Troops at Odds With Ethics Standards

Strains on military families also are intensifying. About 20 percent of soldiers said they were planning a divorce or separation, up from 15 percent in the previous year's survey. Marital problems seem to grow with the length of a deployment, the survey found. Ten percent of soldiers deployed for less than six months reported that infidelity was a problem in their marriage, compared with 17 percent among those who had been in Iraq longer than that.

"The story I heard from my wife and daughter a lot is, 'You're not the same person that left to go over there,' " said retired Sgt. Coby Thomas, who developed post-traumatic stress disorder after serving in Iraq. "People expect you to be like you were and pick up where you left off, and they're not prepared for the changes."

Thomas, who suffered a traumatic brain injury while protecting a convoy south of Baghdad in December 2004, agreed that the stress on soldiers is increasing with multiple tours of duty. "You're talking about fourth deployments; it's the same people going over again and again," he said.

Retired Air Force Tech. Sgt. Scott Shore said multiple deployments over a 19-year military career left him with severe post-traumatic stress disorder. His last deployment was in 2004 in Iraq's Sunni insurgent stronghold, Anbar province, where he provided medical care and saw combat.

"That seemed to be the straw that broke the camel's back," Shore said in a telephone interview from Browns Mills, N.J. Shore said he has suffered flashbacks and nightmares that contributed to the breakup of his first marriage. "I don't go into crowds, I don't like driving, I don't like doing a lot of different things because I'm always on the lookout for the next ambush, the next IED," he said.

The Army has surveyed mental health issues in Iraq three times before, but this was the first time that Marines were included and that ethical questions were posed. Those were added by order of Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr., who until February was the top commander in Iraq. The surveyors did not say why Casey, who is now chief of staff of the Army, made the changes, but they came following revelations about Marines killing 24 civilians in November 2005 in Haditha, Iraq, and about their commanders not seeing reason to investigate.

Military officials sought to boost troops' awareness of ethical issues, first after the Abu Ghraib prisoner-abuse scandal broke in the spring of 2004 and again after news of the Haditha killings emerged.

Asked for his reaction to the data indicating that the majority of Marines would not report wrongdoing, Rear Adm. Richard R. Jeffries, the Marine Corps' chief medical officer, answered gingerly. "I know the Marine Corps is concerned that this may be of some significance," he said, "and they're looking very closely at this with several groups and several teams that have now taken in consideration to see what this means and what we may do differently if there is a problem here."

Pollock said that, in response to the report, completed last November, the Army has altered training to place more emphasis on "Army values, suicide prevention, battlefield ethics and behavioral health awareness."