said. “We saw that a lot during Vietnam, and we see that a lot in the military now.”
Another sideeffect of the GWOT!
 
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