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U.S.
Senator Ken Salazar
Member: Finance, Agriculture, Energy, Ethics and Aging Committees
2300 15th
Street, Suite 450 Denver, CO
80202 | 702 Hart Senate Building, Washington, D.C.
20510
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Sen. Salazar Urges Army Secretary to Build on Fort Carson Homicide Inquiry, Support Combat Stress Pilot Program
DENVER, CO
–Today, in
a letter to Secretary of the Army Secretary Pete Geren, United States
Senator Ken Salazar asked the Army to conduct a broad, service-wide
investigation into recent homicides and violent incidents among soldiers
returning from deployments. The case-by-case, Army-wide inquiry that
Senator Salazar is proposing would build on the task force established
by Major General Mark Graham to examine recent homicides among soldiers
at the Mountain Post.
In addition, Senator Salazar
urges Secretary Geren to immediately implement a pilot program at Fort
Carson that would provide additional combat stress training to soldiers
before deployment.
The full text of the letter
is below. It follows on Senator Salazar’s October
17 letter and Secretary Geren’s recent
response.
December
8, 2008 |
The
Honorable Pete Geren
Secretary of the Army
1600 Pentagon
Washington, DC 20310
Dear Secretary Geren,
Thank you for your actions to date concerning the spate
of tragedies involving soldiers at Fort Carson. I understand that
a multi-disciplinary task force has been initiated by Major General
Graham to look for commonalities between the incidents, and that
the Army Surgeon General will send an Epidemiological Consultation
Team to Fort Carson. I look forward to your preliminary findings
in mid-December.
However, my letter to you dated October 17 asked for
a review of service records of all soldiers who have been involved
in violent crimes since returning from Operation Iraqi Freedom
or Operation Enduring Freedom. This review should not be limited
to Fort Carson. To understand any patterns linking the actions
of a few individual soldiers, the Army should examine similar
cases at installations across the country in a thorough, case-by-case,
service-wide review.
Regarding a pilot program similar to the one proposed
by Section 7 of S.3008, I respectfully disagree with the conclusion
that much of that proposal is already provided by current training
guidelines. As you know, the Army’s current training program,
Battlemind, is built around a slide presentation that aims to
prepare soldiers for the stress of a combat deployment. The pilot
program would complement the Battlemind training by providing
soldiers with a variety of tools and methods to deal with that
stress. While it is impossible to know which individual soldiers
will respond to which types of mental health training, one thing
is clear: the current training being performed by the Army can
be improved and supplemented.
It
is my distinct impression that those military men and women with
direct reporting responsibility for our nation’s soldiers believe
that the Army needs more training to complement those programs
already in place. It is my hope that you will personally review
this pilot program again and deploy it as quickly as possible.
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Sincerely,
Ken Salazar
United States Senator |
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