Iraq Veterans vulnerable to commit suicide

I wrote a translation of the article I read in the papers.
Since it is in Dutch, but excuser-moi if you are a native, you probably can't read it.

 

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These figures are heavily sanitized by the US government, but these suicides do far exceed acknowledged US regular and irregular-force combat deaths.

CBS News reports that veterans are more than twice as likely to take their own lives than Americans who never served.[/url.]

For Iraq veterans, total fatalities for combat and suicide have exceeded 15,000 troops. This is among the many statistics about fatal and no-fatal casualties that are being thoroughly processed and cooked for American consumption. The neoconservatives know very well how to market their McWars.

 

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But they wouldn't know, for example, that even if those people had NOT served they might have commited suicide anyway ...even in civilian life. So that article is ....nothing but sensationalism, which CBS News is, of course, famous for doing!

For Iraq veterans, total fatalities for combat and suicide have exceeded 15,000 troops.[/quote]

How many of those people would have done it even if they'd been civilians? See? Without knowing that answer, one can't reliably place the blame on the war or the military or Iraq or ....anything else.

Baron Max

 

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This is the thinking of a 12 year old. Are you 12?

Of course these numbers have meaning. If we are talking about 1 guy who commited suicide you would be right. But there are thousands of people involved so of course you can derive a conclion from the suicidenumbers. It's called statistics..which is a science. With numbers and stuff. But you would probably call them liberal doo-goody numbers and be done with it, yes?

In your world killing is easy, war is heroic and any voice that calls for peace is a coward. So i guess there is no point to argue with you, since you live in a world where reality isn't really that big a deal.

 

thanks sweety

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I still bet that the suiced rate among them was easily 1/10 of the rate among the Iraqi vets. I have an explanation, but wouldn't make me very popular here....

 

Forget all the rhetoric. Let's just assume all these specious numbers are accurate and veterans (Iraqi and otherwise) really are killing themselves, what's the point of this discussion then? That war is horrible? That it has negative side-effects on those who participate? That's hardly news to anyone, which is why I suspect this is another roundabout criticism of the Iraq war and its political aims. Or am I missing something?

 

You're right no sense trying to do something about veteran's commiting suicide because it might cause people to think poorly about the war.

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Oh, sure ...but it has no meaning unless there's a legitimate, valid statistical rate with which to compare it. For example, what's the rate of suicide for men of the same age group, same lifestyle, same economic level as the vets? Without such comparison, the stats on vet suicides means nothing.

Interesting comment ...especially since there are more wars and conflicts in the world today than ever before in the history of mankind ....and you pretend to know reality??? ...LOL!

So, .....12-year old kids can't think?

Baron Max

 

What are we supposed to do that isn't being done? The armed forces offer plenty of programs now.

Again, I ask what's the purpose of this thread, if the premise is true...

 

That isn't the main factor.

Exposure to intense combat in modern war is.

Despite the apparently "low" casualty rate, the actual combat exposure faced by an Iraq vet is, on average, comparable to Vietnam - maybe a bit worse.

It helps inform the decision on whether to back immediate pullout, by making more accurate the account of the costs of remaining.

 

countezero: "Forget all the rhetoric. Let's just assume all these specious numbers are accurate and veterans (Iraqi and otherwise) really are killing themselves, what's the point of this discussion then?"

That this war is being packaged and marketed to a gullible public that is being kept largely unaware of the human costs entailed.

 

If the number of suicides among vets is increasing (and it is) then obviously they are not offering sufficient or effective programs.

 

Exactly. Someone has dug up something (unsubstantiated) that furthers their political aims. I'm glad you had the guts to admit it.

War is terrible. Nobody disputes that. People get killed. People get hurt. Others are mentally scared. But please don't pretend focusing on such things has anything to do with accounting the costs. It's all about focusing on the travails to embitter people to the point that they adopt the anti-war crowds ideology. The fact vets are coming back and are troubled i(unsubstantiated) in no way, shape or form deals with the correctness of the war and whether it should continue. It's an appeal to sentiment, pure and simple. And such calculus would prevent all wars from being fought. So this entire thread, as I suspected, is nothing more than a canard for the "leave now" to crow about.

 

By the end of 1945, more than 350,000 U.S. personnel were stationed throughout Japan. That's more than twice what we have in Iraq.

 

? Even your standards have somewhere they can slip to, apparently.

It's not a pretense, it's a flat assertion. Focussing on such things is exactly what anyone who wants to honestly consider the costs of this war must do.

Failure to focus on such things is self-deception. Dismissing them as people getting "mentally scared" is stupid self-deception.

If you don't want to consder the mental health fallout from the kind of nasty arena this occupation has been and will remain, you don't have to - but lets not hear, down the road, BS about other people exaggerating the costs of the Iraq war. They're counting, you aren't.

 

I'm not complaining about the costs of war, nor do I think taking stock of them is necessarily a bad thing to do. However I do think is that it's dishonest to accumulate a record of the costs in order to prove a preordained viewpoint. In other words, you're not gathering data, assessing it and reaching a conclusion. You've got a viewpoint and you're gathering data to bolster it. So far as this issue is concern, the above set of circumstances makes it tough to accept your interest or your concern as genuine.

 

Well I don't, even if a pre-ordained viewpoint were involved, and the one with that viewpoint were the one accumulating the record of the costs.

Neither of which is the case here.

I'd go further - I'd actually regard as more honest someone who collected facts to support their pre-ordained viewpoint, in comparison with someone who ignored and denied facts in holding to theirs.

And someone who had arrived at their vewpoint in the first place - before it became "pre-ordained" - by noticing the implications of great piles of facts and events both in agreement and in conflict, and was now simply noticing that the preponderance of the pile of facts in agreement was increasing by yet another addidtion, would be the most honest of all, eh?

 

Well, pretty much everyone is "out in the fight". We aren't buttoning up inside FOBs and sending out armored patrols to rumble down a main street every few days scaring people. We are living in the neighborhoods amongst the population in every way possible, walking on foot, introducing ourselves, making friends, and helping people individually. In this posture, every servicemember is a potential target. Some more than others, yes, but the day of the REMF is in its twilight - at least for the duration of this nation building COIN/small war stuff they've had us doing within the GWOT.

If you want to learn a little about what our posture is now and why it is so different from any previous operation, this article does a pretty good job of explaining things.

People always seem to latch onto stuff like this and use it to support one "side" or another, which is something I find irritating as hell. The thing I'm worried about here is how our guys are transitioning to civilian life after they ETS. There are transition assistance classes (TAP) that cover a few basic things like resume writing, job hunting, and entitled veterans benefits, but there is a bit of a limbo period between the ETS date and the date the VA picks up the gauntlet for people who incur a disability on active duty. It varies, but I have seen a few guys take up to six months to get the VA to cover their medical needs and any compensation/disability they were entitled to. All the while they are having to support themselves and readjust to living in a climate where their closest friends and family have no understanding of the horrible things they've endured. Thankfully, things are coming online to address these shortcomings. Chief amongst them is the Wounded Warrior Act, but there are others. One of them, the Crosby-Puller Combat Wounds Compensation Act, was actually named after one of the Marines formerly under my command. (Semper Fi buddy!)

The time it takes to decompress after a combat deployment varies wildly between individuals, and the process is poorly understood by those who have not gone through it themselves. While the type of stuff we've been doing in OEF/OIF isn't the high intensity sort of symmetrical combat we've seen in previous wars; the patient, careful fight against an amorphous enemy while trying to protect and entertain the populace at large is universally stressful and carries with it its own unique set of psychological baggage. As such, much of the support network that veterans can rely on after their ETS date - from VA psychs to local VFW/AMVETS members - isn't as sympathetic as it could be. At least in my opinion.