In Iraq, American military finds it has an alcohol problem

In Iraq, American military finds it has an alcohol problem
By Paul von Zielbauer
Copyright by The Internatrional Herald Tribune
Published: March 12, 2007


In May 2004, Specialist Justin Lillis got drunk on what he called "hajji juice," a clear Iraqi moonshine smuggled onto an army base in Balad by civilian contractors. He began taking potshots with his M-16 service rifle.

"He shot up some contractor's rental car," said Phil Cave, a lawyer for Lillis, 24. "He hopped in a Humvee, drove around and shot up some more things. He shot into a housing area" and at soldiers guarding the base entrance.

Six months later, at an army base near Baghdad, after a night of drinking a stash of illegal whiskey and gin, Specialist Chris Rolan of the 3rd Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division, pulled his 9mm service pistol on another soldier and shot him to death.

In March 2005, in one of the most gruesome crimes committed by U.S. troops in Iraq, a group of 101st Airborne Division soldiers in Mahmudiya raped a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and killed her and her family after drinking several cans of locally made whiskey supplied by Iraqi Army soldiers, military prosecutors assert.

Strictly forbidden by the American military in Iraq and Afghanistan, alcohol has been involved in a number of crimes committed by soldiers there. Alcohol- and drug-related charges were involved in more than a third of all army criminal prosecutions of soldiers in the two war zones — 240 of the 665 cases resulting in convictions, according to records obtained by The New York Times through a Freedom of Information Act request. Seventy-three of those 240 cases involved some of the most serious crimes committed there, including murder, rape, armed robbery and assault, records of convictions show.

Despite the ban on all alcoholic beverages and strict Islamic prohibitions against drinking and drug use, liquor — Iraqi moonshine in particular — is cheap and easy to find for soldiers looking to deal with the effects of combat stress, depression or the frustrations of extended deployments, said military defense lawyers, commanders and doctors who treat soldiers' emotional problems.

"It's clear that we got a lot of significant alcohol problems that are pervasive across the military," said Thomas Kosten, a psychiatrist at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Houston. It is the same "treatment" that soldiers turned to in Vietnam, Kosten said, adding: "They turn to alcohol and drugs."

The use of alcohol and drugs in war zones appears to reflect a broader trend toward heavier drinking among all military personnel, but especially in the army and Marine Corps, the two services doing most of the fighting, Pentagon officials and military health experts said. A Pentagon report released in January, for instance, found that the rate of binge drinking in the army increased by 30 percent from 2002 to 2005, and "may signal an increasing pattern of heavy alcohol use in the army."

While average rates of alcohol consumption in the navy and air force have steadily declined since 1980, the year the military's health survey began, they have significantly increased in the army and Marine Corps and exceed civilian rates, the Pentagon study showed. For the first time since 1985, more than a quarter of all army members surveyed said they regularly drank heavily, defined as having five or more drinks at one sitting.

The rate of illicit drug use also increased among military members in 2005, to an estimated 5 percent, nearly double the rate measured in 1998, a trend that the study called "cause for concern."

The rates of drinking and illegal drug use among active-duty military personnel are troubling the Defense Department, said Lynn Pahland, an assistant secretary for health affairs. "It is very serious," Pahland said in an interview. "It is a huge concern."

Seeking to reverse the trend, the Pentagon has spent millions of dollars on several initiatives, including a new Web site that deglamourizes drinking. But even with that, overall spending is dropping, Although they say the problem is serious, the Pentagon has cut back on the amount it spends on it, from $12.6 million in fiscal year 2005 to $7.74 million in the current fiscal year.

Some military doctors and other mental health experts said that the army's greater use of so-called moral waivers, which allow recruits with criminal records to enlist, may also be a factor in the increased alcohol use.

Responding to a request for comment, a military spokesman in Baghdad cited rules that prohibit all U.S. military members from "the owning, making, drinking or selling of alcohol."

Getting liquor or drugs in Iraq is not difficult. One of the most common ways to get alcohol is to have friends back home mail brand-name gin or clear rum in bottles marked for mouthwash, soldiers said. Blue or yellow food coloring makes the liquid look medicinal.

Iraqi Army soldiers have sold locally produced prescription drugs to American troops for a tidy profit.

The military's attitudes toward drinking have changed, some soldiers said. The army "was a culture in the 1970s that encouraged drinking," said a retired army colonel. "You'd go out drinking together and you'd find your buddy hugging the toilet at the officer's club and think nothing of it."

But tolerance for such behavior began changing in the 1980s and by the 1990s, "if you had more than a couple drinks at the club, people started looking at you strange," the retired colonel said.

At a time when the military is fighting two major ground wars, the serious consequences of heavy drinking have become clear as more soldiers return from Iraq and Afghanistan suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and other problems, military officials and mental health experts said.

"I think the real story here is in the suicide and stress, and the drinking is just a symptom of it," said Charles O'Brien, a psychiatrist at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine who was a navy doctor during the Vietnam War. There is a high incidence of post-traumatic stress disorder among Iraq veterans, he said, adding: "There's been a lot of suicide in the active-duty servicemen."

More than 90 percent of sex crimes prosecuted by the military involve alcohol abuse, defense lawyers and military doctors said.

In 2005, the army's deputy chief of staff at the time, Lieutenant General Franklin Hagenbeck, wrote in an editorial in a magazine for army leaders that the rising rate of heavy drinking and drug use "seriously impacts mission readiness."

Hagenbeck, now the superintendent of the United States Military Academy at West Point, said that more than half of soldiers discharged for misconduct had also been disciplined for drug or alcohol abuse within the previous year.

That kind of ripple effect has played out repeatedly in Iraq, military defense lawyers said, as soldiers who drink or use drugs commit crimes and hinder their unit's combat and support missions.

Lillis, for example, was given a bad conduct discharge and sentenced to 10 years in prison as punishment for his drunken shooting spree. He is in the military prison in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

A military judge sentenced Rolan, who testified that he drank to relieve depression in Iraq, to 33 years in prison for killing his fellow soldier.

Two of the soldiers charged in the Mahmudiya case pleaded guilty to murder and a former army private described as the ringleader, Steven Green, is awaiting trial for rape and murder in a federal district court in Kentucky.

Andrew Lehren contributed reporting.