WASHINGTON — Fewer than half of U.S. soldiers and Marines serving in Iraq would report a fellow service member for mistreating an Iraqi civilian, and about 10% of those surveyed admitted they had abused noncombatants or damaged their property, according to a Pentagon report released Friday that examined battlefield ethics.
The report said that misconduct occurred more frequently as stress levels increased, and that longer wartime deployments could erode morale and negatively affect mental health.
Soldiers who screened positive for mental health problems, for example, were twice as likely to hit or kick a noncombatant as those who screened negative.
The Pentagon report was based on a mental health survey of 1,320 soldiers and 447 Marines in Iraq.
The report found that soldiers -- whose tours were about twice as long as Marines' -- had lower morale, more marital problems and higher rates of mental health disorders.
The military decided last month to extend Army tours by 90 days.
The report also found that soldiers on repeat tours were more likely to suffer acute stress, and that mental health problems correlated with higher rates of battlefield misconduct.
"The team found that soldiers with high levels of anger, who experienced high levels of combat, or who screened positive for a mental health symptom were nearly twice as likely to mistreat noncombatants as those who reported low levels of anger," said Maj. Gen. Gale Pollock, the acting Army surgeon general.
The Army in particular has struggled with deployment lengths throughout the Iraq war, ordering extensions and speeding deployments to sustain troop levels. The 90-day extension that Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates ordered last month, for active-duty Army units in Iraq and Afghanistan, stretches the typical tour to 15 months. The extension will allow the current buildup to continue without forcing returning units to forgo rest and retraining periods.
Experts said the report raised concern about the possibility of more incidents like the November 2005 massacre of civilians at Haditha or the mistreatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib as tours lengthened.
"What it says to me is we should get out of Iraq before a real disaster happens for us," said Cindy Williams, a security-studies researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who is an expert on military personnel policies. "Iraq is already in chaos, but for us to stay there and continue to wreck our Army over this is a big mistake."
