In about a day, I would be at the exact place where the plane went down, by the sides of dozens of troops who were injured in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. I was chronicling a solemn moment on the 10thanniversary of the 9/11 attacks for “Recovering,” the documentary film I’m directing about troops who have turned to an unlikely recreation, bicycling, to heal from wounds such as post-traumatic stress disorder and lost limbs.

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.

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Now Needham is gone too. He died on Feb. 19, about 10 days after back surgery at a Veteran's Affairs hospital in Tucson, Ariz. The circumstances surrounding Needham’s death are unclear. According to his father, Mike Needham, an older brother discovered John Needham slumped over his bed at his mother’s house in Arizona, his face blue. Efforts by his brother, and then rescuers, to revive him were unsuccessful.

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According to the report, "Survey data from this investigation suggest a possible association between increasing levels of combat exposure and risk for negative behavioral outcomes." The study also says that "combat intensity/exposure . . . may have increased the risk for violent behaviors" and that its "findings are consistent with recent research on combat exposure and subsequent behavior outcomes among Soldiers."

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Last month, Salon published a surreptitious tape recording of a psychologist at the Army's Fort Carson in Colorado admitting privately to a wounded soldier that he and "all clinicians up here are being pressured not to diagnose PTSD." Instead, psychologist Douglas McNinch says on the tape, the soldier would receive another diagnosis likely to result in lower disability payments.

In a follow-up piece, Salon showed how the tape made its way to the upper reaches of the Pentagon and staff on the Senate Armed Services Committee not long after it was recorded in mid-2008. The Army Medical Command then investigated itself -- failing to contact the soldier involved -- and found that nobody did anything wrong.

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Despite his symptoms, however, the Army diagnosed the first lieutenant with anxiety disorder instead of PTSD. He was also diagnosed with depression and given antidepressants. The Army then "stop-lossed" Marino, to prevent him from leaving the Army although his time was up. He was shipped back to Afghanistan for a second tour in 2006. A diagnosis of PTSD might have kept him from being redeployed and sent back into combat; a diagnosis of anxiety disorder did not.

In two stories published this week, Salon has described how a soldier secretly taped an Army psychologist named Douglas McNinch saying that the Army was exerting pressure on him not to diagnose soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder. According to McNinch, the Army preferred that he diagnose soldiers with anxiety disorder instead -- the same diagnosis Marino received. Marino's experience is a case study in what happens when Army medical care is influenced by the need to keep soldiers on the battlefield and the need to hold down the cost of long-term disability payments.

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If what McNinch says on the tape is true, why is it happening? Why would the Army purposely diagnose soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder with something other than PTSD? Combat stress is as real as your big toe. Why would the Army want to deny, or at least minimize, a known consequence of combat? The truth might rest in math.

Soldiers with PTSD present the Army with two problems, both involving scary numbers. First, soldiers suffering serious combat stress should not be returned to combat, and if they cannot fight they represent a significant manpower loss for an already stretched military.  A recent Rand Corp. study estimates that nearly 20 percent of those Army troops who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan might suffer from PTSD or major depression. If they were all barred from the battlefield, the Army could lose as many as one out of every five combat troops while trying to fight two wars.

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But neither the U.S. Senate nor the Army apparently agrees with McNinch's assessment of the treatment that returning soldiers are receiving. By early July, news of the tape recording had made its way to both the Senate Armed Services Committee and the upper reaches of the Pentagon. Despite prodding from Sen. Kit Bond, the Senate Armed Services Committee declined to investigate the tape's implications. A veterans' advocacy group then had a combative July 14 meeting at the Pentagon with the Army's vice chief of staff, at which the vice chief was reportedly dismissive. Two weeks later, the Army issued the results of an internal investigation and absolved itself of any wrongdoing.

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In an interview in the high-rise offices of his Denver attorneys, however, symptoms of the damaged brain inside that tough exterior begin to appear. Sgt. X's eyes go suddenly blank, shifting to refocus oddly on a wall. He pauses mid-sentence, struggling for simple words. His hands occasionally tremble and spasm.

For more than a year he's been seeking treatment at Fort Carson for a brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder, the signature injuries of the Iraq war. Sgt. X is also suffering through the Army's confusing disability payment system, handled by something called a medical evaluation board. The process of negotiating the system has been made harder by his war-damaged memory. Sgt. X's wife has to go with him to doctor's appointments so he'll remember what the doctor tells him.

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After scanning the headlines, you probably would not jot down the first agenda item on the GAO list of issues "needing the attention of President-elect Obama and the 111th Congress." The first issue on their list: "Caring for Service Members."

Four years ago, Salon exposed inadequate mental healthcare at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, unraveling the first threads in what eventually became part of a national scandal. Today, the grind of multiple deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan translates into scores of damaged soldiers coming home. The trend far outstrips the raft of good-sounding military programs -- seemingly invisible at some Army posts -- the Pentagon set up to help these desperate troops. Forget about moldy barracks or mouse droppings in the hallways. People are dying unnecessarily.

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The Kentucky native, an Army soldier stationed at Fort Carson, between deployments in Iraq, had fallen asleep after drinking when his girlfriend began to pound on his apartment door. She wanted inside, and she wanted to talk.

Eastridge responded with a string of obscenities and then flung the door open. He pointed a loaded pistol at his girlfriend. She looked at him like he was crazy, then turned and ran. Eastridge didn't fire. He stood motionless, stunned by his own reaction.

Eastridge recounts the episode from a gray plastic table inside Kit Carson Correctional Center, an island of concrete and razor wire in eastern Colorado's flat ocean of wheat. Now 25, he admits that by the time of his arrest in 2006 for felony menacing, he was already a "runaway train." But the train would keep going for another year, through a second deployment to Iraq, a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder, and then the death of a fellow soldier. Eastridge is among 13 current or former Fort Carson soldiers to return from the Iraq war and then be accused or convicted of involvement in murder since 2005.

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Lawrence's mother had discovered correspondence indicating that her daughter and Marko had planned to meet, and Marko piqued investigators' interest when he initially denied he knew Lawrence. His story kept changing during a chilly weekend in October 2008. Eventually, Marko admitted he knew the 19-year-old special education student, saying he was with her in the rugged terrain somewhere around Pikes Peak, west of Colorado Springs, Colo. He said he left her there.

By Monday, Oct. 13, on Marko's 21st birthday, he finally led deputies to a wooded area. There, investigators searched for and found Lawrence's body, her throat slashed. She had also been raped, investigators say.

Marko, of Decatur, Mich., a man with no prior criminal history, now sits in El Paso County jail in Colorado without bail, awaiting trial for murder. He also faces separate charges for allegedly sexually assaulting a 14-year-old runaway from a psychiatric facility, and for possessing child porn.

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Photo courtesy Sheilagh McAteer

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Needham in his Humvee in Iraq around August 2007, a month prior to his suicide attempt.

Needham on patrol in Iraq.

Needham on patrol in Iraq.

After being diagnosed with PTSD, John Needham was sent back to the U.S., and eventually to Fort Carson. He was greeted at Denver International Airport by Georg-Andreas Pogany, at the time an investigator for the advocacy organization Veterans for America. [Photo by Michael de Yoanna]

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But "Needhammer" was not indestructible after all. He struggled with the aftereffects of the explosions he'd dodged. He survived a suicide attempt while in Iraq, and, after being shipped out of the country in 2007, was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and a brain injury. He took so many prescription meds he could barely hold his head up. According to Needham's father, Mike, the Army's response to the soldier's problems was punishment rather than treatment.

Last year, just weeks after his discharge, he allegedly beat 19-year-old aspiring model Jacqwelyn Villagomez to death in his California condo.

A Salon investigation has identified several trends involving Fort Carson soldiers who became homicidal. There are failures by healthcare workers and commanders to provide proper care to soldiers struggling with hidden wounds such as PTSD and brain injuries. There is a tendency to overmedicate soldiers struggling with stress or other injuries. Behind it all is an Army culture that punishes problematic soldiers instead of aiding them.

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Inside, the chapel was hushed. Camouflage-clad, crew-cut young men packed the pews. Up in front, an empty Army helmet hung on the butt of an upright M16. A pair of brown combat boots sat below, as if they had been tucked under a bunk. A soldier handed Heidi a program for a memorial service. On the front was the image of a soldier, kneeling in prayer below an American flag and illuminated by a beacon of light from above. The inscription just below the kneeling soldier read, "Lord, grant me the strength ..."

It had been five days since Heidi's son Adam, 21, a soldier at Fort Carson, swallowed handfuls of prescription sleeping pills and psychotropic drugs in the barracks, trying to die. With a can of black paint, Adam brushed a suicide note on the wall of his room. The Army, Adam wrote, "took my life." (Read Adam Lieberman's story here.)

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Staff Sgt. Mark Waltz
On April 30, 2007, three days after an appointment at Evans Hospital, the Fort Carson hospital, Waltz fell asleep on the couch in his Colorado Springs home. He never woke up.

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This story is no longer just about lack of medical care. It's far worse than sighting mold and mouse droppings in the barracks. Late last month the Army released data showing the highest suicide rate among soldiers in three decades. At least 128 soldiers committed suicide in 2008. Another 15 deaths are still under investigation as potential suicides. "Why do the numbers keep going up?" Army Secretary Pete Geren said at a Jan. 29 Pentagon news conference. "We can’t tell you." On Feb. 5, the Army announced it suspects 24 soldiers killed themselves last month, more than died in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan combined.

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"I FACED THE ENEMY AND LIVED!" Lieberman painted on the wall in big, black letters. "IT WAS THE DEATH DEALERS THAT TOOK MY LIFE!"

Soldiers called Lieberman's unit, the 1st Battalion, 67th Armored Regiment, the Death Dealers. Adam suffered serious mental health problems after a year of combat in Iraq. The Army, however, blamed his problems on a personality disorder, anxiety disorder or alcohol abuse -- anything but the war. Instead of receiving treatment from the Army for his war-related problems, Adam faced something more akin to harassment. He was punished and demoted for his bad behavior, but not treated effectively for its cause. The Army's fervent tough-guy atmosphere discouraged Adam from seeking help. Eventually he saw no other way out. Now, in what was to be his last message, he pointed the finger at the Army for his death.

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