KEOKUK, Iowa (AP) -- A Fort Campbell, Ky., soldier who police say robbed a bank and then surrendered just wanted to go to jail, Keokuk police said. "He told us he couldn't take it any more," police Capt. Kevin Church said.
"The robbery wasn't for financial reasons. He wasn't doing it because he needed the money, and we know he didn't want to hurt anybody. He wanted to be in a cell."
Master Sgt. Kenneth Lee Schweitzer, 38, of Louisville, Ky., walked into the Keokuk Savings Bank in southeast Iowa about 3 p.m. Tuesday, fired a large caliber handgun into the air and demanded cash, police said.
Schweitzer, a member of the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, left the bank, climbed into his pickup truck and drove to the police department, where he turned himself in.
"He also said the exact reason for robbing the bank was personal," Church added. "He said, 'The only thing I can live in is an 8-by-8 cell.' He realized he was going to jail and he's prepared to do so."
... Schweitzer, who recently returned from Iraq, left Fort Campbell on Tuesday morning, about eight hours before he walked into the bank.
This guy wanted more than just not to go back to Iraq. He wanted to be locked up - for a long time.
A Master Sergeant is 8 points up from private. It is as high as most Soldiers go in the Army's hierarchy without getting a promotion to officer status. In fact, the MSG is usually considered of higher rank (de facto) than most officers. Typically, the MSG is the operational voice of the colonel commanding the batallion. He literally runs the batallion on a day-to-day basis. All officers depend on their NCO's. The NCO is the spinal cord of any Army.
This guy threw away a career and a life which he had been building up for at least 10 years, probably more. He was a Senior NCO in the Screaming Eagle 101st, which is among the most prestigious units in the entire Army.
So not only was this guy one of the leaders in the NCO element of the Army- he was in one of the best Army units.
A senior NCO doing this means he knows he's a danger and needs to be in a prison. He probably has had one or more "rage" episodes and didn't feel he could control himself. Prison would be a "better" solution for some people than psychiatric help for reasons of "pride", i.e. some people think it is less of a black mark to do prison time that be sent to a mental hospital. This indicates to me a highly moral, thoughtful man. He seems to be terrified of what he found himself capable of over there, and he doesn't want to take any chances.
These are some of the social costs of militarism, not that it's not worth it as self-defense in a Just War. But this is what happens when a country uses patriotic rhetoric to sell an illegal immoral war. I am desperately sorry that our military has been caught once again in a political shitstorm and our finest young people end up paying the price.
Tam Dalyell, the Labour MP, father of the House of Commons and one of the leading rebel voices against war with Iraq, said: 'This war is garbage from right-wing think-tanks stuffed with chicken-hawks-- men who have never seen the horror of war but are in love with the idea of war. Men like Cheney, who were draft-dodgers in the Vietnam war.'This is a blueprint for US world domination -- a new world order of their making'. It's either the Cheney-Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz's show of never-ending war or the ending to the long Bush nightmare of war, recession, and unemployment with the Donald Trump mantra, "Bush - You're Fired".
