Bullet For A Soldier

I met a man
In Afghanistan;
And put a bullet through his head.


Children screaming
Black tears streaming;
As he lay bleeding in his bed.


I sang my song
"This man did wrong!"
Military's proper fashion.


But Afghan souls
Thousands years old;
Yet hate me with proper passion.


In my brigade
I'm just a maid;
All hail the conquering hero!


"Suffocate him!"
"He shares our sin!"
Dreaming as the madman Nero.


Napalm jelly
Burns my belly;
Scorch tender mercies when I kill.


Internal plea
No place to flee;
For what eats me they have no pill.

Hey America: damn your love, damn your lies.

Twisted flower
In its brown hour;
Silent, sinking sun bears witness.


My painted face
Hides my disgrace;
Quivering bullets scared shitless.


Public charade
Life's masquerade;
Sharp pressed uniforms to revere.


When love is bought
The soul lives not;
Time marches in eternal fear.


Who wants to live
With hell to give?
Precious family home abused.


Inside my room
Earth's final doom;
Hope's ticking time finally used.


They tell me when
My kill's not sin;
But my life's in the devil's bin.


Liar's prison
Unforgiven;
Pass by the untold tales of men.

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WASHINGTON — When Lt. Col. Dave Wilson took command of a battalion of the 4th Brigade of the 1st Armored Division, the unit had just returned to Texas from 14 months traveling some of Iraq's most dangerous roads as part of a logistics mission.

What he found, he said, was a unit far more damaged than the single death it had suffered in its two deployments to Iraq.

Nearly 70 soldiers in his 1,163-member battalion had tested positive for drugs: methamphetamine, cocaine and marijuana. Others were abusing prescription drugs. Troops were passing around a tape of a female lieutenant having sex with five soldiers from the unit. Seven soldiers in the brigade died from drug overdoses and traffic accidents when they returned to Fort Bliss, near El Paso, after their first deployment.

"The inmates were running the prison," Wilson said.

What Wilson had to deal with, however, was hardly an isolated instance.

With the U.S. drawdown in Iraq, the Army is finally confronting an epidemic of drug abuse and criminal behavior that many commanders acknowledge has been made worse because they'd largely ignored it during nearly a decade of wars on two fronts.

The Army concedes that it faces a mammoth problem.

A 350-page report issued in July after a 15-month investigation into the Army's rising suicide rate found that levels of illegal drug use and criminal activity have reached record highs, while the number of disciplinary actions and forced discharges were at record lows.

The result, the Army found, is that "drug and alcohol abuse is a significant health problem in the Army." Where the Army once rigidly enforced rules on drug use, it got sloppy in the rush to get soldiers ready for the battlefield, commanders say. Officers who once trained soldiers on everything from drug abuse to financial planning had only enough time to get their troops ready for battle.

The number of misdemeanors that soldiers committed — including traffic infractions, drunk driving and being absent without leave — rose to 50,523 in fiscal year 2009 — a sign, the report said, that "good order and discipline" were declining in the ranks. Five years earlier, the number was 28,388.

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