Author: Gunner

The same news piece, a survey on morale among U.S. Army troops stationed in Iraq. The same data. So many different ways to look at it.

First, let’s look at the unnecessarily negative headline.

Army: GI morale low in Iraq

Why do I say unnecessarily negative? The piece, by far the shortest of the three that I will examine, has a negative headline followed by a brief, mostly positive story of improvement. Also, I just pick up some negative vibes of consensus without a frame of reference from the header. It’s hard to put a finger on the problem, but the assertion of “majority” in the following story comes off as less dismaying.

Majority of Soldiers Say Iraq Morale Low

A majority of U.S. soldiers in Iraq say morale is low, according to an Army report that finds psychological stress is weighing particularly heavily on National Guard and Reserve troops.

[…]

The report said 54 percent of soldiers rated their units’ morale as low or very low. The comparable figure in a year-earlier Army survey was 72 percent. Although respondents said “combat stressors” like mortar attacks were higher in the most recent survey, “noncombat stressors” like uncertain tour lengths were much lower, the report said.

The headline is accurate, as the following paragraph I quoted shows. How lengthy was my omission before the story actually reached the supporting figures? I had to jump eleven paragraphs in a sixteen-paragraph story. I would put forth that the slim majority of those who felt their unit morale was low was quite tucked away. More about the unit morale issue in a bit, but I’d like to say that this version of the reporting does not exactly waste the intervening paragraphs.

National Guard and Reserve soldiers who serve in transportation and support units suffered more than others from depression, anxiety and other indications of acute psychological stress, the report said. These soldiers have often been targets of the insurgents’ lethal ambushes and roadside bombs, although the report said they had significantly fewer actual combat experiences than soldiers assigned to combat units.

The report recommended that the Army reconsider whether National Guard and Reserve support troops are getting adequate training in combat skills. Even though they do less fighting than combat troops, they might be better suited to cope with wartime stress if they had more confidence in their combat skills, it said.

Only 55 percent of National Guard support soldiers said they have “real confidence” in their unit’s ability to perform its mission, compared with 63 percent of active-duty Army support soldiers. And only 28 percent of the Guard troops rated their level of training as high, compared with 50 percent of their active-duty counterparts.

While confidence in training could be a reasonable difference in attitudes between reserve and guard troops, I would put forth another difference as contributing to disparities between support and combat personnel — a sense of control. I would be interested to see the numbers comparing those who drive or ride along, fearing the likes of an IED, and those who actually go forth with the intent to confront the enemy.

Another point: did you notice that the majority of those saying unit morale was low was comprised of both the “low” and “very low” groupings, but the reporting of reservist support focused only on the “real confidence” sector. I would surmise that their was also a “confidence” option; how do those two groups collectively compare with the full-time troopers in a similar position? Is the discrepancy severe, or are we watching degrees of confidence being spun in a different manner than morale?

Now, on to a third piece.

Morale of soldiers in Iraq improving, Army survey finds

Holy crap, a positive and accurate headline. See, how tough was that?

Morale among U.S. soldiers in Iraq has improved since the start of the war in 2003, and the soldiers’ suicide rate dropped by more than half last year, according to an Army mental-health survey released yesterday.

The Army’s second Mental Health Advisory Team report paints an improving picture of how soldiers are handling their tours and how medical personnel are dealing with mental-health problems. The team surveyed more than 2,000 soldiers from August to October and concluded that aggressive efforts to improve mental-health care and to make soldiers aware of the stresses of combat have succeeded.

A majority of soldiers fighting in Iraq, however, reported that morale is still a problem, with 54 percent saying their unit morale is “low” or “very low,” and 9 percent reporting “high” or “very high” morale.

During the first survey in late summer 2003, 72 percent of soldiers reported low morale.

Balanced and accurate.

This story also includes a little morsel left out of the other two representaions.

The survey also reported that when soldiers were asked about their own morale — as distinct from their unit’s morale — there was improvement from 2003 to 2004: 52 percent described their morale as low or very low in the first survey, and that dropped to 36 percent in 2004.

Based on this detail, all three of these stories could have said morale was high. Two chose to go negative. Hmmm…

To sum up, two points and a question.

First, individual morale is up, and apparently significantly so.

Second, the individual’s confidence in the unit is improved but still negative. Why the dichotomy? I would submit the difference can be attributed to the nature of soldiering. The soldier has five basic jobs: performing his mission in a competent and professional manner, bitching, whining, grumbling and gossipping. It’s the human reaction to a situation where an individual’s control over his activities is greatly impaired and his outlets for tension are limited. The soldier’s own bitching and moaning are white noise to him, nothing more than a release. The result is an individual, confident in his own abilities, who is inundated with the same grumbling from those around him. But hey, I’m not a shrink; that’s just a common-sense way at viewing the difference, in my view. To back this up a bit and possibly support my idea, I would like to see the raw numbers on unit confidence, including both the confident and really confident categories.

Now, to that important question, I know we did morale and psychological surveys among our troops during World War II, but did we publish them before the world while still engaged? Did we give the enemy (both foreign and domestic) the ability to spin and impair our efforts?