On April 1, after he’d been fighting the desertion case for 18 months, the Army found Goodrum innocent of being absent without leave, or AWOL. But the ordeal took a toll. Goodrum’s 16-year career in the military is over — he wants out. “Why would I serve a military that betrayed me?” he asks. He is $40,000 in debt from legal fees, and his relationship with his fiancée has suffered under the stress. The cause of his original hospitalization was post-traumatic stress disorder resulting from his war experiences — a diagnosis confirmed four times, three times by military doctors. But instead of improving, some of his symptoms have worsened as a result of his protracted legal battle.

“Call me anytime, even late at night,” Goodrum told me on the phone from Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington as I was working on this story. “I don’t sleep.”

Goodrum is heavily medicated to prevent panic attacks, but he says he has sudden, violent urges that make him worry about what he might do to himself or others. He is often drenched in sweat as a result of anxiety. When I ask him about his fiancée, he says flatly: “I have no emotions. I just have no emotions.”

His trust in the military has been shattered to the point where he will not let the Army fix a dental filling that has fallen out, operate on painful kidney stones, or conduct a needed liver biopsy. “I will not let them touch me,” he says, and that includes the Army’s doctors.

Goodrum’s late father was a veteran of Korea who did intelligence work, and Goodrum said his dad was glad when he showed enthusiasm for the military. “Once I got in, I really enjoyed the majority of the functions” of the military, Goodrum said. “I was a good fit for it, and it was a good fit for me. I love being part of a team, but also you can achieve as an individual. I enjoyed defending my country.” Then he said, “I’m glad he is not alive now to see this mess.”

Goodrum’s troubles with the military justice system started after he became a whistleblower. After he returned from Iraq, Goodrum complained to his superior officers that his unit had been sent to war with an appalling lack of equipment, including broken, unarmored vehicles. When his complaints were ignored, he went to his Congress member and to the press. He also complained about the poor medical care he received when he came back. Now, he is convinced the charge of being absent without leave for getting medical care from a civilian doctor is retribution from the Army, which he claims closed ranks and blackballed him.

“They chose a pattern,” Goodrum says. “They denied me healthcare and told me to leave. You can hear it in their own testimony. I think it was just abuse of authority and being vindictive.”

In fact, a review of hundreds of pages of documents and hours of tapes from Goodrum’s disciplinary proceedings show his superior officers cooperating in what looks like a concerted effort to put him behind bars. Goodrum provided the records to Salon, though they are not available to the public.

Although a superior officer did order Goodrum to return to Fort Knox, and he did not — the heart of the Army’s desertion case — the context of that order, Goodrum’s medical status at the time, and the Army’s subsequent actions make it clear that the desertion charge was highly literalistic and almost certainly vindictive. A contemporaneous note in the files casts severe doubt on the crucial claim, made by the officer in charge of long-term medical care, that he did not intend to deny Goodrum medical care at Fort Knox. Initially, the Army in effect ignored the PTSD diagnosis of Goodrum’s civilian doctor, saying that he was not entitled to medical leave for PTSD. The officer who was the target of Goodrum’s whistle-blowing, while in Iraq, took part in the stateside decision to order Goodrum to return to Fort Knox, Ky., although he had not seen Goodrum for months and could have had no knowledge of his medical condition. Officers seem to have pressured some witnesses and coached others, possibly instructing them to lie.

The documents and tapes also show Army officers trying to dig up dirt on Goodrum. Using information from a background check on a different man, the officers suggested — incorrectly — to military prosecutors that Goodrum might be a convicted drug dealer. A document alleging he had had an affair with a female subordinate before going to Iraq mysteriously appeared in Goodrum’s record. The Army said it could not locate some defense witnesses whom Goodrum sought. And when Goodrum, after learning he was being charged with desertion, checked into a different Army hospital, the same superior officer who apparently had ordered him turned away from Fort Knox ordered him held in psychiatric lockdown for almost two weeks, although his doctors had planned to release him. No reason was given other than the Orwellian phrase “administrative concerns.”

Trying to prove that you’re being railroaded by officers trying to cover up for their own poor leadership, or to punish you for speaking out, is particularly difficult because superior officers have so much power. They control your salary, food and clothing, movement and freedom; they decide if your hair is too long. They hold the keys to your career, and they can chuck them in the gutter at any time.

Superior officers also get to choose your punishment. They decide if you will face a trial by jury or a laundry list of “nonjudicial” penalties, including reduction of rank, loss of pay, and house arrest. They also appoint the investigators who will look into your case.

The Army will provide you with a military defense attorney, or you can hire a civilian attorney at great expense. A civilian lawyer might be a good idea — military lawyers are notoriously overworked, and some have the reputation of not trying overly hard on their clients’ behalf. Should a defense bankrupt you, too bad: You can’t sue the military to reimburse your attorney fees.

That Goodrum’s innocence was determined by one general, as opposed to a jury (which would be called for a court-martial), is significant. Superior officers can decide whether a soldier should be tried by a jury or face other, usually lesser, disciplinary action decided by one officer.

That quirk of military justice, critics say, can also be abused to prevent damaging information from becoming public during discovery and cross-examination in a trial by jury. If one general can decide what evidence to look into, he can also decide what not to look into. Information that is damaging to the chain of command can simply remain secret.

Some experts have called for an overhaul of the incestuous military justice system, pointing out that it can easily be manipulated to protect and insulate the Army brass at the expense of lower-ranking soldiers. Which is just what many believe happened in the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal, in which the Army has ignored almost all the high-level officers involved and punished grunts. “The whole system is inherently conflicted. They circle the wagons,” said Kevin J. Barry, a former Coast Guard judge and a founder of the National Institute of Military Justice, which helps defend GIs.

After the Abu Ghraib scandal broke in April 2004, Barry wrote an opinion piece in the Chicago Tribune. “In the United States, almost every commander is also a court-martial convening authority, the equivalent of a district attorney,” Barry wrote. “The commander is empowered and required to investigate serious crimes and to make prosecution decisions such as whom to charge and for what crimes. This role can present a conflict of interest.” Barry added that “these are precisely the circumstances … found in Abu Ghraib.”

After an officer hands down a ruling, in most cases the accused military personnel do have the option of demanding a court-martial, a proceeding over which the military has less control. Goodrum says that the Army tried to cut a deal with him that would rule out a court-martial. He says that he would have insisted on a court-martial proceeding if he had had the money to pay the legal bills.

I told Barry that Goodrum’s command had decided against a court-martial and handled Goodrum’s case in a nonjudicial fashion through one general. “They are scared of something,” Barry said.

The Army claimed Goodrum was a deserter because when he was in the civilian psychiatric hospital in Knoxville he was absent from Fort Knox without permission. A spokeswoman for Fort Knox, Connie Shaffery, told me after the charges were filed that the situation is simple: “If a soldier is not at his or her duty station and is not in an authorized leave or pass status, he is absent without leave,” Shaffery said. “When instructed to return and they do not comply, that is a violation.”

But that seemingly straightforward answer ignores several critical facts. In fact, Army regulations state that when medical care is not available at a military facility, commanders should consider a soldier in a civilian hospital — or a soldier under the care of a civilian doctor — as “absent sick” and should not penalize him or her as a deserter. The civilian doctor has considerable authority to decide when a soldier is healthy enough to return to base. Treatment was obviously not available at Fort Knox earlier, when Goodrum was turned away. Although Goodrum’s company commander ordered him to return to Fort Knox, it was only to sign forms granting him leave. Moreover, she insisted that he drive in the very next day at 7 a.m., although Goodrum was in no condition to drive. Goodrum’s civilian psychiatrist stated that being treated at Fort Knox, where Army brass clearly had it in for him, was not in his medical interests. Finally, after Goodrum’s company commander ordered him to come in, neither she nor anyone else in the Army informed either Goodrum or his civilian doctor that Goodrum was then being considered AWOL. Faxes sent by Goodrum’s doctor clearly indicate that the doctor believed that Goodrum was not considered AWOL.

Under these circumstances, it is hard to escape the conclusion that the Army’s charges of desertion were a vindictive “gotcha,” payback for his speaking out. And even though the Army itself confirmed that Goodrum was suffering from PTSD, its actions throughout this sorry affair betray nothing but skepticism about that claim and a desire to punish him.

Indeed, Goodrum was ultimately found innocent of desertion, but his ordeal hasn’t ended. As with Army chaplain James Yee, a Guantánamo prison chaplain originally charged with spying and later with adultery (all charges were eventually dropped), the Army then alleged that Goodrum had engaged in fraternization with a female sergeant. He was found guilty of fraternization, although not of having sexual relations. Goodrum is appealing the verdict, but even though an investigating officer decided that some of the evidence “may have been obtained by coercion” by a superior officer, according to records, Goodrum could still face punishment — a deduction of $4,000 in pay and a letter of reprimand in his permanent officer-management file.

I met Goodrum in the fall of 2003 while working on a series of articles for UPI about long delays in obtaining appointments, a lack of high-quality medical treatment, and poor housing for Iraq vets in long-term outpatient care — what the Army calls “medical hold.” In my first story, which ran in October, I reported that some of the wounded and ill soldiers at Fort Stewart, Ga., were staying in sweltering cement barracks without running water. The story sparked public outrage, some hearings in Congress, and a bipartisan Senate investigation that confirmed my findings. I wrote a second, similar article a few days later about the conditions at Fort Knox.

A group of about 10 soldiers, including officers, had agreed to meet me at a Chinese restaurant off base to talk about the healthcare problems at Fort Knox. Goodrum, in a sharply pressed khaki uniform, was among those willing to go on the record.

I was going through soldiers’ service records at the time — a good way to measure whom one is talking to. Goodrum had been back from Iraq for about four months, and his service record to that point was impeccable. He had received a raft of decorations, and had been named the Army Reserve’s 176th Maintenance Battalion’s Officer of the Year in 2001. And he had gotten glowing reviews from his bosses going back to his service as a gunner’s mate in the Navy on the USS Missouri during the first Gulf War.

Then, after 16 years of spotless service, Goodrum suddenly turned into a bad egg.

Goodrum was transferred to the 212th Transportation Company out of Camp Atterbury, Ind., prior to leaving for Iraq in April 2003. Transportation companies haul everything and anything around Iraq. They face the constant threat of ambush and roadside bombs. In Iraq, Goodrum had around 35 soldiers under his command, with 18 huge trucks for hauling.

Goodrum and his soldiers tried to fulfill their mission. But their equipment was wretchedly inadequate. The disgraceful state of the Army’s equipment became clear in December 2004, when Army Spc. Thomas Wilson of the 278th Regimental Combat Team complained to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld about the lack of armor plating on military combat vehicles. “Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to up-armor our vehicles?” Wilson asked. Rumsfeld’s cavalier answer was, “You have to go to war with the army you have, not the army you want.” As late as August 2003, after Goodrum’s combat service, only 15 armored Humvees were being produced each month.

On the ground in Iraq that spring, Goodrum and other soldiers have said, they drove unarmored vehicles, with no body armor, no maps, insufficient ammunition, and no medical kits if they did get hit. Goodrum kept his eyes glued to the side mirror of his lead Humvee counting headlights in his truck convoy — because they had no radios. Goodrum was forced to improvise a makeshift roof of plywood and sandbags on his unarmored Humvee. And Goodrum and several other soldiers have claimed that they sometimes drove trucks that had been “deadlined” — meaning the trucks should not have been on the road because of potential safety problems and the possibility of their breaking down in hostile territory.

Making runs was a grueling experience. The convoys faced sniper fire on every mission. At night, tracers would arc nearby, though the soldiers in Goodrum’s platoon did not always know who was shooting. The enemy tossed grenades and satchel bombs. “There was a constant threat, 360 degrees,” Goodrum said. Like many other transportation companies in the beginning of the war, they were told that Iraqi insurgents were slowing down convoys for attack by putting children in the road. Convoys were ordered to run them down, if necessary. Goodrum saw a British convoy run over a small girl. “There were convoys that would run right over children,” Goodrum said. “We had orders to run right the fuck over them. You pray when you see kids. You say, ‘Please, God. Please make that child move.’ You are put in a serious ethical situation.”

Goodrum is not able to recall exactly when he first began experiencing symptoms of PTSD. He had some symptoms in Iraq, but that is normal for that environment. Other symptoms began to appear during evacuation and gradually got worse. Goodrum said he does not know which event, or combination of events, might have triggered his PTSD, or whether he might have been more susceptible because of his combat service in the first Gulf War on the USS Missouri. His gun team fired on Iraqis, and the ship was nearly hit by an Iraqi missile.

That summer, Goodrum was medically evacuated to Fort Knox because of wrist injuries, a legacy of his job of loading 65-pound shells on the USS Missouri. He has had surgery on his left wrist but is waiting to have the other wrist treated until he gets out of the Army. He still wears a brace on that hand.

On Aug. 20, a few weeks after Goodrum’s evacuation, a soldier in Goodman’s unit, Sgt. Kenneth Harris, was killed in a gruesome truck wreck that cut him in half. Soldiers from the unit have said it was a preventable accident caused or exacerbated by the shoddy vehicles. “Kenneth Harris wouldn’t be dead if the vehicles had been better maintained,” Jr. Staff Sgt. Reginal Coleman told This Is Rumor Control, a foreign-policy and security-issues blog, about the fatal accident. Coleman was in one of the vehicles involved. Goodrum clearly hurts when the topic comes up, even though by the time the accident occurred, Goodrum was back in the States.

When he got to Fort Knox, Goodrum fell into the “medical hold” bottleneck, in which many soldiers waited weeks and sometimes months for medical care. The Army later pledged tens of millions to fix the problem, and Congress held hearings. Goodrum’s on-the-record quote in the UPI wire article I filed was: “I have never been so disrespected in my military career. I have never been so treated like dirt.”

Goodrum had never before filed a formal complaint against the Army. But the equipment situation in Iraq was so dire, he says, that he decided to make noise about it. And Harris’ death only made him angrier.

Goodrum criticized Capt. Randall Fisher, his superior officer in Iraq, saying Fisher should have done a better job of fixing the problems that may have contributed to the death of Harris. Fisher was not present at the accident but said that it was due to “driver’s negligence” and that “an investigation determined that the truck that Sgt. Harris was driving was fine,” according to a summary of Fisher’s sworn statements prepared by the Army. A spokesman for the 81st Regional Readiness Command in Birmingham, Ala., Maj. William Ritter, said Fisher did not want to comment on what he called a “he said, she said type of thing.” But when he testified in Goodrum’s disciplinary proceedings, Fisher characterized the unit’s equipment and trucks as being in good shape.

It is unclear what investigation of the accident Fisher was referring to. Goodrum’s defense team requested reports on any investigation into the incident and received a two-page report that lists the basics of the accident, like the location and time of the crash. It says nothing about what might have caused it. Goodrum said the inspector general from the Army Reserve looked into the 212th and gave me the name of the investigator. A spokesman for the Army Reserve, Steve Stromvall, would not confirm or deny that such an investigation had taken place or let me talk to the investigator.

Goodrum says he has talked to three soldiers present at the accident. (One of those soldiers, Coleman, confirmed Goodrum’s account.) He says all three said Harris’ vehicle had been recently “deadlined” and was breaking down in the desert and falling behind the main convoy. It was racing to catch up when it slammed into the back of the convoy, severing Harris in half. “That vehicle should have never been out there,” Goodrum told me.

At Fort Knox that summer and fall, Goodrum became increasingly frustrated because nobody in the Army would take any action on his complaints. On Oct. 15, 2003, he sent a letter to Rep. William Jenkins, R-Tenn. In the letter he wrote, referring to Fisher, “It is also my professional and common sense observation that the commander has fostered an unsafe climate for the company.” He continued, “This commander is not fit to command and has fostered an unsafe command climate, which has resulted in a soldier getting killed under his command.” Almost immediately, Jenkins asked the Army to look into Harris’ death.

Goodrum’s confrontation with the Army was about to turn toxic.

At the same time, Goodrum’s mental condition was deteriorating. The symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder often do not appear until some time after a traumatic event. Panic attacks, depression, sudden bouts of anger, paranoia and suicidal thoughts are symptoms. Some soldiers have frightening homicidal thoughts, as well.

Goodrum says his condition didn’t prevent him from doing what he believed was the right thing in blowing the whistle on the Army. “Unless you are in the midst of a panic attack or totally dysfunctional, you still know right from wrong,” Goodrum said. “Don’t get me wrong, if I get in a rage I might not know what is going on. But I still know right from wrong. Just because you have PTSD does not mean you are totally crazy.”

By November, Goodrum had begun to think about suicide. On Nov. 7, 2003, he sought help at Fort Knox but was turned away. After he was turned away, Goodrum says he got in his car and drove down the freeway at 5 miles an hour, waiting to die.

Goodrum was ordered to leave without treatment. The Army does not dispute this. His medical records from that day include this note from 1st Lt. Ricardo Zaldivar, who was one of two men present when Goodrum was turned away: “Colonel Stevens [sic] do [sic] not want this patient to be in medical hold.”

At that time, Lt. Col. Ronald Stephens was the top officer in charge of soldiers at Fort Knox who were recuperating from the war or who needed long-term help in “medical hold.” My article about poor medical care for soldiers at Fort Knox, in which Goodrum was quoted, had appeared just days before. Stephens had read it, and it was not likely to have pleased him. His boss and the commander at Fort Knox, Col. Keith Armstrong, would later testify before Congress about the issues in my articles. And Pentagon Undersecretary of Defense David S.C. Chu responded by drafting new rules specifying that if medical care is not available for a soldier on a base, he or she should be referred to a civilian doctor.

When I recently called Fort Knox, its spokeswoman, Shaffery, said Stephens was no longer at that post and she didn’t know where he was. (Goodrum says he is now in Japan. Salon was unable to confirm his location.)

In Goodrum’s disciplinary proceedings, Stephens testified that he did not order that Goodrum be denied healthcare. He said there was a misunderstanding and that he had ordered Goodrum brought to his office. But Zaldivar’s note contradicts Stephens’ account. When it was time for testimony in Goodrum’s case, the Army claimed it could not locate Zaldivar, though other testimony showed it was likely that he was at Fort Drum in New York.

There was one other man in the room besides Zaldivar when Goodrum was allegedly denied medical care, 1st Lt. John Fanoschultz. According to Goodrum, Fanoschultz told him that his orders from Stephens were clear: Don’t treat Goodrum. “You are not to be put on medical hold or to be treated here at Fort Knox,’” Goodrum recalls Fanoschultz saying to him.

Under oath in Goodrum’s case, Fanoschultz said he did not remember anything. “I don’t recall specifically seeing him [Goodrum],” Fanoschultz said. “I don’t specifically recollect an individual or a particular time frame.” Fanoschultz also said under oath, however, that he had discussed the case with Stephens, his boss, just before testifying. “I briefly talked to the colonel and asked him what was happening regarding this issue,” Fanoschultz said. “And we went over essentially what had happened.” How Fanoschultz and Stephens could go over “what happened” with Goodrum when Fanoschultz had no memory of the entire incident is not clear.

As for Goodrum, he’s convinced that Stephens denied him medical care because of my UPI article. When Goodrum showed up asking for help, he says an aide in the hospital sarcastically called him “a celebrity” when Goodrum gave his name — presumably because of his quote in that article. Stephens testified in Goodrum’s case that he did know about the UPI article, but he did not think the article was true.

Turned away from Fort Knox, Goodrum checked himself into the civilian psychiatric hospital in Knoxville, where he was put under the care of Dr. Vijay Jethanandani. Starting on Nov. 15, Jethanandani sent a series of five faxes to Fort Knox, updating the base on Goodrum’s hospitalization and further outpatient care, which lasted until February 2004.

While Goodrum was under civilian care, Stephens was in close communication with Fisher, the officer in Iraq whom Goodrum had accused, documents show. “Through close dialogue between his company commander [Fisher] … and LTC Stephens … it was determined that Lt. Goodrum should return to Fort Knox for re-evaluation,” a Fort Knox hospital commander later wrote to Rep. Lincoln Davis, D-Tenn. (Goodrum had asked Davis to look into his case.) What medical insight Fisher, who had not seen Goodrum for months, could have provided to Stephens is unclear. The records show that Fisher was in contact with Fort Knox about Goodrum via e-mail as well. After that “close dialogue,” Fort Knox decided Goodrum was AWOL.

Records show that Fort Knox classified Goodrum AWOL on Nov. 21. Yet Goodrum says “they never ordered me to return to Fort Knox.” Goodrum says he was under the impression that the Army, after initially threatening to find him AWOL, had decided to let him get his treatment from the civilian doctor in Knoxville. He found out the Army thought he was a deserter only when he went to get a prescription filled for psychiatric drugs on Jan. 17, 2004, when he was getting outpatient therapy. But Fort Knox had cut off his Army insurance and he could not get the pills. When he called the Army insurance program, he was told Fort Knox had listed him as a deserter.

Army officials testified they had given Goodrum a clear choice: Return to Fort Knox or face charges. But after issuing an initial threat, the Army does not seem to have followed up with either Goodrum or his doctor — strange behavior considering that desertion is among the most serious charges that can be levied against a soldier. Indeed, the Army’s behavior throughout the entire case is murky, contradictory and suspicious.

After Goodrum checked into the civilian hospital on Nov. 7, Jethanandani treated him. After determining that Goodrum’s condition allowed it, the physician let him out before Thanksgiving, but wanted him to stay nearby for further outpatient treatment. On Nov. 15, he sent a first fax to Fort Knox, saying that Goodrum was hospitalized under his care.

On Nov. 26, the day before Thanksgiving, Goodrum received a voice-mail message from his company commander at Fort Knox, Capt. Deborah Savage, who reported to Stephens. On the tape, Savage said she would approve some sort of leave for Goodrum, but that his civilian doctor could not excuse him from Fort Knox. “Only I have the authority to put you on leave … However, I agree to authorize your leave, but you need to call me back so I can let you know … If I am not here, leave me a message because I am going to be putting you on leave.”

Goodrum called her back. Goodrum and Savage agree on their recollections of their conversation. Savage told Goodrum she was not going to grant him convalescent leave, but that she would grant him leave if he agreed to take it out of his personal time — that is, his vacation. She told him he had to come back to Fort Knox to the next morning at 7 a.m. on Thanksgiving day to sign the forms. After Goodrum protested, saying that he had a serious medical condition, “I said, ‘If that is what you want, I will consider you AWOL,’” Savage recounted later in her testimony. Goodrum, panicked at the idea of being charged with desertion, agreed to take the leave out of his personal time, but told Savage he was in no shape to drive and asked if she could fax the papers. She repeated that he had to come in person. At this point, in despair, Goodrum asked her to talk to his doctor.

It is not clear whether Savage called Jethanandani. Savage did speak to the physician’s office manager, Jeanette Willis, around this time and told her that Goodrum was in danger of being charged with desertion.

Whether Savage spoke to him or to Willis, Dr. Jethanandani learned about the military’s hard-line position and protested vehemently. On Dec. 3, he sent a fax to Fort Knox in which he wrote, “Unfortunately, recent intimidation, threats of being arrested for staying on medical leave from his superiors has resulted in recurrent psychiatric symptoms. Until 11/26/03 Mr. Julian [sic] Goodrum was progressing fairly well … It does not help that Mr. Goodrum was in combat with a unit in Iraq, where a superior officer ignored safety protocol jeopardizing the safety of soldiers and resulting in the death of one man. Instead of following up on his complaints, it appears that some of his superiors on stateside may be penalizing him for reporting his superior officer in Iraq.”

After his conversation with Savage, Goodrum, afraid and confused, called the inspector general (an independent military investigator) at Fort Knox and asked him to look into the matter. Goodrum claims that after the IG did so, Savage backed off her threats and told his civilian doctor Goodrum was not a deserter. (Base spokesperson Shaffery said the inspector general’s office is not allowed to comment on its work.)

Subsequent faxes from Jethanandani give no indication that the doctor was concerned that his patient was going to be found AWOL. On Jan. 2, 2004, for example, Jethanandani wrote, “This is to state that Mr. Julian Goodrum needs an extension of his medical leave for another two months. The antidepressants he is on at this time have failed to resolve his depression.”

In an interview, office manager Willis also supported the idea that Savage seemed to have dropped the idea of charging Goodrum with desertion. Willis said that she had a second conversation with Savage in which Savage indicated everything had been worked out and Goodrum was not in danger of being charged with desertion. “In one of the two conversations, she indicated that it was going to be OK,” Willis said. “I do remember her saying that it is OK, we will try to push through his leave.” Willis could not remember the exact date of these conversations, but both took place after Goodrum had been hospitalized.

“That was the last time we heard from the Army,” Goodrum says. “The Army just did not tell anybody I was AWOL. I know it is shocking, but it is true. The Army knew I was under psychological care and they knew the doctor. Why didn’t they call the doctor to tell him?”

Fort Knox said Savage still works there, but she did not call me back by the time this article went to press. Goodrum’s civilian doctor did not, either. Willis, his office manager, told me he would probably not return my calls. “He does not like to stir up trouble,” Willis told me.

While a bewildered and fearful Goodrum was trying to deal with this situation, his superior officers at Fort Knox were trying to dig up dirt on him. An e-mail from Jan. 20, 2004, obtained by his defense team, shows that Maj. William Judd, who worked for Stephens at Fort Knox, asked a colleague to look into a rumor that Goodrum might have used a fake name to get psychiatric treatment at the University of Kentucky. “We may be able to charge him with an offense under the Uniform Code of Military Justice,” the e-mail reads. “If you can get any paperwork from UK that has his [Social Security number] on it and shows that he tried to get admitted, that would be very helpful.” The rumor was false.

After Goodrum’s superiors cut off the Army’s insurance payments to the civilian hospital in Knoxville, Goodrum was forced to check out of the facility. His civilian psychiatrist, believing — with considerable reason — that being treated at Fort Knox would not help him get better, suggested that Goodrum go to the Army’s flagship hospital in Washington, Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Goodrum was shocked and angry at being charged with desertion and was afraid to return to Fort Knox. But he agreed to go to Walter Reed.

When he got there, on Feb. 9, 2004, Walter Reed’s doctors immediately placed him in the lockdown psychiatric ward for evaluation, a relatively standard step to determine if a soldier is a risk to himself or others. His medical records from that period portray Goodrum as “cooperative and polite” but also “anxious and depressed” and “largely preoccupied with concerns about legal charges and financial stressors.”

A note in Goodrum’s medical records shows that four days later, Stephens and the officer in charge of Fort Knox’s hospital, Col. Carol Pierce, visited Walter Reed on Feb. 12. It is unclear what they did there.

Although the records show that Goodrum was improving and that doctors planned to release him from the lockdown psychiatric ward on Feb. 19, Stephens called Walter Reed medical staff on Feb. 18, the records show, and told doctors to keep him in the lockdown ward. “Contacted by DCCS at Fort Knox, LTC Stephens, who provided additional information and expressed concerns regarding potential discharge of LT Goodrum,” the records say. Doctors at Walter Reed apparently agreed to keep him there. “Pt is scheduled for intake [for outpatient therapy] tomorrow, however due to recent admin developments concerning command at Fort Knox this may need to be postponed.”

Goodrum was held in the ward for the next 13 days, despite the belief of some on his medical team that he should be released. “Several team members have discussed concern that he is [in the locked ward]. Serial Mental Status exams have not revealed signs of psychosis, [suicidal thoughts] or [homicidal thoughts],” the records for Feb. 26 say. “As discussed previously, this inpatient hospitalization has been extended due to administrative concerns,” the records for Feb. 27 say. “This treatment could have taken place in an outpatient setting.” Walter Reed diagnosed him as suffering from PTSD.

After Goodrum had been held for nearly two weeks longer than apparently needed, I wrote an article about him on March 1, 2004. Walter Reed released him from the lockdown ward on March 2. Goodrum says he believes that his extended stay in the psychiatric lockdown was purely punitive and that if the article had not appeared, he might have been held much longer, perhaps indefinitely.

On March 3, documents from an FBI database show, Fort Knox officials asked federal prosecutors to troll the FBI’s National Crime Information Center for any criminal history for Goodrum. On March 4, Fort Knox deputy staff judge advocate Brian Corneilson forwarded to Army prosecutors in Washington the results of that FBI search and noted his suspicion that Goodrum might be a drug dealer. “Results of NCIC check received by Fort Knox indicates an individual (with a different name) with the same height, weight, hair color, social security number, but not eye color, as Goodrum was sale and delivery of Schedule IV substance on 9, Feb. 2001 in Clinton TN,” Corneilson wrote. Corneilson added that Clinton is “just outside of Knoxville,” near Goodrum’s home.

But a review of the FBI data pulled by Corneilson shows that the individual in question had not only a different eye color but also a different Social Security number and birth date. And Goodrum’s service records indicate that a conviction for drug dealing in February 2001 was unlikely, since the Army’s intelligence wing at Fort Meade in Maryland had granted Goodrum access to secret information through August 2002.

When told that the background check had identified the wrong man, Fort Knox spokeswoman Shaffery said, “Isn’t that interesting?” She said Corneilson is no longer at Fort Knox and she doesn’t know how to find him.

Goodrum’s superiors did come up with one allegation that stuck — fraternization. This allegation came from Fisher, Goodrum’s superior officer in Iraq. But there are several peculiar things about the fraternization case against Goodrum, including a possibly forged document and testimony that the Army itself admitted was “tainted.”

Military policy says a soldier should be “counseled” by a superior officer before the soldier faces serious punishment, after which a written “counseling statement” is to be placed in his or her record. Goodrum says Fisher never counseled him about the alleged fraternization — but that a counseling statement nevertheless showed up in his record when the Army threw the book at him. Goodrum claims it was manufactured.

“Lt. Goodrum needs to explain what he was doing last night, where he was, and with whom,” the statement, dated April 5, 2003, reads. It says that the female sergeant allegedly involved was suspiciously missing from her bunk one night at Camp Atterbury when Goodrum had gone missing too. “It is only suspect [sic] that these two, the platoon leader and sergeant, might be having an affair.”

Both commanders and soldiers are supposed to sign counseling statements to authenticate them. The Army prosecutors’ packet of information against Goodrum includes, behind the counseling statement, a separate authentication page that Goodrum and Fisher were supposed to sign to show that Goodrum had been counseled. But Goodrum’s signature is dated March 18, 2003, three weeks before he would have received the counseling. It looks like an exact copy of a signature from an unrelated document Goodrum signed on March 18, 2003.

Goodrum’s case file contains a dozen statements from soldiers from the 212th about the alleged fraternization between Goodrum and the female sergeant. Some believed their relationship may have been inappropriate; others did not.

Three soldiers allege having seeing Goodrum and the sergeant kiss. A military investigating officer later determined that two of those soldiers may have been engaged in an affair themselves and that Fisher may have threatened to prosecute them in an effort to get their statements against Goodrum. “The statements … may have obtained by coercion, using the threat of charges of adultery between these two soldiers as leverage for them to make statements against Lt. Goodrum,” the officer said, adding that the evidence “should be considered tainted.”

One officer stated in writing that he was present when Fisher used the threat of divulging the affair. He said Fisher had it in for Goodrum. “On several occasions Capt. Fisher stated that he hated Lt. Goodrum and wished he could get him,” said Lt. Jason Eisele from the 212th Transportation Company.

The third witness who said he saw Goodrum kissing his platoon sergeant said another soldier pointed it out. But in a written statement, that soldier said that it was not true.

The sergeant allegedly involved with Goodrum was never called by the Army to testify. In a written statement taken from Iraq, she denied a romantic relationship: “My relationship with Lt. Goodrum has been nothing but professional at all times,” she wrote.

As for Goodrum, he said he only learned of the charges on June 16, 2004 — the day he was charged with being AWOL. “The first time I hear of that was when they charged me. I knew the potential AWOL thing was going to pop, but I had that all covered by the reg. [Army regulations that show he should not have been considered AWOL]. I was in shock.”

After months of legal wrangling, on April 1, 2005, Maj. Gen. Galen Jackman at the Army’s Military District of Washington finally released a decision in Goodrum’s case. A few weeks before, the gray-haired Jackman considered the fraternization case while sitting at his desk in a cramped, hot office at tiny Fort McNair in southwest Washington. Goodrum stood for three hours, his perspiration finally soaking through the jacket of his dress uniform.

Jackman, who gained fame when he appeared giving his arm to Nancy Reagan during her husband’s funeral in Washington, found Goodrum innocent of the AWOL charge. He found Goodrum guilty of fraternization with the sergeant, but only of the lesser violation of presenting an inappropriate image, not of having sexual relations with her. In his written decision, Jackman does not explain the basis for finding Goodrum guilty.

Goodrum vows to keep trying to prove his innocence. “I’ll fight until justice is delivered,” Goodrum said. “I tell people: Try to settle your problems quietly and tactfully through the Army. But if you are going to fight, really, really be ready to fight until the end.”

That was too much for even a well-seasoned cubicle warrior like me to ignore and so I wrote a book about it, “We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the War for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People.” I was on the spot to see it all happen, leading two Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) in rural Iraq while taking part up close and personal in what the U.S. government was doing to, not for, Iraqis. Originally, I imagined that my book’s subtitle would be “Lessons for Afghanistan,” since I was hoping the same mistakes would not be endlessly repeated there. Sometimes being right doesn’t solve a damn thing.

By the time I arrived in Iraq in 2009, I hardly expected to be welcomed as a liberator or greeted — as the officials who launched the invasion of that country expected back in 2003 — with a parade and flowers. But I never imagined Iraq for quite the American disaster it was either. Nor did I expect to be welcomed back by my employer, the State Department, as a hero in return for my book of loony stories and poignant moments that summed up how the United States wasted more than $44 billion in the reconstruction/deconstruction of Iraq. But I never imagined that State would retaliate against me.

In return for my book, a truthful account of my year in Iraq, my security clearance was taken away, I was sent home to sit on my hands for months, then temporarily allowed to return only as a disenfranchised teleworker and, as I write this, am drifting through the final steps toward termination.

What We Left Behind in Iraq

Sadly enough, in the almost two years since I left Iraq, little has happened that challenges my belief that we failed in the reconstruction and, through that failure, lost the war.

The Iraq of today is an extension of the Iraq I saw and described. The recent Arab League summit in Baghdad, hailed by some as a watershed event, was little more than a stage-managed wrinkle in that timeline, a lot like all those purple-fingered elections the U.S. sponsored in Iraq throughout the Occupation. If you deploy enough police and soldiers — for the summit, Baghdad was shut down for a week, the cell phone network turned off, and a “public holiday” proclaimed to keep the streets free of humanity — you can temporarily tame any place, at least within camera view. More than $500 million was spent, in part planting flowers along the route dignitaries took in and out of the heavily fortified International Zone at the heart of the capital (known in my day as the Green Zone). Somebody in Iraq must have googled “Potemkin Village.”

Beyond the temporary showmanship, the Iraq we created via our war is a mean place, unsafe and unstable. Of course, life goes on there (with the usual lack of electricity and potable water), but as the news shows, to an angry symphony of suicide bombers and targeted killings. While the American public may have changed the channel to more exciting shows in Libya, now Syria, or maybe just to “American Idol,” the Iraqi people are trapped in amber, replaying the scenes I saw in 2009-2010, living reminders of all the good we failed to do.

Ties between Iraq and Iran continue to strengthen, however, with Baghdad serving as a money-laundering stopover for a Tehran facing tightening U.S. and European sanctions, even as it sells electricity to Iraq. (That failed reconstruction program again!) Indeed, with Iran now able to meddle in Iraq in ways it couldn’t have when Saddam Hussein was in power, that country will be more capable of contesting U.S. hegemony in the region.

Given what we left behind in Iraq, it remains beyond anyone, even the nasty men who started the war in 2003, to claim victory or accomplishment or achievement there, and except for the odd pundit seeking to rile his audience, none do.

What We Left Behind at Home

The other story that played out over the months since I returned from Iraq is my own. Though the State Department officially cleared “We Meant Well” for publication in October 2010, it began an investigation of me a month before the book hit store shelves. That investigation was completed way back in December 2011, though State took no action at that time to terminate me.

I filed a complaint as a whistleblower with the Office of the Special Counsel (OSC) in January 2012. It was only after that complaint — alleging retaliation — was filed, and just days before the OSC was to deliver its document discovery request to State, that my long-time employer finally moved to fire me. Timing is everything in love, war, and bureaucracy.

The charges it leveled are ridiculous (including “lack of candor,” as if perhaps too much candor was not the root problem here). State was evidently using my case to show off its authority over its employees by creating a parody of justice, and then enforcing it to demonstrate that, well, when it comes to stomping on dissent, anything goes.

My case also illustrates the crude use of “national security” as a tool within government to silence dissent. State’s Diplomatic Security office, its internal Stasi, monitored my home email and web usage for months, used computer forensics to spelunk for something naughty in my online world, placed me on a Secret Service Threat Watch list, examined my finances, and used hacker tools to vacuum up my droppings around the web — all, by the way, at an unknown cost to the taxpayers. Diplomatic Security even sent an agent around to interview my neighbors, fishing for something to use against me in a full-spectrum deep dive into my life, using the new tools and power available to government not to stop terrorists, but to stop me.

As our government accumulates ever more of what it thinks the American people have no right to know about, there will only be increasing persecutions as prosecutions. Many of the illegal things President Richard Nixon did to the famous Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg are now both legal (under the Patriot Act) and far easier to accomplish with new technologies. There is no need, for instance, to break into my psychiatrist’s office looking for dirt, as happened to Ellsberg; after all, the National Security Agency can break into my doctor’s electronic records as easily as you can read this page.

With its aggressive and sadly careless use of the draconian Espionage Act to imprison whistleblowers, the Obama administration has, in many cases, moved beyond harassment and intimidation into actually wielding the beautiful tools of justice in a perverse way to silence dissent. More benign in practice, in theory this is little different than the Soviets executing dissidents as spies after show trials or the Chinese using their courts to legally confine thinkers they disapprove of in mental institutions. They are all just following regulations. Turn the volume up from six to ten and you’ve jumped from vengeance to totalitarianism. We’re becoming East Germany.

What I Left Behind

There has been a personal price to pay for my free speech. In my old office, after my book was published in September 2011, some snarky coworkers set up a pool to guess when I would be fired — before or after that November. I put $20 down on the long end. After all, if I couldn’t be optimistic about keeping my job, who could?

One day in October, security hustled me out of that office, and though I wasn’t fired by that November and so won the bet, I was never able to collect. Most of those in the betting pool now shun me, fearful for their own fragile careers at State.

I’ve ended up talking, usually at night, with a few of the soldiers I worked with in Iraq. Some are at the end of a long Skype connection in Afghanistan, others have left the military or are stationed stateside. Most of them share my anger and bitterness, generally feeling used and unwanted now that they need a job rather than rote praise and the promise of a parade.

“We Meant Well” is, I think, pretty funny in parts. I recall writing it as an almost out-of-body experience as I tried to approach the sadness and absurdity of what was happening in Iraq with a sense of irony and black humor. That’s long gone, and if I were to write the story today, the saddest thing is that it would undoubtedly come out angry and bitter, too.

A Member of a Club That Would Have Me

Having left behind friends I turned out not to have, a career that dissolved beneath me, and a sense of humor I’d like to rediscover, I find myself a member of a new club I don’t even remember applying for: The Whistleblowers. I’ve now met with several of the whistleblowers I’ve written about with admiration: Tom Drake, Mo Davis, John Kiriakou and Robert MacLean, among others.

As ex- or soon-to-be-ex-government employees all, when we meet, we make small talk about retirement, annuities and the like. No one speaks of revolution or anarchy, the image of us the government often surreptitiously pushes to the media. After all, until we blew those whistles, we were all in our own ways believers in the American system. That, in fact, is why we did what we did.

My new club-mates represent hundreds of years of service — a couple of them had had long military careers before joining the civilian side of government — and we cover a remarkably broad swath of the American political spectrum. What we really have in common is that, in the course of just doing our jobs, we stumbled into colossal government wrongdoing (systematized torture, warrantless wiretapping, fraud and waste), stood up for what is right in the American spirit, and found ourselves paying surprising personal prices for acts that seemed obvious and necessary. We are guilty of naiveté, not treason.

Each of us initially thought that the agencies we worked for would be concerned about what we had stumbled upon or uncovered and would want to work with us to resolve it. If most of us are now disillusioned, we weren’t at the outset. Only by the force of events did we become transformed into opponents of an out-of-control government with no tolerance for those who would expose the truth necessary to create Thomas Jefferson’s informed citizenry. In meeting my club-mates, I learned that whistleblowers are not born, but created by a government with much to hide and an unquenchable need to hide it.

One of those whistleblowers, Jesselyn Radack, wrote a book about her experiences called “Traitor: The Whistleblower and the American Taliban.” At the dawn of the War on Terror, Radack, an attorney at the Department of Justice (DOJ), wrote a memo stating that John Walker Lindh, the “American Taliban” captured in Afghanistan, had rights and could not be interrogated without the benefit of counsel.

The FBI went ahead and questioned him anyway, and then DOJ tried to disappear Radack’s emails documenting this Constitutional violation. Ignoring her advice, the government tossed away the rights of one of its own citizens. Radack herself was subsequently forced out the DOJ, harassed, and had to fight simply to keep her law license.

As proof that God does indeed enjoy irony, Radack today helps represent most of the current crop of government whistleblowers (including me) in their struggles against the government she once served. Radack and I are now working with Academy Award-nominated filmmaker James Spione on a documentary about whistleblowers.

What Will Be Left Behind

So what’s left for me in my final days as a grounded State Department worker assigned to timeout in my own home? Given my situation, there is, of course, no desk to clean out; there are no knickknacks collected abroad over my 24 years to package up. All that’s left is one last test to see if the system, especially the First Amendment guaranteeing us the right to free speech, still has a heartbeat in 2012.

Though I could be terminated by State within a few weeks, I am otherwise only months away from a semi-voluntary retirement. Since I’m obviously out the door anyway, State’s decision to employ its internal security tools and expensive, taxpayer-paid legal maneuvers at this late date can’t really be about shortening my tenure by a meager four months. Instead, it’s clearly about mounting my head on a pike inside the lobby of State’s Foggy Bottom headquarters as a warning to its other employees not to dissent, or mention wrongdoing they might stumble across. Better, so the message goes, to sip the Kool Aid and keep one’s head down, while praising the courage of Chinese dissidents and Egyptian bloggers. The State Department is all about wanting its words, not its actions, to speak loudest.

Running parallel to the State Department termination process is an investigation by the Office of the Special Counsel into my claim of retaliation, which State is seeking to circumvent by tossing me out the door ahead of its conclusion. State wants to use my fate to send a message to its already cowed staff. However, if the Special Counsel concludes that the State Department did retaliate against me, then the message delivered will be quite a different one. It just might indicate that the First Amendment still does reach ever so slightly into the halls of government, and maybe the next responsible Foreign Service Officer will carry that forward a bit further, which would be good for our democracy.

One way or another, sometime soon the door will smack me in the backside on my way out. But whether the echo left behind inside the State Department will be one of justice or bureaucratic revenge remains undecided. My book is written and my career is over either way. However, what is left behind matters not just for me, but for all of us.

[Disclaimer: The views expressed here are solely those of the author in his private capacity and do not in any way represent the views of the Department of State, or any other entity of the U.S. Government. It should be quite obvious that the Department of State has not approved, endorsed, embraced, friended, liked, tweeted or authorized this post.]

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I journeyed to Alawadi’s adopted hometown of El Cajon in Southern California to find out more about her death. El Cajon is a microcosm of Iraq, but an Iraq that no longer exists. More than 40,000 Iraqis are struggling to build a new life there, having fled persecution in their homeland. One local described to me a community where “There’s Chaldeans, Yazidis, Mandaeans. There’s Shi’a, Sunni, Kurds. There’s Assyrian and Armenian.”

The first wave of immigration came in the late 1970s on the eve of the devastating Iran-Iraq War. Others, including Alawadi and her family, fled after the 1991 Persian Gulf War, mainly Shi’a who unsuccessfully tried to overthrow a wounded Saddam Hussein at the urging of the senior Bush administration. The third wave was courtesy of the junior Bush’s 2003 invasion, which spawned Islamist militias that have decimated Iraq’s Chaldean Christians, Mandaeans (followers of John the Baptist) and Yazidis (a 4,000-year-old syncretic religion). Out of the millions of Iraqi refugees from the most recent U.S. war, 59,000 have landed on American soil.

Many have found their way to El Cajon. They tell of harrowing escapes from kidnappings, bombings and death squads, years in refugee camps and life savings spent to hopscotch from country to country. Recent arrivals come bearing deep traumas and have landed in a depressed economy where they often sink into joblessness, squalor and depression. They have also discovered not everyone is welcoming.

“There is a hate crime problem in El Cajon,” says Basma Coda, an Iraqi-American who works at the Chaldean-Middle Eastern Social Services. “We have documented six physical attacks since 2007 in which Iraqi refugees were beat up and had broken bones. All had to go the hospital. They were all over 50, and one was a 75-year-old man with Parkinson’s disease.” (The El Cajon police department did not return calls about the alleged crimes.)

“There are a lot of anti-Islamic groups and know-nothings here,” says California State University professor Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism in San Bernardino. Nonetheless, he and other hate-crime monitors are skeptical of some of the alleged details of Alawadi’s death. “Why are the police so quick to say it is an isolated incident? That suggests to me they are looking at other motives. There is the possibility this could be some sort of personal attack or revenge attack.” Mark Potok, senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate groups nationwide, says that when he first heard about the threatening notes, “I raised an eyebrow. It’s too perfect. It’s highly unusual to have notes that spell out the motive on paper.” As for the crime itself, Potok says, “It is quite unusual to invade someone’s home, especially a woman, and violently beat her to death in the dining room.”

Indeed, in the days after her death several revelations called the hate-crime allegation into question. On April 4, an affidavit for a search warrant about the murder was “accidentally released,” according to the New York Times. The San Diego Union-Tribune, which first received the document, claimed it shows a “family in turmoil and cast doubt on the likelihood that her slaying was a hate crime.” Alawadi was said to be planning on leaving her husband, based on blank divorce papers found in her vehicle. Last November, police investigating reports of two people possibly having sex in a car found Fatima with a 21-year-old man. After her mother was called to pick her up, Fatima allegedly jumped out of the moving car at 35 mph. While being treated at a hospital for her injuries the court records state, “Police were informed by paramedics and hospital staff that Fatima Alhimidi said she was being forced to marry her cousin and did not want to do so she jumped out of the vehicle.”

The document also mentions “a neighbor reported seeing a skinny dark-skinned male running west from the area of Alawadi’s house” on the morning of the murder. According to the affidavit, as of March 27, the police had not confirmed the whereabouts of Kassim Alhimidi, Alawadi’s husband, at the time of the murder. And curiously, “a handwritten note was located at the scene that the family denied seeing before.”

Yet some in the community are still skeptical because there is no suspect, motive or murder weapon. Hanif Mohebi, director of the San Diego chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, says, “There are definitely questions that are brought up by the article, but we should not jump to a conclusion unless there is a real fact provided. Our community is not immune to these issues.”

Some observers worry that the new information in the Alawadi case will be misused. Hanif Mohebi says, “From the beginning we were very cautious about the murder because we are all human beings, and this could go any way. The Islamophobes will exploit this. If there is something that advances their agenda, they will most definitely use it.” Right on cue, Geller and Spencer began their postulations about “honor killings.”

Potok also stresses that, whoever murdered Alawadi, the rise in Islamophobia is genuine. The Southern Poverty Law Center has tracked a 200 percent increase in anti-Muslim hate groups nationwide from 10 such groups in 2010 to 30 in 2011. Potok attributes the spread to “the so-called Ground Zero Mosque controversy in 2010 that was really ginned up by opportunistic activists and politicians … This is a classic case of words having consequences.”

The rumors of notes, in particular, have unsettled Iraqi immigrants to El Cajon. The notes have hurled them back to wartime horrors they seem unable to escape. After the United States occupied Iraq, a favored tactic of extremist militias was to deliver a note to intended victims warning them to leave or be killed. Families would receive letters because a child or husband was collaborating with U.S. forces, or perhaps they were the wrong ethnicity or religion in the wrong part of town. Religious minorities were sometimes given the “option” of converting to Islam.

Basma Coda says, “We have threatening notes in our office that people brought from Iraq.” The notes say things like, “You are an infidel. You are a sinner. You deserve to die. If you don’t leave by a certain time, you and children will die.” Often they would be given a specific day or time to leave. Coda says, “The Iraqi refugees in El Cajon every day they live their fear. They live their trauma. The future is unknown for these refugees.” She says her social service organization is trying to help them, “but one incident like Alawadi’s murder takes them back to the trauma they experienced.”

On March 30, I attended an outdoor prayer service and candlelight vigil for Alawadi. I met one of her neighbors from Iraq. Abbas Almeali, 42, clad in traditional Iraqi garb and headdress, said he knew Shaima and her family from Samawa, the closest city in southern Iraq to the Saudi Arabian border. He fled in March 1991 after the revolt failed, but “was proud to be part of the uprising.” He said Alawadi’s father was tortured by Saddam Hussein’s regime and her uncle was hung during the uprising. “She was a nice girl, she had no problems with anyone,” Almaeli said.

Kamyar Hedayat, a medical doctor of Iranian heritage, spoke at the vigil. Hedayat said as he has practiced critical care for children, “I’ve watched children die, and I know how death affects families.” Hedayat said, “It is ironic that a woman who escaped the murderous regime of Saddam Hussein and the bombs of George Bush, Sr., lost her life in San Diego seeking safety and civility.”

Michelle Fawcett contributed to this report.

A man consumed with war, words and images, Busch served two combat tours in Iraq. He proved himself both exceptionally thoughtful and also terribly overconfident. In his first tour, beginning in April 2003, he was the commanding officer of a light armored reconnaissance unit, in a village near Iran. In his second tour, in an exploding Ramadi in 2005, Busch had the impossible job of trying to rebuild a town — and gain its trust — while insurgents and sniper fire added to the general lawlessness and lack of any power structure.

Oh, and in between those two tours, Busch returned home to play Sgt. Anthony Colicchio on “The Wire.” The military man who emphasized listening to Iraqis and learning what he didn’t know played a fictional Baltimore police officer of the exact opposite variety. The over-aggressive Colicchio loved nothing more than making arrests to show toughness and to pump up the Western District’s stats. He’s not interested in getting to know the streets he patrols, and he’s disgusted by covert efforts to legalize the drug trade in a part of Baltimore dubbed “Hamsterdam.”

In an interview this week, Busch said real-life frustrations in Iraq fueled Colicchio’s rage. But the challenge in Iraq, he says, was making sure those frustrations never, ever revealed themselves when working with Iraqis. Both roles, he said, were essentially acting jobs. We also talked about Robert Bales and how soldiers handle pressure, where the war plans went wrong and whether the Marines need more Vassar alums.

You were a student at Vassar during the first Gulf War, the 100-hour action that pushed Iraq out of Kuwait. You write about feeling disappointed that it was over so quickly – that this looked like your generation’s shot at war. You very much wanted to go to war.

I thought that. I pushed the extremes throughout my youth, as you can see from some of the small stories even as a child. I was always venturing into what I either considered unexplored territory or what I considered unwise territory to explore.  And war was certainly one of those things. Its mere existence is entirely an environment of threat. Although, as you learn in war, with the randomness of death, preparation is only partially useful. Looking forward to it, you think that you could develop skills which would make you impervious. I painted myself in that idea, that I had survived the poor wisdom of my youth, and it must be because I had certain endurance. I wanted to believe that that could be extended into an environment as ferocious as war. I covered myself in a certain invulnerability in my first tour as a commander, mostly because my Marines expected it.

There’s a vivid scene in the book where your helicopter is going down, and you see the side of a cliff rushing toward you, the small details of land getting clearer and clearer. But you have Marines in the back of the helicopter facing the other direction who don’t know what is happening. So you just calmly smiled at them.

What else can you do in the face of death but smile.

Some people might scream. 

I’m not a screamer. There’s a certain calm that comes with both a belief that you are invulnerable and a belief that you’re doomed.  It leads to a lack of anxiety: One you can’t affect, and the other you can’t be affected.

And that’s the change you describe during your two tours in Iraq. The first time, there’s an eerie confidence. But the second time, death is omnipresent.

Yes, between the two tours that became very pronounced. My first tour I was wearing it for show; I created my own myth and believed in it. My second tour I was wounded almost immediately and we were taking incredible casualties and Ramadi was just a caustic environment in 2005. It was entirely random; every day you expected that it was going to be your day. We almost had this fatalistic humor about it all. We’d walk out the door and say, “Oh, I’m probably going to be killed today, so you can have my uniforms.” People weren’t surviving.

This is post-insurgency, and in the capital of the Sunni province of Anbar. It was a very bloody time, and you suggest our presence didn’t help, which in some ways is a startling admission from a Marine.

It was teeming not just with insurgents — actual Sunnis which were fighting for their own destiny — but it was also overrun with Syrians who were real pure jihadists. They came across the border to fight and die – they came there for us. Many of them were funded by Saudis. So there was a strange triangle of danger created all around our mere presence. And what we would look at was the families. There were children living there and parents who wanted what everyone wants – a secure day, food on the table. And not to fear that something collateral will happen to them, either by insurgents or by us. It was hard to watch that every day, knowing that they were under threat because we were under threat. And that our job was to protect them and we really couldn’t.

Let me back up for a moment. Your memoir has nine chapters, structured among elements like water, metal, stone and blood. You recount stories involving those materials from your youth, and then connect those materials to your war stories. So how did your childhood prepare you for what you saw when you weren’t playing games?

Endless fascination. I think it was endless fascination that prepared me for everything in my life. I was always paying attention. I was put here to observe and build upon my fascinations.

You make it sound simple. But there’s another scene in the book where you are called to mediate an emergency council meeting in Jassan. Water had been diverted to Saddam Hussein’s family. The town wanted a pipe sealed so their water flow would improve. The people did not know what to do, and insurgents were threatening the village’s leaders and sent a message during the meeting that they would also kill you. How does a young American in that situation know what to do?

It’s my Lawrence of Arabia moment.

It’s also a moment where you teach the meaning of democracy. You empower them to put the matter to a vote, and then act. You see people hungry to solve problems together, and excited to find the power within themselves to do that. That’s in some ways what we said we would do there — and exactly what didn’t happen often enough.

It was my place not to impose that, but to let that native urge be successful. I just felt very early that they wanted direction, and the worst thing that I could do would be to give it, because that would make me in charge. That would make me the ruling class. What had been removed was any sense of structure – the Baath party had been dissolved at that point, and had not been replaced with anything. There was a huge vacuum and all that had been put into it was us. And I knew that our mistakes would be made by creating a dependency upon a new state order that was perhaps not sustainable. I had nothing to offer except advice and bullets. That’s what I had. We couldn’t even get our mail at the time. What I wanted to do was find native solutions to native problems that I could only reinforce their answers to their problems, in some ways.  And that was a big moment I wish I could have celebrated in some ways because it was their choice and it was just that brief moment where they felt like they were in charge of their destiny – they felt like they had done something. They had the power to achieve justice, and they did it against all the odds. We had to replace rule of law in a place that is entirely lawless.

So you pay attention. I just followed my fascinations. Why is the water not running? Where does the water come from? Let’s follow that. And we did. You begin to reverse engineer everything just by seeing what’s wrong at the end. I wouldn’t say that I was good at anything.

Good questions. Too bad we didn’t ask them more often.

We could have saved a lot of time and a lot of loss if we had done so. What I feel the most regret about is that I left those people. We had that place almost stabilized in some ways, and though it was not in any way efficient or in any way without corruption, there was a possibility of being quietly transformative in some of those communities.

How do you see what went wrong?

We tried to define them. It’s what we do. We’re Americans. We find ourselves in a position that’s generally comfortable and our vision can only extend so far as us, and who wouldn’t want to be like us. So, if we just offer this, then it will be accepted and embraced. We don’t have a lot of respect for cultural traditions because we barely have any.

And honestly, our own history, if you watch how we achieved our great comfort, it’s pretty ugly. We’d like to criticize everyone for their stages toward democracy but if you look at ours – we didn’t let women vote, we didn’t let blacks vote, we had slaves. We had issues. We eradicated an entire native population almost.  I went into the place knowing that I was the one with the least information, and so it was my job to spend as much time listening and not talking as I could. I wanted to make sure I kept track of the details, the names. I was rebuilding family trees because the environment was built out of family trees.

Unless you’re going to come in there like the British empire and establish infrastructure and reform an entire place in its image, then you’re going to be wholly ineffective. We are definitely not the British empire in the way that we do business. We went in there awkwardly, we built mistakes upon mistakes. And after a while, you know, we wore ourselves down being wrong about things. It just took a little perspective, and some specialists. The people in the State Department knew all about Iraq. I would have liked to have had them in my vehicle.

All that failure, all that pressure, the consecutive tours. Not everybody handles pressure the way you were able to. What do you think happens when a soldier snaps, like Sgt. Robert Bales in Afghanistan, and allegedly goes on a shooting rampage and kills 17 people.

I can’t diagnose him. We have people that do horrible things all the time. Everyone deals with stress in their own way. There were ideologues over there. There were people who were on crusades. You just name it – look at everyone’s background.

Is this the right way to put a military together? When you look at the background you had, and the very different way you approached problem-solving and building relationships with people, those don’t necessarily seem to be the skills most valued by the military right now. You were a visual artist from Vassar. You probably had many cultural issues to overcome. But would a more diverse military be beneficial? Even some sort of mandated public service of some sort

What I found intriguing was that I met America in the Marines. At Vassar, I met a certain intellectual group. Vassar doesn’t teach you how to do anything. Literally. You come out of Vassar with no skill other than that if you find yourself in any situation you’ll be able to think your way out of it. It’s a critical thinking environment. To constantly question, to constantly try to resolve, and to resolve by not talking over the problem but by engaging in it. Collectively in some ways.  The military obviously has a very hierarchical system, but I didn’t see them any differently. I took the discipline of critical thinking, much to the chagrin of certain people, and I employed it.

Now that led to its own kind of hubris in your second tour, when you thought what had been effective among the Shia might also work with the Sunni. It didn’t.

I said, well, I don’t understand anything that’s happening here, which should tell me something. Shut up and find out. I deluded myself into thinking that because I had been effective in that area, which was very rural, Shia, on the Iranian border, with completely different feelings, that when I went for my second tour in Ramadi, the opposite side of the country, Sunni, I thought I could apply these great collective, cooperative ideas of building a city to a place that was a shooting gallery. And I was exposed for being the most wrong person, ever. It was just one step short of delusional that I could take these ideas and apply them effectively to a place, thinking, Well, this has been effective in a small scale, on a small range, with almost no money. We repaired buildings, we established critical infrastructure, we fixed water lines. We did an awful lot of stuff in a small place and they liked it.

With the irony, of course, that we fixed what we blew up.

Right. I thought that if you give something to someone that they realize is of great value to them, then they will defend it and, in doing so, they will embrace some of the stability that comes with preserving things instead of destroying them. We knew very well what the Taliban did and what the insurgents could do, which was destroy things. They didn’t build things for people; they blew them up. Our message was, “We didn’t do that.” And of course, in order to fight them, we blew things up. So our message was lost in our own struggle, and we never could achieve the support of the locals because we could prove nothing. We couldn’t give them the one thing that was needed for all these things to be effective, which was security, peace. We couldn’t do it. And because they knew we couldn’t do it, they were forced to side with those who would use extreme measures.

“Hopelessness” is certainly a word that comes to mind. I mean, we fought the city every day, as one captain said when we were there. You don’t fight the Battle of Ramadi, you fight Ramadi every day.

An impossible bureaucracy, corrupt institutions, intractable problems — it’s almost like a David Simon TV show.  And in between tours in Iraq, you established an acting career, and played a Baltimore policeman on “The Wire.” How did one experience affect the other?

Sgt. Colicchio fed off that second tour of Iraq where I was so frustrated. Colicchio is the opposite, he has a very black-and-white sense of justice. There is no gray for him, and of course, Iraq was entirely gray. So I got to air all the things I had to bury while I was there.

What was the timeline like on the acting roles, and your military service?

Interestingly, I had just come back from my first tour when I got the role of Colicchio. And for a year, 2004, I did Season 3. Immediately at the end of the filming schedule, I went to Ramadi. For 2005, I came back just in time for the beginning of Season 4 and rushed to grow out some hair on my face. It was literally at the end of one experience and the beginning of a very different one.

How do you handle that psychologically — to go from a real war zone into playing a police officer?

It was all an acting of a certain kind. When you play a role, there is some of you in it, and the rest is what you’re burying yourself in to create a character. I did that in Iraq. I didn’t think I could be killed. I had to prove that by acting that way. And I did the same thing with Colicchio; Colicchio  was airing a lot of frustration I truly felt, that I kept to myself, and he gave it a voice. So it’s interesting that I think the war informed Colicchio in some ways, and then going back, I was once again placed in that environment where I had to create a certain person who was both real and partially imagined to deal with that environment. I couldn’t actively and visually be frustrated with Iraqis, because that was insulting. Even if they were saying the most outrageous stuff imaginable. It’s an area of conversation, most of which is a lie. Asking questions about the lie, you begin to get pieces of the truth, and eventually, you create something close to what’s really going on.

Makiya was no academic advocate, however. He returned to Iraq to set up an NGO, and was an advisor to the Iraq interim governing council. He oversaw the drafting of a prototype Iraqi constitution, which called for a secular, democratic state. He argued with Chalabi about pushing Iraq into a civil war. He has been back to Iraq “many times” since the 2003 invasion, he says.

Now Makiya is back as a pundit, talking about Iraq’s neighbor to the west, Syria, a country increasingly engulfed in civil war. All efforts to reached negotiated solution have failed and the government’s attacks on its opponents, armed and unarmed, have widened. An estimated 8,000 civilians have been killed in the past year. In challenging President Bashar al-Assad’s entrenched dictatorship, the Arab Spring has suffered its most violent repression.

Makiya has written a powerful article  for the New Republic, calling international intervention in Syria a “moral and human imperative.” “There is a moral and a human imperative to act that is larger than any nation’s interests and larger than any strategic calculation,” he writes. “That is so obvious it is an embarrassment to have to say it. This is how I thought about intervention in Iraq 20 years ago and it is how I think about what needs to be done in Syria today.”

But, of course, the disaster of the Iraq war that Makiya supported causes many to draw the opposite conclusion: that America should avoid intervening in the Middle East militarily, at least unless it is directly attacked. For Makiya the mistake came not in 2003, but 1991, the year that hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were slaughtered after they rose up to overthrow Saddam Hussein, while President George H.W. Bush and his Allied Coalition sat by, despite having urged the uprising. Many Iraqis understandably felt betrayed. But the first President Bush, unlike his son, had few illusions about America’s ability to govern Iraq after getting rid of Saddam.

Makiya spoke to Salon about these ideas in a recent phone conversation. He wrote the TNR piece, he says, because he has a “sense of déjà vu” that the world is making the same mistakes that it did in 1991. In 1991, the case for intervention was “much, much greater,” Makiya says. The population had risen in opposition, the Iraqi army was devastated, and help was nearby. No help was given.

“The result was, not only did you have an immediate crushing of the uprising, but in the two to four months following that, as the regime retaliated, the result was some 200,000 dead,” he says.

The single biggest problem in Iraq is the devastation that resulted from the failure of the state following the 1991 uprising, Makiya says. “A state that I described as semi-totalitarian in ‘Republic of Fear’ turned into a criminal state. Sanctions took a huge toll, and institutions crumbled. They were totalitarian institutions, to be sure, but they had functioning health and education systems. The infrastructure for all that collapsed.” By the time the Americans did invade, in 2003, “the institutions are a shell of their former selves, and the entire thing collapsed like a house of cards,” he says. That is the lesson Makiya believes we should learn from Iraq. “It’s not a case of intervening too much or too little,” he argues, “but when it happens that matters.”

Makiya says that “what we are looking at in Syria is very similar.” Aside from the failures of the Arab Spring, the cost will be not just victims who have already been killed. The cost of keeping Syrian leader Basher al-Assad, he says, will be “hundreds of thousands dead,” as the regime retaliates over the long term. Not letting that happen is Makiya’s imperative, he says.

His plan relies on the leadership not of the United States, but of Turkey. A safe haven for the Syrian opposition should be established that would be policed by Turkish troops and funded by Arab countries. “Establish a place where the Syrians can be safe from the bombardment and killing machine of Assad, No. 1. No. 2, give them a chance to organize their future.” America uses its political capital, not its military capital, to establish a safe haven protected by the Turks. “It just requires political will, but that is the crucial first step before we can talk about arming the Syrian opposition and finding out who the opposition is. That’s where I would start.”

The solution may not be so simple. The rebels are determined to bring Assad down. Will those protecting them prevent the government’s overthrow? With much of the country targeted, a no-kill zone will have to engulf much of the country. At that point, the Assad government may simply make war on the Turks, lest the government lose control of a majority of the populace. Why the Turks would sign on to such an open-ended venture is unclear.

Hanging over all this is the specter of Iraq. How one evaluates that war often determines how one views the prospect of further involvement in Syria. Makiya still believes the war was worth it; indeed, he wishes it came in 1991.

“2003 didn’t come out of nowhere. It directly follows the tragic outcome of 1991, which only looked on paper like a victory because Saddam Hussein was kicked out of Kuwait.” For the Iraqis who faced retaliation and 13 years of crippling sanctions, it was not a victory at all. “From an Iraqi point of view, containment didn’t work.” For all the horrors of the war and the many mistakes America made,  Makiya says, “Iraqis have a future. They have elections, they are starting to learn politics because their institutions were destroyed by 30 years of Saddam Hussein, and there is hope.”

Many Iraqis disagree with that argument. According to November 2011 polling conducted by Zogby, a full one-half of Iraqi Shiites and Sunnis say they are “worse off” as a result of the war. Eighty-eight percent and 81 percent of Sunni and Shia Arabs, respectively, say “personal safety and security” has worsened. Those figures, of course, do not include the feelings of the many Iraqis dead from the war, nor of the more than 5 million refugees that resulted from the conflict.

Moreover, the war was an unmitigated disaster for the United States. Whatever benefits were accrued from the removal of Saddam Hussein were outweighed by the deaths of 4,486 American troops, the expenditure of at least $1 trillion, the erosion of U.S. credibility and international support, and the bolstering of Iranian power.

Nonetheless, Syria is not Iraq, which was at worst a potential threat to the United States. Syria is undoubtedly a humanitarian crisis. But Makiya concedes Syria is like Iraq in another way: We don’t know much about it.

“It turns out we don’t know an awful lot about what happens after 30 years of a totalitarian regime. We didn’t really understand the legacy of pain and brutalization that this kind of situation in Iraq and, perhaps to a lesser extent, in Syria, have gone through,” he admits.

Trying to replace a dictatorship is something the United States should avoid, given its disastrous history in the region. Only the people of Syria can do that and the world community may have to protect them in order to avoid an even great massacre and a wider war. Makiya’s plan hinges on Turkey taking a leading role. It’s difficult to see how it would work but such a scheme may be the only hope Syria has left.

But Shanksville was far away. It was raining and cold and I kept pedaling. I was wet, breathing hard, my ass hurt and heart felt like it could burst. I wanted to stop. But that was out of the question. I wasn’t going to let the other cyclists down.

I looked down at the Garmin mileage tracker on the handlebars of my road cycle. It read: “790.”

In just 121 miles, it would hit “911.” Then the champagne would flow.

In my 12 years as a journalist this moment ranks high in terms of unusual situations that I’ve been in. Here I was, supposedly reporting and the battery for the tiny HD camera attached to my bike had run out. Walkie-talkie contact with my director of photography, “Blood Diamonds” author Greg Campbell, was long lost.

Alone with my thoughts and too tired to talk or do anything constructive for the film, I kept spinning my legs. I wondered if I ought to be on the back of a motorcycle, armed with a camera and helping Greg. Or maybe I should be in a van, waving my arms and squinting at horizons, sipping a perpetual cup of lukewarm coffee and looking like a film director.

It was a moment of doubt. I wondered, “Was I still making a difference to this film?”

It was also a moment of pain with pain. I was, as cyclists say, bonking, or hitting a proverbial wall of fatigue after riding hundreds of miles, including several days with a small group of cyclists through Tropical Storm Lee. The proverbial wall became a real one: this damn hill. On any other ride, I may have quit.

But today, most of the cyclists around me were hurting just as bad. As Dexter Durante, an Army master sergeant who was blinded when a small bit of C-4 explosive detonated in his face during a training accident, told me, cycling is like a bad relationship – the kind so bad that it’s good for you, if that makes sense. “You know, she hurts so bad,” he says in his poetic way. “Yet still, she’s addictive, you know. I can’t stop loving her. I’m all into her, even when I’m climbing up them hills.”

For years I’ve reported on the toll of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, including here at Salon. In two investigations, reporter Mark Benjamin and I revealed that troops with severe psychological trauma had been mistreated by commanders when they returned from brutal war deployments. Some were drummed out of the Army without adequate access to benefits, like help for their PTSD, at a time when suicides were hitting record highs.

Now, I was pulling a new thread in this story that has sweeping ramifications for not just a generation of American troops, but also their communities. Troops are fighting to recover from their wounds. If there are enough of them, they may alter the stereotype that many returning veterans are hardcore substance abusers who can become violent and dangerous.

I met young privates, hard-nosed sergeants, fresh-faced officers, Navy SEALs, Army Rangers and Special Forces officers. They were all joining cycling rides  – whether they were wounded warriors or not. Neither rank nor branch of service matters. When former Army Chief of Staff George W. Casey, a retired four-star general, joined the trek in September, he told everyone to call him “George.”

Vietnam vets I met along the way were almost jealous of this – in a melancholy sort of way. More than one told me they wished there was something like this for them when they returned from war back in the 1960s and 1970s. One told me he was so inspired by the young riders that he was now, after all these years, starting to address long-lingering psychological issues, including simmering, vague anger, head-on. Everyone I met, it seemed, was having nightmares. And everyone was finding a way to talk about them.

This is what John Wordin, a former pro cyclist and executive director of the Ride2Recovery nonprofit, wanted. Hundreds of troops, clad not in camo and boots, but superhero-like Lycra and clicky shoes, all riding together, helping one another by literally lending a hand by placing their palm on the back of the rider next to them (or on the push-bar of a hand cycle or recumbent). This makes hills easier. Moreover, they could talk about their problems with people who understand.

As I pedaled for hundreds of miles last summer and fall through several East Coast states and Normandy, France, I received a few pushes myself. I returned the favor and began to push others. Somewhere in there, riders began to trust us and tell their stories on camera.

In the film, troops talk about how their post-traumatic stress disorder evolved. Wives share what they thought when their husbands lost their legs. Riders speak about the darker places in their souls. Suicide was a subject that came up.

Then we’d ride some more. Then came laughter.

Besides the obvious benefits of cardio exercise, weight loss and muscle gain, bicycling creates a “runner’s high,” a rush of endorphins and a sense of euphoric bliss. As Tony Dragovich, a doctor at the pain clinic for Fort Bragg, North Carolina, tells me, “You relieve your own pain by doing this. So it becomes a self-fulfilling pain treatment.” The activity can be so powerful, he says, that riders with severe pain have kicked their dependence on prescription pills.

For some riders, there’s a new addiction: speed. After a grueling climb comes the reward of a fast descent in which bicycles can hit speeds of up to 60 mph. My mini bike computer has told me I’ve hit speeds in the high 50s many times and I can only say that it is seriously fun and scary all at once.

There are crashes. I saw one unfold before my eyes. As a small group of riders zoomed down a hill in Pennsylvania as part of a ride to meet up with a larger contingent of riders at ground zero in New York on Sept. 10 last year, three riders tumbled on the road when a stick got caught in someone’s spokes. One rider, Dick Brock, a gray-haired man who just rides because he loves being around veterans, needed a hip replacement.

That event was on my mind as we closed in on mile 911 in the suburbs outside the Pentagon in late September. I was also thinking about Army Sgt. 1st Class Justin Minyard, a 9/11 first responder and rider who came up with the idea of the 911-mile journey to honor the victims of 9/11. He couldn’t make it because of a medical issue and not being there was something he said he’d probably regret for a long time.

When we hit 911, champagne was everywhere, all over everyone. I’ve never poured champagne over anyone for a story. This was not any old story.

Several of the soldiers and Marines I rode with now call Greg and me friends. We made friends. As one sergeant wrote to me, “For a bunch of wounded guys and gals to accept and let you into our circle may not seem like a lot but it is. We are very protective of whom we tell and how we tell it. We created a special bond that I know that I will never forget.”

That’s the kind of solidarity that I want every average American to know is out there for them if they take the time to care. There are a lot of positives to having a military where men and women voluntarily agree to serve, but the system has also led to a divide. Many families seem blissfully unaware of the challenges faced by military families, including their tragic losses.

Whether you were for or against the wars, I’m here to tell you times are changing and war is winding down. The troops are coming home in droves and many have experienced horrific moments. Soldiers and their loved ones often tell me they are somehow different than when they left, changed in a sad sort of way, like the excitement of life is gone and can’t be recaptured. They are seeking their old selves – their true selves. They are looking for the persons they were before they went into combat. I am honored that I was there to catch a glimpse of the spark returning to their eyes.

To see the trailer for the film “Recovering,” click here.