"We don't count suicides." - United States Department of Defense

Pentagon Cover Up:

15,000 or more US casualties in Iraq War

By Mike Whitney, 11/17/07 "ICH"

The Pentagon has been concealing the true number of American casualties in the Iraq War. The real number exceeds 15,000 and CBS News can prove it.

CBS’s Investigative Unit wanted to do a report on the number of suicides in the military and "submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the Department of Defense." After 4 months they received a document which showed--that between 1995 and 2007--there were 2,200 suicides among "active duty" soldiers.

Baloney!

The Pentagon was covering up the real magnitude of the "suicide epidemic." Following an exhaustive investigation of veterans’ suicide data collected from 45 states; CBS discovered that in 2005 alone "THERE WERE AT LEAST 6,256 AMONG THOSE WHO SERVED IN THE ARMED FORCES. THAT’S 120 EACH AND EVERY WEEK IN JUST ONE YEAR."

That is not a typo. Active and retired military personnel, mostly young veterans between the ages of 20 to 24, are returning from combat and killing themselves in record numbers. We can assume that "multiple-tours of duty" in a war-zone have precipitated a mental health crisis of which the public is entirely unaware and which the Pentagon is in total denial.

If we add the 6,256 suicide victims from 2005 to the "official" 3,865 reported combat casualties; we get a sum of 10,121. Even a low-ball estimate of similar 2004 and 2006 suicide figures, would mean that the total number of US casualties from the Iraq war now exceed 15,000.

That’s right; 15,000 dead US servicemen and women in a war that--as yet--has no legal or moral justification.

CBS interviewed Dr. Ira Katz, the head of mental health at the Department of Veteran Affairs. Katz attempted to minimize the surge in veteran suicides saying, "There is no epidemic of suicide in the VA, but suicide is a major problem."

Maybe Katz right. Maybe there is no epidemic. Maybe it’s perfectly normal for young men and women to return from combat, sink into inconsolable depression, and kill themselves at greater rates than they were dying on the battlefield. Maybe it’s normal for the Pentagon to abandon them as soon as soon they return from their mission so they can blow their brains out or hang themselves with a garden hose in their basement. Maybe it's normal for politicians to keep funding wholesale slaughter while they brush aside the casualties they have produced by their callousness and lack of courage. Maybe it is normal for the president to persist with the same, bland lies that perpetuate the occupation and continue to kill scores of young soldiers who put themselves in harm’s-way for their country.

It’s not normal; it’s is a pandemic---an outbreak of despair which is the natural corollary of living in constant fear; of seeing one’s friends being dismembered by roadside bombs or children being blasted to bits at military checkpoints or finding battered bodies dumped on the side of a riverbed like a bag of garbage.

The rash of suicides is the logical upshot of Bush’s war. Returning soldiers are traumatized by their experience and now they are killing themselves in droves. Maybe we should have thought about that before we invaded.

Check it out the video at: CBS News "Suicide Epidemic among Veterans"
t~85,441
military families speak out
bake sales for body armor
http://www.thehomefrontwardiaries.com/

Still In Iraq

Are Veterans Free to Speak on Veterans Day?

OhioDem1 Sent the following:

"Take a look at the linked video of some anti-Iraq veteran protesters who were arrested at the Boston Veterans Day parade. They actually arrested a 76 year old and 92 year old WW II veteran. Veterans Arrested During Protest

These guys have so much class and dignity. These guys make me proud to be an American Veteran."

Still in Iraq

Too many American women "live with the daily fall-out from this war ..."

As usual, my good friend Stacy hits the nail directly on the head with this article. i have also met with Senator Clinton, and found her lack of understanding of the plight of military families to be distressing to say the least.

I must say loudly and clearly, i will vote for my dog before vote for Senator Clinton for our president. this is just one reason why.

Republicans will be overjoyed if Clinton is the nominee, because they know how divisive she is. We need some real democrats, not the pile of do nothing followers that are currently in congress.

t~85,441
military families speak out
bake sales for body armor
http://www.thehomefrontwardiaries.com/

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/11/01/4947/

Published on Thursday, November 1, 2007 by CommonDreams.org
War IS a Women’s Issue, Senator Clinton
by Stacy Bannerman

I spoke with Senator Clinton back in 2006, when I spent almost three months spearheading Operation House Call, a daily vigil in the summer sauna of Capitol Hill, with a growing number of combat boots representing what Congress’s decision to "stay the course" in Iraq was costing our troops. The Senator is smaller and softer in person than she is on TV, but I guess that’s the benefit of living in the political and financial Green Zone that affords the luxury of denial; that insulates and isolates an elected official from having to face the human and domestic costs of war.

In an effort to cement herself as the candidate of choice for working- and middle-class women, Senator Hillary Clinton is reaching out to those constituencies by touting issues like child care, Social Security and health care. Speaking to audiences of women political activists, she focuses almost exclusively on domestic policy, framing her presentations in terms of family, health and home, rarely, if ever, addressing foreign policy. Perhaps Hillary thinks women shouldn’t worry their pretty little heads about things like war; that women should just leave that up to the men folk. Or perhaps it’s because the Senator has no real grasp on precisely how the seemingly-interminable occupation of Iraq and the repeat, extended deployments are destroying the American home front.

As the (separated) wife of an Iraq war veteran, and a card-carrying member of Military Families Speak Out, I have no buffer. I live daily with the fall-out from this war, I hear regularly from the women who are suffering in silence, rambling e-mails dripping with the psychic blood that is being shed all over this nation, long phone calls from weeping wives, worried about their children, their husbands and their families, but rarely, if ever, themselves. We are America’s uncounted, unrecognized collateral damage, left to fend for ourselves in a system that denies our experience and dismisses our existence.

Our numbers include: the mother in Seattle who is caring for - and bearing witness to - the grief and despair and suicidal thoughts of her young son who left blood, brains and body parts in the sands of Iraq; The wife of an Iraq war veteran who held her at knifepoint in front of the children while speaking in Arabic in a PTSD-induced disassociative fugue; the wife and child who are living in the dining room of a friend’s house because her husband, a veteran, is in jail after bringing home weapons (not unusual) and the military has cut off his pay; the wife who has endured multiple violent assaults by her husband, whom the VA has discontinued treatment for because he’s been issued orders for another tour in Iraq; the sister who is taking care of her brother with severe traumatic stress on a waitresses salary because his parents kicked him out and the VA won’t help and he’s got nowhere else to go.

Among the "acceptable losses" is the wife who asked, "How do you grieve for someone who isn’t dead?" She is the primary caretaker of her Marine, suffering severe polytraumas, while also taking care of their three children and her elderly mother. Another casualty is the wife of Oregon Army Reserve Supply Sergeant Matthew Denni, whose PTSD contributed to him butchering his bride and stuffing her corpse in a footlocker.

We’re branded "unpatriotic" if we talk about this in public. When we dare to tell the truth, we are slammed and slandered for being anti-military and not supporting the troops. Our loved ones are the troops. Without them - and, make no mistake about it, us, the women who were drafted when our loved ones enlisted and are serving without pay, support or recognition on the home front - there would be no military. And now we’ve got a female Presidential candidate who is trying to secure the women’s vote by talking to women about "women’s issues," like family, and children and health care, but refuses to address the domestic disaster that is descending upon military families across this country as the direct result of America’s foreign policy. Senator Clinton, aren’t we women, too?

Stacy Bannerman, M.S., is the author of When the War Came Home: The Inside Story of Reservists and the Families They Leave Behind, (Continuum Publishing, 2006). She can be contacted at stacy@stacybannerman.com.

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