Inside The Mind Of A Soldier

Steven D. Green, the 21-year-old Army private charged with a heinous crime in Iraq, has pleaded not guilty to all charges. Green was discharged from the Army two months after the incident. CBS News Chief Investigative Correspondent Armen Keteyian takes a look at how Green got into the Army in the first place.

It was only after the Army had become aware Green had allegedly raped an Iraqi woman and then massacred her and her family that the clinical term "anti-social" was publicly added to the diagnosis.

"Chances are you're going to be insubordinate with authority, you're going to be able to casually do wrongful things to enemy non-combatants," says Dr. Michael Stone, a professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University.

So how does an Infantryman like Green, suffering from such a disorder, slip pass recruiters, take the oath of enlistment and make it all the way into combat?

One reason, experts say, is that prior to induction, there is no formal personality assessment. Recruits are asked only to fill out medical forms, volunteering whether they've ever seen a mental health professional.

In addition, military recruiters around the country are under constant pressure to fulfill annual quotas and maintain new troop levels.
Recently, recruiters have been accused of widespread, fraudulent enlistments and ethical misconduct.

To help meet the U.S. military's lofty recruitment goals — 80,000 new troops this year alone — an ever-increasing number of recruits receive waivers for issues ranging from medical problems to misdemeanor drug and alcohol convictions. Those waivers have increased by 70 percent since 2001.

The Pentagon says only about 1 percent of all those booted out of the Army involve "personality disorders." But numbers can be deceiving. At Fort Carson in Colorado, about 18 percent of the soldiers involuntarily discharged involve personality disorders — a threefold increase since the war began.