Navy SEALs training plagued by pervasive problems, according to investigation after death of sailor

[Omaha Steve]

Source: AP

ByLolita C. Baldor 2 hours ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — The training program for Navy SEALs is plagued by widespread failures in medical care, poor oversight and the use of performance-enhancing drugs that have increased the risk of injury and death to those seeking to become elite commandos, according to an investigation triggered by the death of a sailor last year.

Medical oversight and care were “poorly organized, poorly integrated and poorly led and put candidates at significant risk,” the nearly 200-page report compiled by the Naval Education and Training Command concluded.

The highly critical report said flaws in the medical program “likely had the most direct impact on the health and well being” of the SEAL candidates and “specifically” on Kyle Mullen, the sailor who died. It said if the shortcomings had been addressed, his death may have been preventable.

The investigation also dug deep into the longstanding problem of sailors using steroids and similar banned drugs as they try to pass the SEAL qualification course. The report recommends far more robust testing for the drugs — a move the Navy and the military more broadly have been slow to make — and better education for service members in order to prevent their use.




Read more: https://apnews.com/article/navy-seal-death-steroids-medical-failures-e49b76593ca884cc521d48a9b0b4a8ef

[Crowman2009]

1. Being chock full of right wing dickheads from Texas doesn't help either.

Mainly people like Chris Kyle and that prick who's friends with Rick Perry.

[Haggis 4 Breakfast]

5. You may have different political views from the late Chief Chris Kyle, and that's your right.

But Kyle comported himself with honor, courage and unparalleled committment in the battle zones of the Middle East. He saved more lives of US soldiers than almost any sniper in the field.

You are free to disagree with his politics, but his service to this country that he loved so much is untouchable. After his service ended, he began an orgainization to help vets re-enter society through multiple therapies. His life was cut short by a mentally-ill coward.

Slagging a dead veteran - who cannot defend himself - who served his nation honorably says more about you than you know.

SEMPER FORTIS.

[Crowman2009]

6. He also bragged about shooting at looters during Katrina.

Added to all other times he lied his ass off in his biography and giving a former Marine with severe PTSD & an attempted murder conviction a loaded weapon, he doesn't come off as very honorable to me.

[Haggis 4 Breakfast]

9. Kyle's biography was vetted extensively by the Department of Defense.

"lied his ass off" ?? If you have problems with its contents, perhaps, you should take up your comments with DoD.

"giving a former marine with severe PTSD . . . " Kyle did not know that at the time. And Routh had NOT been diagnosed with PTSD or adjudicated by the Board of Review at that time.

Maybe you should talk to the many soldiers whose lives Kyle saved by being a sniper.

Spare me your judgementalism.

[Aristus]

7. I'm sorry. I can't agree.

Chris Kyle was a psychopath who openly bragged about killing innocent Iraqis (they were all innocent; we invaded their country unprovoked) including children, saying he enjoyed it, and wanted to go back and kill more.

Adolf Hitler is a dead veteran. Veteran status does not confer moral unimpeachability.

[Haggis 4 Breakfast]

10. Psychopath is a diagnostic term used by trained and qualified psychiatrists

who actually examine and interact with their patients. In this case, military snipers. I doubt that includes you.

No one ever made such a diagnosis of Chris Kyle as being such. And certainly no one he served with- whose lives he saved - would ever apply such a term like that to him. Many are alive today because of him.

Secondarily, your logic falls flat. You obviously blame the soldier (sailor, airman, marine) for carrying out the orders they are given from far up the chain of command. Those of us who wear the uniform do NOT make these decisions, are NOT involved in discussion about US foreign policy, and certainly DON'T get to decide who the innocent or guilty parties are. We are given orders, we fulfill them.

If you have a problem with US foreign policy, talk to your elected representatives, who send US NAVY SEALS (and others) all over the world to protect and serve US interests.

US NAVY SEALS also dispatched Osama bin Laden. You got a problem with that too ?

I don't know what offends me more - your ignorance or your arrognce. And spare me your judgementalism.

[Aristus]

11. "We are given orders and we fulfill them."

An argument that didn't work for the Nazis at Nuremberg. That didn't work for Calley at My Lai. In Army Basic Training (at least when I went through it in 1986) we were given an entire afternoon of classes called "Roll of the Army". And we were told in no uncertain terms that if we were given an unlawful order, we had a legal, moral and ethical duty to disobey it.

Killing children in a country we were "liberating" seems pretty illegal.

I don't really care what the DSM-V classified Chris Kyle as. He enjoyed killing people. Not the most socially-acceptable trait a human being should really possess, no matter who makes excuses for their behavior.

And your position is not as well thought-out as you seem to think. I loathe Chris Kyle, so naturally I loathe all Navy SEALS and all of the good things they do? That's one of the worst logical fallacies out there.

An innocent child just trying to walk down the street in Ar-Ramadi is the same as Osama Bin Laden?

No......I really don't think so.

[Haggis 4 Breakfast]

12. If you really equate Nazi atrocities with US actions in the ME

Or Lt. Calley's actions at My Lai (which was not something he was commanded to do - he went rogue), then you are hopelessly lost and out of your depth.

In the ME, if children had C4 strapped to their chests and were approaching a convoy of Army soldiers, while their mothers held a detonator in their hands, they became a weapon. Or would you rather those soldiers had died because the instrument of their deaths was a child ? And are you really blaming Kyle for dead Iraqi children ?

Don't waste my time regurgitating baseless talking points that have no validity in truth or fact.

Lastly, if you ever bothered to read Chris Kyle's biography, you would KNOW that he did not enjoy killing anyone, least of all women or children. It weighed heavily on his soul.

[Crowman2009]

13. +1

Frankly most Iraq veterans like myself hated our deployments, and stopped giving a fuck about whether we were going to win this war since it felt like a boondoggle to funnel taxpayer money to no-bid contractors. Some even thought that if we lived in Iraq our whole lives in the blowing sand and extreme heat, we'd resort to joining the Shia insurgency as well. All we cared about was coming home in one piece.

[Hortensis]

2. Reminder, 58 SEAL candidates started Hell Week -- just 21 finished.

By Thursday of Hell Week, Kyle Mullen was in what one of his classmates called "full messed up mode," coughing up dark fluid but unwilling to seek medical attention for fear he would be dropped from the course. Twice in the closing hours of Hell Week he was pulled from training and administered oxygen. Once he had to ride from one location to another in an ambulance.

After he completed Hell Week, Mullen and the other trainees were given physical exams and sent to their barracks to recover. Mullen was pronounced "fit to train" even though he had to be transported to the barracks in a wheelchair.

There were no medical personnel on hand in the barracks to keep Mullen or any of his classmates under observation. When he and three others started experiencing increased difficulty breathing, other sailors called the medical clinic and were told they could call 911 but they might end up being washed out of the course. By the time someone finally called 911, it was too late to save Mullen.

... In an average class, roughly a third of SEAL candidates wash out in the first three weeks. After Capt. Geary took over the training, the dropout rate started to climb toward 50%, and civilian observers complained that the SEAL instructors seemed more interested in weeding out weak performers than in training them.

The training program's being overhauled. Of course.

Ten people may be charged. Seriously, ten people should mean 10 people thinking about what they're supposed to do, at least several times better than one, not several times worse, turning into one criminally irresponsible group idiot.

24 years old.

[Shipwack]

3. The part about drugs -during- training surprised me...

For background, I'm retired Navy, and while I never worked with any seals, I hear a little more than most...

Anyway, it seems that the Seals suffer from the same problem that the Nuclear Power program "used"* to have. It's tough to even get in, and they have a high attrition rate. They take more pride in the latter.

That being said, while I've heard stories of steroid abuse of people actually in the Seals, it surprises me that they would be taking performance enhancers -during- training. I would have thought that:

1) it couldn't happen because of screening anything the trainees have.
2) Drug screening during training
3) A feeling that those -in- training need to prove how "tough" they are on their own.

Apparently I was wrong...

Still, with an outsiders perspective, no one should be dying or getting seriously injured from training. Sure, the occasional accident will occur, but it is happening way too often. Those on the "inside" however, will probably bitterly fight any attempt to change things.

*I put "used" in quotes because I heard a recruiting talk being given to a bunch of engineers at my company. The officer giving it had said that while attrition used to be about 30%, the yhad decided that it wasn't cost effective (or necessarily "fair&quot to quickly discard anyone who might have had a different learning style, or had anothe undiscovered issue. Especially if the Navy had already spent tens of thousands of dollars on them... I have no idea how how honest he was being though, and I have no way of fact checking it. He seemed sincere, though... or at least was good at faking sincerity.

[Happy Hoosier]

4. I have no doubt Special Ops guys are using uppers....

.... it can be a BRUTAL regimen.

[milestogo]

8. Graduate school for macho men.

In the end you're going to die, one way or another.