[Newsbot]

Title: U.S. Military Suicides So Far in 2012: 155 Days, 154 Dead | Battleland | TIME.com
Category: Military
Posted By: maldonsfecht
Date: 2012-06-08 10:59:34

[maldonsfecht]

terrible statistic... these young men and women need as much support as can be given; in and out of uniform. as proud as I am regarding the States' and NATO's role in the world as a force for security, I think they both need a long break, or higher participation from the greater population, not shouldering all the burden on these over-worked and increasingly underappreciated young professionals

[Brenda]

So terribly sad...

I don't know if the help is not available tho. A lot of people who really need help just do not get it. They think it won't help, or are too proud to admit they need it or even that they have a problem.

I don't know if it is part of the screening, but maybe an evaluation of how people feel about psychiatric help may help. I mean, would you really want to send one to a war zone who thinks psychiatry is bogus?

[BartSimpson]

This has to do with the policy of rotating smaller numbers of troops into combat. They send one guy over to the sandbox eight times as opposed to sending eight guys once each.

This reduces the total number of PTSD cases and increases the overall efficiency of the deployed force as it is mostly composed of veterans. After so many tours with no end in sight you can start to feel hopeless.

It's all about reducing health care and mental care costs for the government.

That's the same government everyone wants us to trust with national health care making this kind of heartlessly cold decision.

[andyt]

It's a military under stress. Read in Doonsbury that there are 19,000 rapes a year. Looked it up, and that's an estimate of the unreported rapes last year as well as 3000+ reported ones. Something seems very wrong here.

[BartSimpson]

andyt andyt:

It's a military under stress. Read in Doonsbury that there are 19,000 rapes a year. Looked it up, and that's an estimate of the unreported rapes last year as well as 3000+ reported ones. Something seems very wrong here.

In Garry Trudeau's case the problem is that he's making shit up. There's no way to estimate unreported anything so the 19,000 figure is prima facae bullshit from the start.

Also, the military draws a fine line on certain relationships and classes a consensual relationship between an officer and an enlisted woman as a form of coerced sex but not forcible rape and that gets included in the 3,000 figure and represents about 60% of the 3,000 figure.

[andyt]

He didn't make it up, Bart. Obviously an estimate of unreported rapes isn't going to be hard data, but here's where Trudeay took that from:

$1:

Last year 3,158 sexual crimes were reported within the US military. Of those cases, only 529 reached a court room, and only 104 convictions were made, according to a 2010 report from SAPRO (sexual assault prevention and response office, a division of the department of defence). But these figures are only a fraction of the reality. Sexual assaults are notoriously under-reported. The same report estimated that there were a further 19,000 unreported cases of sexual assault last year. The department of veterans affairs, meanwhile, released an independent study estimating that one in three women had experience of military sexual trauma while on active service. That is double the rate for civilians, which is one in six, according to the US department of justice.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/ ... s-military

[Thanos]

We usually get a story pop up every year or so about how our own Ministry Of Veterans Affair or the DND fucks over our own troops, including lack of health services for those dealing with PTSD. Remember, at one time in Canada someone in our government and at DND thought it was an awesome idea to deliberately expose our own troops to things like Agent Orange just to see what would happen to them. As such we shouldn't yap at the Yanks too much when we've got some fairly obvious feet of clay ourselves. Our guys still get to operate first-gen Sea Kings so don't tell me that Canada gives much of a damn either.

Not that this excuses the Americans for their own behaviour. Nowhere along the line in the past 12 years have I seen much indication that anyone gives much of a damn in the US for veterans, active-duty personnel, or for military families. Military people are only tools to be used for the domestic politics of the Republican Party and their Forever War neo-conservative agenda. The lives of the individual soldier are essentially meaningless in a calculus such as this. You'll never see a bankers son serving in a place like Fallujah or Khandahar so why exactly should one expect a banker to give a damn about someone else's son when they come back from those places with nothing left inside of them but shattered glass? They way things are going down there President Mittens will probably privatize the entire system for the profit of his Wall Street friends and mentally-damaged veterans can look forward to a lifetime of anguish, alcoholism, and being forgotten once again by an allegedly "grateful" nation.

[Bodah]

[Strutz]

Wow Bodah... that was quite an emotional vid.

It's beyond tragic that so many end up driven to take their own lives after serving. It breaks your heart.

So many lives destroyed... and for what?

[Thanos]

It's tragic enough when the war fought was worthwhile. It's doubly worse when the war in question (e.g. VietNam or Iraq 2003) was based in lies, propaganda, and out of control political ideology. To have such servicemen and women suffer for the benefit of so many worthless politicians is a crime against decent humanity everywhere.

[Regina]

The human mind and body can only take so much then something has to give. No different after any war we've been in.

[ShepherdsDog]

according to the video, death by suicide is exceeding combat deaths amongst military personel...Government inaction and negligence seems to be killing more of their soldiers than the actual enemy

[EyeBrock]

Another, systemic issue that I don't think will ever change in Western nations that are regulary in combat is the fact that soldiers etc are seen as disposable.

The bosses pretend they care but really, they just replace the used up troops with fresh faces and the whole thing starts over again.

[andyt]

EyeBrock EyeBrock:

Another, systemic issue that I don't think will ever change in Western nations that are regulary in combat is the fact that soldiers etc are seen as disposable.

The bosses pretend they care but really, they just replace the used up troops with fresh faces and the whole thing starts over again.

I doubt this applies only to Western nations. Maybe Western soldiers are used to being treated as a person with rights, so it is discussed more in the West.

If the soldiers know this, why do so many join a volunteer army? There was a lot of complaining when US soldiers were deployed to Iran, who had expected to have a peaceful career in the forces. Guess they saw the army more as a career move rather than wanting to serve to protect their country. And the bosses make sure to maintain an underclass with limited prospects so that they have a ready supply of Bics (ie disposables).