US ARMY Suicide Rates out of Control

What do you expect when you're told that you're fighting a war when it's really an invasion on foreign soil. These poor soldiers can't live in a bloody lie forever.

my uncle just went through four tours in iraq after the second one he wanted to quit but he was told if he did he would become a fugitive of the state and hunted down the sad thing is he still loves this country after all its done to him everytime he came back it was worse and worse now he cant visit resturaunts with out checking every door/exit is that how we protect our soilders when they come home anry with our leaders for bringing us into the war in iraq afganistan wa neccissary but iraq seriously this makes me think of a qoute “Old men declare war. But it’s the youth that must fight and die!”-Herbert Hoover

makes me sick..

I would have to say that the worst part is that when we really look at it, our main enemy is Al-Qaeda and we don't have real communication with them. And with the members we do find, we just impression them, or in the case of the last administration we'd torture and assassinate. It's almost impossible to get peace in this situation, yet I don't believe total war should be the only option.

How about we stop wars of aggression instead ? We could make this country stronger by giving kids the best education possible . We could really support the people who come back .

These numbers are not surprising. In the early fall of 2008 the NYTimes reported that fully 24% of the Army were high school dropouts. A number Sec Def Gates pledged to reduce and indeed Dept of Army has raised entry threshold to HS graduates. (The Marine Corps never lowered theirs)

In some ways the Army has become a dumping ground for the lower socio-economic classes. Even some with limited criminal convictions were admitted prior to 2008. One need not be a sociologist to understand that the majority of these suicide attempts come disproportionately from this group.

The larger issue is that smart American Youth (18-30) emphatically disapprove of military service. They demonstrate on campus and shout down recruiters. They overwhelmingly oppose reinstating the draft. (But they do wear Yellow Ribbons and say they "support" the troops.) And finally the sons and daughters of the educated and affluent are decidedly absent from serving our nation in uniform.

So as long as the Army is forced to recruit underachievers and large numbers of poorly educated soldiers this mental health issue will not go away.

Want to help? Those of you who are educated (as I suspect many Current TV surfers are) ....stop what you are doing. Go serve your country. End the hollow "support the troops" refrain. Join the Army. Help raise standards. Volunteer for a dangerous MoS and go through grueling training. Then request combat duty and get down in the Afghanistan/Iraq dirt and fight for the privilege of living here.

mike whatley
pasadena, ca.

Why are the people we have govern us totally brain dead? Besides throwing more money at a probelm can we use our brains for one second!?
How about this: You train someone to be a soldier, right? Perhaps it would help to have a training program to undo the process? They take you away for THREE MONTHS to learn how to KILLl. HOW MUCH TIME IS SPENT TO TRAIN YOUR MIND AFTER THAT TO LEARN TO TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF AND MENTAL HEALTH ?
Bottom line - Your mental health and well being as a soldier is not of importance to the counrty you give your life for. At least, that is how it seems to me and many others out there. Much love, support and deep hearted thanks to our men and women serving and who have ever served. My father, being one of them

how can you say breaking the record set in 2008? It's freaking 2009! all that means is it just keeps getting worse

Of course!
Look at the NY Times treatment of Gen. David Petraeus.
Listen to the rhetoric of the past years from the likes of Harry Reid and Dick Durbin.
Soldiers get no support from the legislature.
Soldiers get no support from the press.
Worse, when these brave soldiers are doing good deeds and making progress in bring the conflict to an end, the press is NOWHERE.

Three nations today are capable and guilty of this. The USA, Israel and Britain are holding the world hostage and this will be the end rresult.Out of 300,000,000 Americans who would find this sickening, appalling and just outright disgusting. How many would stand up and be counted? How many cowards would remain hidden?

Why do we have war? Its not the public to have war. Why is it necessary for so many returning soldiers to die to find peace? I dont see George Bush, Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld suffering from PTSD or the loss of limbs or even the loss of life, on even suffering an iota. These bastards who were leading the country and sent these kids to a living hell and they can't even feel a bit of their pain or even a bit of remorse.They have done their damage and turned the ruins over to the next leader to follow in the same footprints and he is doing a perfect job of imitating his every move. But it still doesn't answer the question? Why do these young kids have to die to find peace? The death and destruction continues and Mr Bush can still go to the ball games or go shopping in fact carrying on a lifestyle as if he never declared his own war. What in his life, rewards him with this priviledge to set on his front porch and look around and realize that I am a free man and nobody can touch me. I am above the law and the people. I am God Almighty and in a few years Barack Obama will inherit this trouble free life and those thousands who continue to die will lay in the ground and it is all in vain. Neither God nor common man can has the power to stop evil in this world.

Reminds me of when I was on the eastern front.

THE ILLUSION IS THAT WE ARE ALL SEPARATE......

All highschool and elementary school kids should be indoctrinated in the truth and consequences of a nation of war lovers and the the pain and misery for those who lose their loved ones in war and all about those who start and continue the war spirit. War is ugly but a public who is unaware of the history of the wars fought all over the world by two primary nations are bound to live in the bloodshed. Just a few years ago Britain returned India to the Indian peoples but they were at war with india for many years. The British Empire had a large chunk of Africa, Rhodesia in the heart of Africa and nations surrounding it. France also had its share of Bloody wars but are less bloodier in some respect, The Frence had a large slice of Africa but when they left the natives were better off. The RIF wars of the 1920's involved war with the Arab nations. British Empire had carried their bloody wars all over the world from Africa to Asia. The Kyber pass is an old word for those familiar with the Kyber Rifles and of course the " Into the Valley of death rode the five hundred" Yes England was also the starting point of the Crusades and many more bloody battles. And since The USA is more or less the son of the British Empire, who would expect it to be anything other than a bloody empire too. America is a multifaced nation. It was meant to be a nation with a constitutional goverment and a nation of laws, but like all other nations of the world there is a criminal element that has more power and criminal savy than the entire brainless public. And no matter how innocent a nation is at its beginning it can become as bloody as the brutal and abusive as the parents who gave it a birthright. So with America Allied with Israel and the British Empire and their history of violence and wars one should expect nothing less than past history has recorded. There are hundreds and even thousands of real live stories and books detailing the horrors and the victims of western wars and the misery caused by them but with a population kept stupid by a government run education department the books exposing the crimes of the world are read by few but have no power to generate a response. The American and British public as with the public world wide are powerless and voting in elections have proved to be a big fraud. With outrageous election monies being used to buy votes and complete elections. Iran is a typical example of how powerless the public is against the fully armed government police and here in America the public are faced with a much more powerful and bloodier force. So nothing is different. Elections prove nothing. Elections are filled with false promises against the powers of the Lords of finance who are the true leaders of England and America. So we the people must fall in line and even though it is against our very nature to commit to a bloody war, we are powerless to refuse. It is natures way to force oneself to accept the powers that be in order to survive in this cruel world.

I remember when I played football in high school, we had a trainer who had never heard of an injury that could not be treated with an ice pack and "walking it off." As you might expect with a bunch of smart-ass 16 and 17-year-old boys, it wasn't long before we were mocking him behind his back. "Hey Coach! I got a brain tumor!" Reply: "Put some ice on it and walk it off..." (you get the picture).

But that is the kind of attitude I feel like we are showing our returning soldiers. I remember talking to my Grandfather about war (he served in the South Pacific islands during WWII, carrying around one of those tripod-mounted machine guns). He said the hardest thing for HIM to get used to on his return was ACCEPTING the absence of fear.

He said it wasn't cowardly to be afraid -- in fact a low-level of fear kept you alive by keeping you (relatively) alert and forcing you to recheck things that could go wrong before they killed you. You couldn't be in constant panic mode, of course. You would go nuts (and a few did). But you could maintain it as a kind of constant low-level background noise...especially because every once in a while a sniper or the odd mortar round would pick someone off at a time when you thought they were relatively "safe."

After weeks and months of that, he coudn't just "turn it off," even when he was a thousand miles inland in the U.S. And at first, even when he COULD turn it off, it wouldn't STAY off. In fact, it would often come back in a rush, like, "Oh my God, I let my guard down -- what was I THINKING?! -- even while a rational little voice was telling him that there really WAS nothing to be worried about anymore." I asked him how long it took hime to get re-acclimated, thinking he would say weeks...no, he said, it was YEARS...

Our media is right here . This is it . Anything else is part propaganda machine , so use with caution and a grain of salt .

You know what the sad part is? We are hearing about this from Russia.

Where is our media when we need them most?

I had a cousin to die in Nam....He volunteered at age seventeen to the Marines, and was killed at eighteen.....My cousin told me that they were brainwashed and fed drugs in their foods daily, to make them kill....They were ordered to throw hand grenades in huts, and then enter, just to find old people and children.........That really upset him, and he hated the war.

There is only so much you can ask any one man/woman to do. How long before they decide they have seen enough? How long before they lose any sense of how precious and wonderful life is. How many nightmares can one endure? Before they decide they dont want any part of this world anymore? It's fucking pathetic how much we ask of our soldiers and how little consideration we give them before shoving them around like little pieces in a big game of chess.

Yeah this is a big deal in the Army right now. There's this suicide prevention interactive DVD I had to watch. It gives these scenarios and there's options you have to choose from that change the scenario. We wanted to go through it again after and see what happens when you take all the bad choices, but the master sergeant wasn't feeling it.

Overall kind of a pathetic training program, but there are a lot more practical improvements. Commanding officers are now more encouraged to give time off from the field, and there are suicide prevention teams that come and help soldiers work through problems in the field.

Obviously none of that is going to solve root problems like watching your buddies die around you while your fiancee leaves you back home, but I guess you do what you can...

I heard an interview of this guy on the radio . I believe him . Some , more primitive cultures had a protocol for reintegrating warriors back into the society . It sometimes had to do with soul retrieval and telling the soul it was on longer fighting , it was safe to return and heal from the hurt . My point is we should try something , because what we do now is clearly not working . We send them to hell , and to survive they must become it . I protested these " wars " and I was amazed at how easily some threw away the lives of others . Ain't right .

What the hell do they think will happen when, despite surviving repeated deployments to intense unconventional war zones, they are sent agian and again until they don't come back. Sometimes the body comes back sans the spirit.
There is a simularity with the Camer Rouge using villagers to sweep mine fields by walking through them, over and over again.
These soldiers are controlling the one thing left to them to control, how they die.
Don't need $65 million to figure this out, spend it on getting them back to as near normal as possible.