Manning plea statement: Americans had a right to know 'true cost of war'

After admitting guilt in 10 of 22 charges, soldier reveals how he came to share classified documents with WikiLeaks and talks of 'bloodlust' of US helicopter crew

guardian.co.uk, Ed Pilkington at Fort Meade, Maryland, Thursday 28 February 2013

Manning's statement recounted how he had first become aware of WikiLeaks
in 2009. Photograph: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images

Bradley Manning, the solider accused of the biggest unauthorised disclosure of state secrets in US history, has admitted for the first time to being the source of the leak, telling a military court that he passed the information to a whistleblowing website because he believed the American people had a right to know the "true costs of war".

At a pre-trial hearing on a Maryland military base, Manning, 25, who faces spending the rest of his life in military custody, read out a 35-page statement in which he gave an impassioned account of his motives for transmitting classified documents and videos he had obtained while working as an intelligence analyst outside Baghdad.

Sitting at the defence bench in a hushed courtroom, Manning said he was sickened by the apparent "bloodlust" of a helicopter crew involved in an attack on a group in Baghdad that turned out to include Reuters correspondents and children.

He believed the Afghan and Iraq war logs published by the WikiLeaks website, initially in association with a consortium of international media organisations that included the Guardian, were "among the more significant documents of our time revealing the true costs of war". The decision to pass the classified information to a public website was motivated, he told the court, by his depression about the state of military conflict in which the US was mired.

Manning said: "We were obsessed with capturing and killing human targets on lists and ignoring goals and missions. I believed if the public, particularly the American public, could see this it could spark a debate on the military and our foreign policy in general [that] might cause society to reconsider the need to engage in counter-terrorism while ignoring the human situation of the people we engaged with every day."

In a highly unusual move for a defendant in such a serious criminal prosecution, Manning pleaded guilty to 10 lesser charges out of his own volition – not as part of a plea bargain with the prosecution. He admitted to having possessed and willfully communicated to an unauthorised person – probably Julian Assange – all the main elements of the WikiLeaks disclosure.

That covered the so-called "Collateral Murder" video of an Apache helicopter attack in Iraq; some US diplomatic cables including one of the early WikiLeaks publications the Reykjavik cable; portions of the Iraq and Afghanistan war logs; some of the files on detainees in Guantánamo; and two intelligence memos.

The charges to which the soldier pleaded guilty carry a two-year maximum sentence each, committing Manning to a possible upper limit of 20 years in military prison.

But the plea does not avoid a long and complex trial for the soldier, that is currently scheduled to begin on 3 June. Manning pleaded not guilty to 12 counts which relate to the major offences of which he is accused by the US government.

Specifically, he denied he had been involved in "aiding the enemy" – the idea that he knowingly gave help to al-Qaida and caused secret intelligence to be published on the internet, aware that by doing so it would become available to the enemy.

As he read his statement, Manning was flanked by his civilian lawyer, David Coombs, on one side and two military defence lawyers on the other. Wearing full uniform, the soldier read out the document at high speed, occasionally stumbling over the words and at other points laughing at his own comments.

He recounted how he had first become aware of WikiLeaks in 2009. He was particularly impressed by its release in November that year of more than 500,000 text messages sent on the day of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

He had originally copied the war logs as a good housekeeping measure to have quick access to the information. But the more he read into the data, he said, the more he was concerned about what it was uncovering.

He decided to take a copy of the data on a memory stick when he went back from Iraq to the US on leave in January 2010. There, having failed to interest the Washington Post and the New York Times in the stash of information, he turned to WikiLeaks.

On his return to Iraq, he encountered a video that showed an Apache helicopter attack from 2007 in which a group of people in Baghdad came under US fire. The group was later found to have included civilians, children and two Reuters correspondents who died.

Manning said he was "troubled" by the resistance of the military authorities to releasing the video to Reuters, and a claim from on high that it might not still exist. When he looked through the video on a secure military database he was also troubled by the attitude of the aerial weapons team in the Apache – "the bloodlust they seemed to have, they seemed not to value human life".

The soldier related that in the video a man who has been hit by the US forces is seen crawling injured through the dust, at which point one of the helicopter crew is heard wishing the man would pick up a weapon so that they could kill him. "For me that was like a child torturing an ant with a magnifying glass."

After he had uploaded the video to WikiLeaks, which then posted it as the now notorious "Collateral Murder" video, Manning said he was approached by a senior WikiLeaks figure codenamed "Ox". He assumed the individual was probably Julian Assange, and gave him his own codename – Nathaniel Frank – after the author of a book he had recently read.

Of the largest portion of the WikiLeaks disclosures – the 250,000 US diplomatic cables – Manning said he was convinced the documents form embassies around the world would embarrass but not damage the US. "I thought these cables were a prime example of the need for more diplomacy. In many ways they were a collection of cliques and gossip," he said.

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Matthew message (Channelled by Suzanne Ward, Feb 18, 2013)

"... The Rothschild faction of the Illuminati, which governed its empire from London and the Vatican, lost its media foothold along with its other powers in that part of the world. A section of the Illuminati’s Rockefeller faction, headquartered in Washington, DC, and New York City, still has influence on major media in the US as well as on Wall Street; and their lingering foothold in Congress is evident in the intransigence that has stagnated progress. ..."

EU reaches deal to cap banker bonuses

Yahoo - AFP News, 28 February 2013

The European Union flag flies in front of the European Parliament on

October 12, 2012 in Strasbourg.

The European Union has reached a deal to cap bankers' bonuses, which critics say played a major role in driving the financial crisis, officials said on Thursday.

The deal was struck early on Thursday, with the European Parliament and the EU's current Irish presidency agreeing on how to implement new rules for the banking sector.

"For the first time in the history of EU financial market regulation, we will cap bankers' bonuses," said MEP Othmar Karas, the negotiator for the parliament.

The new regulatory framework is known as Basel III, an internationally-agreed set of rules which tighten up bank capital requirements.

The negotiations on Basel III implementation in the EU have dragged on for some 10 months, in part because of the European Parliament's desire to peg back banker bonuses which critics blame for helping drive the speculative approach in the lead-up to the 2008 global financial crisis.

Basel III was supposed to have been implemented from January this year but the timetable has slipped, with the United States announcing in November that it too would not make the deadline.

The accord reached overnight will now go forward to EU finance ministers when they meet next week in Brussels.

Kras said the provisions on banker bonuses were "not the most important part of the new rules," the key point being the new capital regulations for the banks.

"The essence is that from 2014, European banks will have to set aside more money to be more stable and concentrate on their core business, namely financing the real economy, that of small- and medium-sized enterprises and jobs."

Basel III notably requires the banks to build up their capital buffers and reserves so that they will be better able to withstand any new crisis.

Full details of the EU accord will be released at a press conference in the European Parliament later on Thursday.

British Prime Minister David Cameron said Thursday he would "look carefully" at the proposed new regulations while defending the UK's position as an international financial centre.

Speaking in Riga after talks with Latvian Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis, Cameron told journalists: "On the negotiations in Brussels on banking regulation...we will look carefully at the outcome of the negotiations last night.

"We are absolutely clear that we must be able to implement the Vickers Plan in the UK which in some ways is tougher than regulations which have been put in place in other European countries. We want to have a proper ring fence between retail banks and investment banks and the rules must allow that to happen."

The Vickers plan is a set of domestic proposals designed to reform the UK banking sector.

Cameron signalled that he would not allow new regulations from Brussels to impact the leading role of the City of London in global marketplaces.

US army forced to release WikiLeaks case documents

The Daily Star, AFP, February 28, 2013

FILE - This Aug. 19, 2012 file photo shows WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange
 making a statement to the media and supporters at a window of Ecuadorian
Embassy in central London.(AP Photo/Sang Tan, File)

                            

FORT Meade, Maryland: The US Army published dozens of documents online Wednesday in the case of WikiLeaks suspect Bradley Manning, after media outlets and other groups had criticized a lack of transparency.

The move came in response to multiple Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests related to the case against Manning, who stands accused of passing a trove of secret files to Julian Assange's anti-secrecy WikiLeaks website.

Among the organizations that demanded access to the pre-trial documents were The Washington Post, CNN and the Center for Constitutional Rights, which all said they had been prevented from informing the public about the case.

Such documents have been sealed based on requests either by the prosecution or defense lawyers in the case against Manning, which is being heard in a military court at Fort Meade, Maryland, north of the US capital Washington.

In federal civilian court, similar types of documents are nearly always made public.

Even in the military commissions at the Guantanamo detention facility, where pre-trial hearings in the case against the 9/11 plotters are being heard, military lawyers have made such documents available.

On Wednesday, 84 court orders and rulings were released in the Manning case, including a partial transcription of a deposition made by Manning.

The 25-year-old Army private faces a slew of charges, including "aiding the enemy," for allegedly leaking hundreds of thousands of sensitive US military and diplomatic documents to WikiLeaks.

He was arrested in May 2010 while serving as an intelligence analyst near Baghdad and subsequently charged over the largest leak of restricted documents in American history. The trial is expected to begin in June.

"Due to the voluminous nature of these documents, it will take additional time to review, redact, and release all of the responsive documents," the Army said in a statement, adding that 500 documents have been released thus far.

During Wednesday's hearing at Fort Meade, Judge Denise Lind dealt the defense a blow when she rejected their claim that the documents allegedly leaked by Manning were incorrectly marked top secret.

"Evidence of overclassification is not relevant," she said.

The proceedings at Fort Meade are shown to reporters via closed circuit television with a slight delay, so the transmission can be cut if sensitive matters are discussed.

Prosecutors had asked that hearings be closed when classified information is to be discussed.

Prosecutor Ashden Fein said that of 141 possible witnesses, "some form of classification" should be used for testimony from 73 of them, though "not necessarily all their testimony."

Manning is expected to offer a revised plea proposal Thursday.

The most serious of the 22 charges against him, "aiding the enemy," carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment, but Manning's team is trying to have that charge dropped.

The 2013 State of the Union Address (Enhanced Version)

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Archangel Michael via Ron Head: It is Truly a Time to be Joyous – 21 January 2013

“We begin today’s message by congratulating the President of the United States on celebrating his inauguration, which will begin within minutes now. It is truly a time to be joyous. I, Michael, am most pleased to extend congratulations from the entire company for I speak. We understand the very difficult position which he has been in, and know that his path will become increasingly clearer as we progress from this point. We urge all to support him in love and light.“  Read More

Obama hugs Michelle, and makes Facebook history

Matthew message (Channelled by Suzanne Ward, Mar 11, 2013) - New

"... We shall give you an example. We and many other messengers in the light have told you the truth about Barack Obama, a highly evolved soul from a civilization far advanced in spirituality, intelligence and ancient wisdom. The highest universal council asked him to leave his homeland and accept the mission of leading the United States and your world into an era of peace, prosperity and unity.

We have explained that his mission, which transcends politics worldwide, is a provision of the Golden Age master plan that is aligned with Gaia’s vision of Earth’s residents living in harmony with each other and with Nature. Then   Gaia’s planetary body and all of its life forms will be in balance, wherein all is light. We have asked you to send light to President Obama because it will hasten the day when that balance is attained.

Also we have mentioned in previous messages that the tenacity of the dark ones caused about a ten-year delay in your progress as a society. The delay didn’t deter Earth’s ascension one whit—her timing was predestined—but it severely curtailed Obama’s ability to carry out his mission because powerful individuals within the Illuminati still had the power to derail, distort or detour his efforts.

A large part of their effectiveness has come from people whose third density perceptions have been sending forth the energy of “anti-Obama” thoughts and feelings. That energy has been refueling the dark ones and enabling them to keep a strong chokehold on the president’s endeavors to move your world toward Gaia’s vision.

It is natural to question why that would include killing, and many feel that Obama’s approval of using drones shows that he is not of the light. That perspective omits this essential element: The drones’ purpose is to kill as few persons as possible while ending warfare as quickly as possible.. ..."

Thousands protest financial hardships in Spain

Deutsche Welle, 23 February 2013

Spaniards infuriated by the hardship of the country's financial crisis, as well as corruption scandals, took to the streets across the country. Protest organizers said Spain has been subjected to a "financial coup."

Thousands took to the streets on Saturday to protest the hardships and corruption scandals associated with the financial crisis, forming a "citizens' tide" of protests.

In the Spanish capital, Madrid, thousands answered the call of a group of civil movements, demonstrating against the spending cuts and tax hikes imposed by Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's government in an attempt to reduce the deficit.

"We have come because of it all - unemployment, corrupt politicians, the young people who have no future - it's a combination of everything," Luis Mora, 55, a construction worker, told the AFP news agency.

Tackling the 'coup'

The action was planned to coincide with the anniversary of an attempted coup on February 23, 1981, in which right-wing officers tried to crush Spain's young democracy and restore military rule.

Saturday's organizers issued a manifesto saying their demonstrations targeted the "coup of the financial markets" they blame for the collapse of the housing market and the resulting financial crisis.

The cuts have targeted the public sector, and the protestors would prefer to see solutions that don't "give away" the Spanish welfare state.

The recession itself has caused numerous company shutdowns, putting millions out of work. The Spanish unemployment rate is above 26 percent.

Other side of coin

Rajoy defended his government's cuts in a national address on Wednesday.

"We have left behind us the constant threat of imminent disaster and we are starting to see the path for the future," he said.

Saturday's "citizens' tide" is the latest in a series of weekly demonstrations targeting Rajoy's austerity measures.

tm/rc (AFP, AP)

Obama asks Supreme Court to scrap gay marriage ban

Google – AFP, Tangi Quemener (AFP), 23 February 2013 

Zoe Smith and Sunni Ryan at an event during the North Carolina primary on

May 14, 2012 in Raleigh, North Carolina (Getty Images/AFP/File, Sara D. Davis)

WASHINGTON — The Barack Obama administration took another step toward institutionalizing gay marriage, formally asking the US Supreme Court to strike down a 1996 law defining marriage exclusively as a union between a man and a woman.

The request was contained in a legal brief filed Friday with the US court, whose nine justices will next month review whether or not to repeal the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which bans marriage between homosexuals.

The document marks the first time a president has endorsed same-sex marriage rights before the Supreme Court.

Richard Blanco reads a poem during the

 presidential inauguration ceremony in

 Washington, DC on January 21, 2013

(AFP/File, Jewel Samad)

According to the filing, the Defense of Marriage Act "violates the fundamental constitutional guarantee of equal protection" before the law stipulated by the US Constitution.

DOMA "denies to tens of thousands of same-sex couples who are legally married under state law an array of important federal benefits that are available to legally married opposite-sex couples," read the brief signed by US Solicitor General Donald Verrilli.

The case before the Supreme Court involves Edith Windsor, a lesbian who married in Canada in 2007 but whose spouse and partner of 40 years died. She was required to pay more than $360,000 in federal estate taxes because she was not considered married under DOMA.

The White House position, however, came under fire from Republicans in the House of Representatives.

In a brief filed Friday, they insisted they have a legal right to defend the law in the Supreme Court in the absence of a defense from the executive branch.

Last month, 10 US senators urged the court to uphold the act and not to recognize same-sex marriages from other states.

Michelle Obama at an event co-hosted by

 the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund on

September 5,  2012 in North Carolina
(AFP, Brendan Smialowski)

All of these senators had voted for the Defense of Marriage Act and in a friend-of-the-court brief, they said it was inconsistent for the Justice Department to have assured Congress the law was constitutional while it was being crafted in the mid-1990s only to raise questions now.

"The time to speak was in 1996, when Congress gave careful consideration to the need for DOMA," they argued.

The Obama administration's decision to challenge the law comes as little surprise. Obama has signaled on various occasions recently that he is that he is in favor of gay marriage.

During his second inaugural address last month, the president drew parallels between the struggle for gay rights and the Civil Rights movement of past decades.

"Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law, for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well," Obama said.

He also drew a parallel between several watershed struggles in US history: the landmark Seneca Falls convention in 1848; the 1960s civil rights battles; and the Stonewall riots of June 1969, which are widely seen as having launched the gay rights movement.

Obama's also chose gay poet Richard Blanco to read a specially composed poem at his second inauguration.

Rinaldo Americo impersonates Barack

Obama in  the Gay Parade on Rio de
Janeiro's Copacabana  Beach on October
9, 2011 (AFP/File, Vanderlei Almeida)

Already during his first term in 2011, Obama abolished the Pentagon's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy requiring military recruits to hide their homosexuality, or risk being expelled from the service.

In 2012, he became the first sitting US president to speak out in favor of gay marriage.

This past week, the Pentagon officially extended some military benefits to same-sex partners, but said services like medical coverage would not be offered to gay troops' spouses because of DOMA.

"One of the legal limitations to providing all benefits at this time is the Defense of Marriage Act, which is still the law of the land," Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said.

About 17,000 same-sex couples in the armed forces were affected by the decision, including 5,600 active duty service members.

The effect of the DOMA law is to ban gay marriage at the federal level. After victories in several local referendums however, it is now legal in nine out of 50 US states and in Washington DC.

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Multi-Billion Dollar F-35 Fleet Grounded

ABC News, Lee Ferran, Luis Martinez, Feb 22, 2013

The military has grounded its entire fleet of F-35 stealth fighters, the most expensive weapons program in history, after finding a crack in one of the multi-million-dollar plane’s engines.

The grounding comes just days after the Marine Corps gave its variation of the fighter the green light to fly again after its own month-long grounding for an unrelated problem.

The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program office released a statement today saying a routine engine inspection on Feb. 19 “revealed a crack on a low-pressure turbine blade of an F-35 engine” and the office took the “precautionary measure” of suspending all F-35 flight operations.

“The F-35 Joint Program Office is working closely with [engine maker] Pratt & Whitney and [primary plane manufacturer] Lockheed Martin at all F-35 locations to ensure the integrity of the engine, and to return the fleet safely to flight as soon as possible.”

The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, which has a baseline price tag of over a third of $1 trillion as of last March, represents America’s costly foray into fifth-generation stealth fighters along with the troubled $79 billion F-22Raptor.

The plane comes in three variants: an Air Force version with standard takeoff and landing capabilities, a Navy version designed to take off and land from aircraft carriers and the Marine version, which is designed to land vertically like Britain’s famous Harrier jet. The military currently has 58 planes total, but plans to purchase more than 2,400 more in order to replace the aging F-16 and F-18 legacy fighters.

The F-35 program has suffered a long history of delays and cost overruns, which officials said is partially because it is one of the most complex weapons systems in history and because it was put into production far too early – before major issues could be found.

This time last year Frank Kendall, then the Pentagon’s Acting Undersecretary for Defense Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, said that the government’s plan to field the plane was so reckless it amounted to “acquisition malpractice.”

The engine itself has not been without controversy as well. For months General Electric teamed up with Rolls Royce to provide the military with an engine to compete with Pratt & Whitney, even though the military repeatedly said a second engine was not necessary. The alternate engine was partially funded by the U.S. government to the tune of $3 billion before it was called off in December 2011.

Despite its well-documented problems, the F-35 is seen by top military and government officials as the backbone of America’s future air power. The F-35 Program Office said it is currently investigating the cause of the engine crack.

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"Recalibration of Free Choice"–  Mar 3, 2012 (Kryon Channelling by Lee Caroll) - (Subjects: (Old) Souls, Midpoint on 21-12-2012, Shift of Human Consciousness, Black & White vs. Color, 1 - Spirituality (Religions) shifting, Loose a Pope “soon”, 2 - Humans will change react to drama, 3 - Civilizations/Population on Earth,  4 - Alternate energy sources (Geothermal, Tidal (Paddle wheels), Wind), 5 – Financials Institutes/concepts will change (Integrity – Ethical) , 6 - News/Media/TV to change, 7 – Big Pharmaceutical company will collapse “soon”, (Keep people sick), (Integrity – Ethical)  8 – Wars will be over on Earth, Global Unity, … etc.) - (Text version) 

“…  8 - The End of War

The last one is the best. For thousands of years on this planet, Human Beings have warred with each other. If you take a look at the reasons they warred with each other, you will quickly see there aren't any good ones - land, resources, greed. Those are not reasons. That is a description of old energy. Those are not reasons. Reasons would be perhaps defense against an aggressor. But what if there is no longer the consciousness of the aggressor?

When I appeared in my partner's life more than 20 years ago, I said to him privately that the first messages we're going to give will be unbelievable. There would be laughter. We told him that Human nature and consciousness itself would change, and that the seeds of peace would be planted and there would come a time where there is no more war. Indeed, the laughter was great because humans look at history and they see patterns based on an absolute energy called Human Nature. "Impossible! There always has to be war. There always has been. Therefore, there always will be." This is you, in a box, in a black and white potential, where you can only see the black and white of what is and the black and white of what has been. You have no idea the shades of color that are there in your consciousness and the beauty of the love of God

North Korea is on the edge of change, as we told you it might be. What did this require? The death of the old energy, and I want you to watch this take place. The advisors of the young leader are going to do their best to pull him back into an old energy. This free choice of his will be far different than his father, for he sees some color. Watch for these things. They'll take longer than you want, but it is the beginning of the beginning.….”

'I'm a monster': US veterans feel 'alone' in guilt

The Daily Star, AP, Pauline Jelinek, Feb. 22, 2013

In this Oct. 16, 2011, photo, former Marine Capt. Timothy Kudo sits outside
 his apartment in the Brooklyn borough of New York. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

                              

WASHINGTON: A veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, former U.S. Marine Capt. Timothy Kudo thinks of himself as a killer - and he carries the guilt every day.

"I can't forgive myself," he says. "And the people who can forgive me are dead."

With American troops at war for more than a decade, there's been an unprecedented number of studies into war zone psychology and an evolving understanding of post-traumatic stress disorder. Clinicians suspect some troops are suffering from what they call "moral injuries" - wounds from having done something, or failed to stop something, that violates their moral code.

Though there may be some overlap in symptoms, moral injuries aren't what most people think of as PTSD, the nightmares and flashbacks of terrifying, life-threatening combat events. A moral injury tortures the conscience; symptoms include deep shame, guilt and rage. It's not a medical problem, and it's unclear how to treat it, says retired Col. Elspeth Ritchie, former psychiatry consultant to the Army surgeon general.

"The concept ... is more an existentialist one," she says.

The Marines, who prefer to call moral injuries "inner conflict," started a few years ago teaching unit leaders to identify the problem. And the Defense Department has approved funding for a study among Marines at California's Camp Pendleton to test a therapy that doctors hope will ease guilt.

But a solution could be a long time off.

"PTSD is a complex issue," says Navy Cmdr. Leslie Hull-Ryde, a Pentagon spokeswoman.

Killing in war is the issue for some troops who believe they have a moral injury, but Ritchie says it also can come from a range of experiences, such as guarding prisoners or watching Iraqis kill Iraqis as they did during the sectarian violence in 2006-07.

"You may not have actually done something wrong by the law of war, but by your own humanity you feel that it's wrong," says Ritchie, now chief clinical officer at the District of Columbia's Department of Mental Health.

Kudo's remorse stems in part from the 2010 accidental killing of two Afghan teenagers on a motorcycle. His unit was fighting insurgents when the pair approached from a distance and appeared to be shooting as well.

Kudo says what Marines mistook for guns were actually "sticks and bindles, like you'd seen in old cartoons with hobos." What Marines thought were muzzle flashes were likely glints of light bouncing off the motorcycle's chrome.

"There's no day - whether it's in the shower or whether it's walking down the street ... that I don't think about things that happened over there," says Kudo, now a graduate student at New York University.

"Human beings aren't just turn-on, turn-off switches," Veterans of Foreign Wars spokesman Joe Davis says, noting that moral injury is just a different name for a familiar military problem. "You're raised 'Thou shalt not kill,' but you do it for self-preservation or for your buddies."

Kudo never personally shot anyone. But he feels responsible for the deaths of the teens on the motorcycle. Like other officers who've spoken about moral injuries, he also feels responsible for deaths that resulted from orders he gave in other missions.

The hardest part, Kudo says, is that "nobody talks about it."

As executive officer of a Marine company, Kudo also felt inadequate when he had to comfort a subordinate grieving over the death of another Marine.

Dr. Brett Litz, a clinical psychologist with the Department of Veterans Affairs in Boston, sees moral injury, the loss of comrades and the terror associated with PTSD as a "three-legged stool" of troop suffering. Though there's little data on moral injury, he says a study asked soldiers seeking counseling for PTSD in Texas what their main problem was; it broke down to "roughly a third, a third and a third" among those with fear, those with loss issues and those with moral injury.

The raw number of people who have moral injuries also isn't known. It's not an official diagnosis for purposes of getting veteran benefits, though it's believed by some doctors that many vets with moral injuries are getting care on a diagnosis of PTSD - care that wouldn't specifically fit their problem.

Like PTSD, which could affect an estimated 20 percent of troops who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, moral injury is not experienced by all troops.

"It's in the eye of the beholder," says retired Navy Capt. William Nash, a psychiatrist who headed Marine Corps combat stress programs and has partnered with Litz on research. The vast majority of ground combat fighters may be able to pull the trigger without feeling they did something wrong, he says.

As the military has focused on fear-based PTSD, it hasn't paid enough attention to loss and moral injury, Litz and others believe. And that has hampered the development of strategies to help troops with those other problems and train them to avoid the problems in the first place, he says.

Lumping people into the PTSD category "renders soldiers automatically into mental patients instead of wounded souls," writes Iraq vet Tyler Boudreau, a former Marine captain and assistant operations officer to an infantry battalion.

Boudreau resigned his commission after having questions of conscience. He wrote in the Massachusetts Review, a literary magazine, that being diagnosed with PTSD doesn't account for nontraumatic events that are morally troubling: "It's far too easy for people at home, particularly those not directly affected by war ... to shed a disingenuous tear for the veterans, donate a few bucks and whisk them off to the closest shrink ... out of sight and out of mind" and leaving "no incentive in the community or in the household to engage them."

So what should be done?

"I don't think we know," Ritchie says.

Troops who express ethical or spiritual problems have long been told to see the chaplain. Chaplains see troops struggling with moral injury "at the micro level, down in the trenches," says Lt. Col. Jeffrey L. Voyles, licensed counselor and supervisor at the Army chaplain training program in Fort Benning, Georgia. A soldier wrestling with the right or wrong of a particular war zone event might ask: "Do I need to confess this?" Or, Voyles says, a soldier will say he's "gone past the point of being redeemed, (the point where) God could forgive him" - and he uses language like this:

"I'm a monster."

"I let somebody down."

"I didn't do as much as I could do."

Nash says the Marines are using "psychological first aid techniques" to help service members deal with moral injury, loss and other traumatic events. But it's a young program, not uniformly implemented and just now undergoing outside evaluation for its effectiveness, he says.

At Camp Pendleton, the therapy trial will be tailored to each Marine's war experiences; troops with fear-based problems might use a standard PTSD approach; those with moral injury may have an imaginary conversation with the lost person.

Forgiveness, more than anything, is key to helping troops who feel they have transgressed, Nash says.

But the issue is so much more complicated that wholesale solutions across the military, if there are any, will likely be some time coming.

Many in the armed forces view PTSD as weakness. Similarly, they feel the term "moral injury" is insulting, implying an ethical failing in a force whose motto stresses honor, duty and country.

At the same time, lawyers don't like the idea of someone asking troops to incriminate themselves in war crimes - real or imagined.

That leaves a question for troops, doctors, chaplains, lawyers and the military brass: How do you help someone if they don't feel they can say what's bothering them?

Suicides have outnumbered combat deaths in US
troops in 2008 and 2009

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(Matthew channelled by Suzanne Ward, June 3, 2012)

“….   22. Beyond those myriad personal situations, beyond the civilian casualties in war zones, and beyond the financial burdens to the peoples whose nations are at war is the global emotional impact. It can be said that the condition coined post traumatic stress disorder is endemic to Earth. No one is immune to this battle energy that permeates your world, no one can escape the ravages that centuries of bloodshed have inured generation after generation to accept as humankind’s nature and lot in life. Yet, the fear of dying is just as pervasive, and that sets up a paradox that minds have to come to terms with. …" 

"Healing the Military Energies in our family Tree" – Jun 13, 2011 (Kryon channelled by David Brown)

“ … There’s much violence and anger throughout the world; when we look at the Middle East, we can see that changes are coming there. The West has a lot of power over the Middle East, but that power will begin to dissolve. The Muslim people of this world will begin to have their own power, and their own prosperity, and they will begin to disconnect from the Western World. This disconnection doesn’t have to be violent as violence only happens when somebody hangs onto what doesn’t belong to them....

... What Military Energy means if we use an analogy: it would be like putting grinding paste into the oil of your motor car. Once you release these energies you will begin to feel lighter as you disconnect from this reality, and, you will find it easier and easier to release any other negative emotions. Military Energies are the core of all your problems...."

"Recalibration of Free Choice"–  Mar 3, 2012 (Kryon Channelling by Lee Caroll) - (Subjects: (Old) Souls, Midpoint on 21-12-2012, Shift of Human Consciousness, Black & White vs. Color, 1 - Spirituality (Religions) shifting, Loose a Pope “soon”, 2 - Humans will change react to drama, 3 - Civilizations/Population on Earth,  4 - Alternate energy sources (Geothermal, Tidal (Paddle wheels), Wind), 5 – Financials Institutes/concepts will change (Integrity – Ethical) , 6 - News/Media/TV to change, 7 – Big Pharmaceutical company will collapse “soon”, (Keep people sick), (Integrity – Ethical)  8 – Wars will be over on Earth, Global Unity, … etc.) - (Text version) 

“…  8 - The End of War

The last one is the best. For thousands of years on this planet, Human Beings have warred with each other. If you take a look at the reasons they warred with each other, you will quickly see there aren't any good ones - land, resources, greed. Those are not reasons. That is a description of old energy. Those are not reasons. Reasons would be perhaps defense against an aggressor. But what if there is no longer the consciousness of the aggressor?

When I appeared in my partner's life more than 20 years ago, I said to him privately that the first messages we're going to give will be unbelievable. There would be laughter. We told him that Human nature and consciousness itself would change, and that the seeds of peace would be planted and there would come a time where there is no more war. Indeed, the laughter was great because humans look at history and they see patterns based on an absolute energy called Human Nature. "Impossible! There always has to be war. There always has been. Therefore, there always will be." This is you, in a box, in a black and white potential, where you can only see the black and white of what is and the black and white of what has been. You have no idea the shades of color that are there in your consciousness and the beauty of the love of God

North Korea is on the edge of change, as we told you it might be. What did this require? The death of the old energy, and I want you to watch this take place. The advisors of the young leader are going to do their best to pull him back into an old energy. This free choice of his will be far different than his father, for he sees some color. Watch for these things. They'll take longer than you want, but it is the beginning of the beginning.….”