Whiteside, who is now a psychiatric outpatient at Walter Reed, ran a medical unit at the very same hospital until 2006, when she volunteered to deploy to Iraq. She told the Washington Post that seeing so many casualties at Walter Reed made her feel she was not bearing her full responsibility.

The bare details: In Iraq, she was assigned as a platoon leader in a medical company at the Camp Cropper detainee prison, which housed 4,000 suspected terrorists and insurgents, and included such high-security prisoners as Saddam Hussein and Ali Hassan Majeed, known as "Chemical Ali."

Whiteside supervised nine medics who worked the night shift at the prison, ate one meal a day and worked seven days a week, dispatching drivers, medics and support staff to transport sick and wounded Iraqis and U.S. troops. Her superiors credit her with her unit's success.

Given the radio handle "Trauma Mama," the high school valedictorian and ROTC grad told the Washington Post, "I loved our mission because it represented the best of America: taking care of the enemy, regardless of what they are doing to us."

Sometime after Hussein’s execution, a nurse in Whiteside’s unit reported that Whiteside was "freaking out." The nurse found Whiteside sitting on her bed, mumbling and visibly

upset. When comrades tried to help, Whiteside resisted and told them to leave. At one point, she fired her pistol into the ceiling. Later, she pointed the weapon at one of her colleagues, yelling that she wanted to kill them. When she opened her door she saw armed soldiers approaching. She slammed the door shut and fired her weapon once into her stomach. She was still in serious condition when she arrived at Walter Reed a few days later.

There are many more details I’m not going to try to cover here. The Washington Post first told Lt. Whiteside’s story in a brilliant report by Dana Priest and Anne Hull in the December 2 paper. It’s well worth reading, at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/01/AR2007120101782.html.

The point of all this is that, despite monumental advances in mental illness diagnosis and therapy, and endless pronouncements from the White House and the Pentagon about how deeply concerned they are about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and other combat-related psychological problems, the Army doesn’t seem to have moved very far from “The Idiot” of my 1951 MP unit.

Back then, doctors knew virtually nothing about how to diagnose, much less treat, his psychological disorder. His buddies thought of him as a little crazy. So The Idiot was tried, jailed and dishonorably discharged.

But today, both diagnosis and treatment are real options – and they are happening every day. They happen when mental health professionals, not military prosecutors, get listened to and believed.

This week we may find out whether the Army has been listening.

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