US Military Suicides Spiked In January

American troops in Afghanistan. These men are stretched to the limits and war-weary. They deserve better. BRING THEM HOME FROM THIS POINTLESS WAR.

_______________________________

Reportedly, the US Army’s investigating a stunning number of military suicides in January, a count that could exceed all combat deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan last month. According to figures obtained by the Associated Press, there were 24 suspected suicides in January, compared to only four in January 2008, six in January 2007, and 10 in January 2006. Annual suicide rates have been rising steadily since 2004 largely believed to be due to increasing stress on the force from long and repeated tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. The US Army has rarely, if ever, released a month-by-month update on suicides, but, officials said this week that they wanted to re-emphasise “the urgency and seriousness necessary for preventive action at all levels” of the force. In announcing the 2008 figures last week, the US Army said it would hold special training later this month to help troops recognise suicidal behaviours and to intervene if they see such behaviour in a comrade-in-arms. After that, the US Army also plans a suicide prevention program for all soldiers from the top of the chain of command down. However, Army Secretary Pete Geren appeared to be stumped by the spiralling number of suicide cases in the US Army. Clearly, the relentless rise in suicides has frustrated the service, coming despite numerous attempts to stem the tide through additional suicide prevention training, the hiring of more psychiatrists and other mental health staff, and other programmes both at home and at the battlefront for troops and their families. Whilst the active-duty military force is expanding, the rate of suicides is growing even faster amongst all four services, a phenomenon that’s alarmed defence officials as stress on service members builds with the US deployment in Iraq nearing the six-year mark. Army Brigadier General Loree Sutton told NBC News that active-duty service members were under tremendous strain. “They’ve lost buddies. They’ve been exposed to the most corrosive environment known to warfare, physically, psychologically, spiritually, and morally”, General Sutton said. Paul Rieckhoff, executive director of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, told the New York Times ruefully, “In January, we lost more soldiers to suicide than to Al Qaeda. If we lost this many soldiers to an enemy weapon, the entire country would know about it and we would demand defensive measures”. However, the problem of dealing with men and women in uniform that are obviously overextended and overstressed has yet to be addressed.

6 February 2009

Yuri Reshetnikov

Voice of Russia World Service

http://www.ruvr.ru/main.php?lng=eng&q=40087&cid=87&p=06.02.2009

******

Below is the AP article referenced by Reshetnikov. Read it and weep. This is due to the evil of the neocons, who were allowed to run amuck in the Clinton and Bush II administrations. There’s a special cold place in Hell for such people, I’m sure.

******

Army Suicides at Record High, Passing Civilian Rate

Stressed by war and long overseas tours, US soldiers killed themselves last year at the highest rate on record, the toll rising for a fourth straight year and even surpassing the suicide rate among comparable civilians. Army leaders said they were doing everything they could think of to curb the deaths and appealed for more mental health professionals to join and help out. At least 128 soldiers committed suicide in 2008, the Army said Thursday. The final count is likely to be even higher because 15 more suspicious deaths are still being investigated. “Why do the numbers keep going up? We can’t tell you”, said Army Secretary Pete Geren. “We can tell you that across the Army we’re committed to doing everything we can to address the problem”. It’s all about pressure and the military approach, said Kim Ruocco, 45, whose Marine husband was an officer and Cobra helicopter pilot who hanged himself in a California hotel room in 2005. That was one month before he was to return to Iraq a second time. She said her husband, John, had completed 75 missions in Iraq and was struggling with anxiety and depression, but felt he’d be letting others down if he sought help and couldn’t return. “He could be any Marine because he was highly decorated, stable, the guy everyone went to for help”, Ruocco said in a telephone interview. “But, the thing is… the culture of the military is to be strong no matter what and not show any weakness”. Ruocco, of Newbury MA, was recently hired to be suicide support coordinator for the non-profit Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors. She said she feels that the military has finally started to reach out to suicide survivors and seek solutions. “Things move slowly, but I think they’re really trying”, Ruocco said.

At the Pentagon on Thursday, Colonel Elspeth Ritchie, a psychiatric consultant to the Army surgeon general, made a plea for more professionals to sign on to work for the military. “We’re hiring and we need your help”, she said. Military leaders promised fresh prevention efforts will start next week. The new suicide figure compares with 115 in 2007 and 102 in 2006, and is the highest since current record-keeping began in 1980. Officials expect the deaths to amount to a rate of 20.2 per 100,000 soldiers, which is higher than the civilian rate, when adjusted to reflect the Army’s younger and male-heavy demographics, for the first time in the same period of record-keeping. Officials have said that troops are under unprecedented stress because of repeated and long tours of duty due to the simultaneous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yearly increases in suicides have been recorded since 2004, when there were 64, only about half the number now. Officials said they found that the most common factors were soldiers suffering problems with their personal relationships, legal or financial issues, and problems on the job.

However, the magnitude of what the troops are facing in combat shouldn’t be forgotten, said Representative Joe Sestak (D-PA), a former Navy vice admiral, who noted he spoke with a mother this week whose son was preparing for his fifth combat tour. “This is a tough battle that the individuals are in over there”, Sestak said. “It’s unremitting every day”. Said Dr Paul Ragan, an associate professor of psychiatry at Vanderbilt University and a former Navy psychiatrist, “Occasional or sporadic visits by military mental health workers are like a Band-Aid for a gushing wound”. The statistics released Thursday cover soldiers who killed themselves while they were on active duty, including National Guard and Reserve troops who’d been activated. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the suicide rate for US society overall was about 11 per 100,000 in 2004, the latest year for which the agency has figures. However, the Army says the civilian rate is more like 19.5 per 100,000 when adjusted. An earlier report showed the Marine Corps recorded 41 possible or confirmed suicides in 2008, about 19 per 100,000 troops. The military’s numbers don’t include deaths after people have left the services. The Department of Veterans Affairs tracks those numbers and says there were 144 suicides among the nearly 500,000 service members who left the military from 2002-2005 after fighting in at least one of the two ongoing wars.

29 January 2009

Pauline Jelinek

Kimberly Hefling

Associated Press

As Quoted in Yahoo News

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090130/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/army_suicides

Editor’s Note:

This is what the neocons have done to America. Shame on them! Don’t forget the cost of their Orwellian doubletalk and ambitions. Let no more “common Joes” die for their perverse pride and hubris.

______________________________

This is grim. This is evil. This is beyond all words. That’s to say, the neocons are absolutely immoral and malevolent. They deserve to be placed up against the nearest wall and shot dead without mercy or remorse. However, a word or two on this noisome tribe is in order. Firstly, they aren’t conservatives, not in the least. They’re called such by a sector of the American left that calls all who oppose them “conservatives”, whether they are such or not. No, this squalid lot of butchers has its roots in Wilsonian Interventionist Idealism, the farthest thing from conservatism that can be imagined. Woodrow Wilson was the most evil man of the New Dark Ages of the 20th Century. Why? He was the Pandora that opened the box that set free the demons of that benighted century. If Wilson hadn’t intervened in the Great War, for no American interest was at stake, the rise of the Reds and the Nazis may have been averted, the massacre of the Jews may have never occurred, and Europe might still be the home of three great continental empires.

Secondly, the neocons are, in effect, arguing for an American imperium throughout the world, with the USA having a veto over all global affairs. Our American soldiers are mere pawns in their eyes. Like all Neoliberals, they don’t care to count the human cost of their pipedream nostrums. “It’s only light casualties”. Yes… “light casualties”… that means that some family somewhere is burying a son, daughter, husband, wife, father, and/or mother. To be blunt, the military actions of the US since 1991 didn’t justify the sacrifice of one life, either American or foreign. True, there are terrorists, but since they aren’t embodied in a state structure, they’re virtually immune to the usual run of military action. Rooting out terrorists requires long and patient effort in concert with overseas partners to effectively stamp out the menace. Simply placing an American puppet in place as a client and calling the resulting situation “democracy” (see Karzai’s comic-opera régime in Afghanistan, its writ does not even run to the near-suburbs of Kabul) shall not turn the trick. That is, Americans must return to an earlier and saner time, when the USA wasn’t intent on “exporting” its ideology. The system of government found in the US can only function under specific conditions, conditions that are mostly lacking elsewhere. If others choose other paths, that’s their prerogative. In any case, aren’t the neocons and their political enablers always mewling about “freedom”? Indeed, freedom means that a country can reject American nostrums… hmm…

BMD