Every now and then something makes its way to us that manages to penetrate the haze that is a result of the pronouncements of our government in collusion with a media that marches in lock-step to its steady beat of lies and distortions. The March 6th edition of “Rolling Stone” magazine contains such a message and it does so in depth and detail so sorely lacking in most coverage of the War in Iraq. The article’s subtitle tells enough to let its reader realize why what follows is essential reading. “Hoping to turn enemies into allies, U.S. forces are arming Iraqis who fought with the insurgents. But it’s already starting to backfire. A report from the front lines of the New Iraq.” The reporter, Nir Rosen, goes beyond what passes for journalism in most publications these days and writes a devastating account of how far our government and military have been willing to go to buy less violence and how the resulting efforts have produced the seeds for the next stage of violence and civil war. I am hoping the Clinton and Obama campaigns are paying attention. The prospect of more Bush policy when it comes to the conduct of this war and its duration in the person of John McCain was scary enough before I read this article. See what you think and please let your views be heard/published by responding with a comment on the blog. Here’s the website for the article in its entirety: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/18722376/the_myth_of_the_surge
Archive for February, 2008
Rolling Stone Magazine’s “MYTH OF THE SURGE” Should be Required Reading
Friday, February 29th, 2008A Remarkable Film – “Across the Universe”
Sunday, February 17th, 2008Last night my wife, Susan, and I watched a film that has not received the attention it deserves. The Beatles music – 33 songs – that is woven into the fabric of this unique movie musical is what it has become known for, but what we discovered is that it is a powerful anti-war film. Set in the mid to late ’60′s it chronicles the evolution of our culture and in so doing presents the Vietnam War as the debacle it was with its cataclysmic effects on a generation and a country. If musicals don’t work for you – even when the music is beautifully rendered versions of Beatles’ classics – then this film may not be the one for you, but its vivid depiction of the ways in which its characters adapt to the extraordinary times is well worth checking out. One additional recommendation comes from my 16 year old son who is watching it for a second time this morning after having seen it with a group of friends in the theater. I believe that this film does a remarkable job of bridging the generational divide and teaching about a time when anti-war activism was commonplace. We could certainly use a dose now! That the draft features prominently in what drives some of the protest is unavoidable conclusion, but just seeing young people protesting against a war is a good way for our youth to spend their time…
I found a “viewer comment” on the web to be particularly thoughtful so I am including it herein. I appreciated his reference to the film’s giving him, “as an activist some badly needed renewed vigor.”
The 1960′s Counterculture In All Its Glory!, 1 October 2007
Author: liberalgems from Baltimore, Maryland
As someone who was literally a child of the mid – late 60′s & and a student of the time period, I first want to thank everyone who had anything to do with the making of this film! Your timing could not have been better! You helped me to remember the fervor, passion and idealism that made up the mid-late 60′s. It’s been many years since I have burst out sobbing in a movie theater! Thanks for helping to lift the fog a bit! As an activist, you have collectively given me some badly needed renewed vigor!
I also feel so very, very sorry for all the critics of this movie who don’t have a clue about what it all this means, or whose hearts have grown so hard with such bitterness, cynicism or despair; or have just simply sold-out; or plain no longer care! All your ranting and raving and nay saying won’t do a thing to take away one moment of the adventure, creativity, experimentation, excitement or passion that made this time in history so great!
I also want to thank the brilliant filmmakers for paying homage to so many great cultural icons, organizations and events of the period: Walter Cronkite, the greatest broadcaster of the 20th century. Baba Olatunji, the Nigerian Drummer and social activist, his double looked like he came right off the Drums of Passion album cover! I can now see him smiling from heaven! The tremendous scene with Bread and Puppet, a living, breathing, direct link to 1960′s radicalism, warmed my heart! You even went up to their stronghold in Glover, Vermont, to film part of the scene! Bravo! The SDS (Students for a Democratic Society), which did not advocate violence, and the much smaller splinter-group that morphed into an organization advocating extreme measures, called the Weather Underground. The brave Martin Luther King, Jr. and his intervention in a labor dispute, which cost him his life. The historic occupation of the Ivy League, Columbia University by its students protesting both the Vietnam war and the intense poverty that surrounded the school. Ken Kesey and his legendary bus. The Jimi Hendrix & Janice Jopplin characters who show such dignity, and a passion for music. And, of course, the Beatles! Their music reaches deep into my soul. You gave me insights into the meaning of their tunes that after all these years never crossed my mind!
I also enjoyed being bathed in all the very colorful special affects. The 60′s and early 70′s were a time of outrageously bold colors and design. Something brilliantly portrayed in “Across the Universe”! The only film I intend to purchase on DVD that has been released this year!
Another Travesty/Tragedy in Iraq
Sunday, February 17th, 2008There is yet another horrible example of the mismanagement of the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that has exploded into the media’s sights these past few days. This time it involves a request for the type of vehicle that could have been protecting American troops from IED’s for the past several years had the request been granted. Instead deaths and maimings have resulted that could have been prevented and the source of this report is the military itself. The first sentence of the article tells the tragic story and conjures up the same kind of “gross mismanagement” that resulted in countless veterans of the Vietnam War paying endlessly for their service as they suffered from Agent Orange poisoning. “Hundreds of U.S. Marines have been killed or injured by roadside bombs in Iraq because Marine Corps bureaucrats refused an urgent request in 2005 from battlefield commanders for blast-resistant vehicles, an internal military study concludes.”
STUDY DELAYED DELIVERY OF TRUCKS LED TO MARINE DEATHS
WASHINGTON (AP) — Hundreds of U.S. Marines have been killed or injured by roadside bombs in Iraq because Marine Corps bureaucrats refused an urgent request in 2005 from battlefield commanders for blast-resistant vehicles, an internal military study concludes.
The study was written by a civilian Marine Corps official and obtained by The Associated Press.
It accuses the service of “gross mismanagement” that delayed deliveries of the mine-resistant, ambush-protected trucks for more than two years.
Cost was a driving factor in the decision to turn down the request for the MRAPs, according to the study.
Stateside authorities saw the hulking vehicles, which can cost as much as a $1 million each, as a financial threat to programs aimed at developing lighter vehicles that were years from being fielded.
After Defense Secretary Robert Gates declared the MRAP the Pentagon’s acquisition priority in May 2007, the trucks began to be shipped to Iraq in large quantities.
The vehicles weigh as much as 40 tons and have been effective at protecting American forces from improvised explosive devices (IEDs), the weapon of choice for Iraqi insurgents. Only four U.S. troops have been killed by such bombs while riding in MRAPs; three of those deaths occurred in older versions of the vehicles.
The study’s author, Franz J. Gayl, catalogs what he says were flawed decisions and missteps by midlevel managers in Marine Corps offices that occurred well before Gates replaced Donald Rumsfeld in December 2006.
Among the findings in the January 22 study:
• Budget and procurement managers failed to recognize the damage being done by IEDs in late 2004 and early 2005 and were convinced the best solution was adding more armor to the less-sturdy Humvees the Marines were using. Humvees, even those with extra layers of steel, proved incapable of blunting the increasingly powerful explosives planted by insurgents.
• An urgent February 2005 request for MRAPs got lost in bureaucracy. It was signed by then-Brig. Gen. Dennis Hejlik, who asked for 1,169 of the vehicles. The Marines could not continue to take “serious and grave casualties” caused by IEDs when a solution was commercially available, wrote Hejlik, who was a commander in western Iraq from June 2004 to February 2005.
Gayl cites documents showing Hejlik’s request was shuttled to a civilian logistics official at the Marine Corps Combat Development Command in suburban Washington who had little experience with military vehicles. As a result, there was more concern over how the MRAP would upset the Marine Corps’ supply and maintenance chains than there was in getting the troops a truck that would keep them alive, the study contends.
• The Marine Corps’ acquisition staff didn’t give top leaders correct information. Gen. James Conway, the Marine Corps commandant, was not told of the gravity of Hejlik’s MRAP request and the real reasons it was shelved, Gayl writes. That resulted in Conway giving “inaccurate and incomplete” information to Congress about why buying MRAPs was not hotly pursued.
• The Combat Development Command, which decides what gear to buy, treated the MRAP as an expensive obstacle to long-range plans for equipment that was more mobile and fit into the Marines Corps’ vision as a rapid reaction force. Those projects included a Humvee replacement called the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle and a new vehicle for reconnaissance and surveillance missions.
The MRAPs didn’t meet this fast-moving standard and so the Combat Development Command didn’t want to buy them, according to Gayl. The study calls this approach a “Cold War orientation” that suffocates the ability to react to emergency situations.
• The Combat Development Command has managers — some of whom are retired Marines — who lack adequate technical credentials. They have outdated views of what works on the battlefield and how the defense industry operates, Gayl says. Yet they are in position to ignore or overrule calls from deployed commanders.
An inquiry should be conducted by the Marine Corps inspector general to determine if any military or government employees are culpable for failing to rush critical gear to the troops, recommends Gayl, who prepared the study for the Marine Corps’ plans, policies and operations department.
No comment from the Marine Corps
The study was obtained by the AP from a nongovernment source.
“If the mass procurement and fielding of MRAPs had begun in 2005 in response to the known and acknowledged threats at that time, as the (Marine Corps) is doing today, hundreds of deaths and injuries could have been prevented,” writes Gayl, the science and technology adviser to Lt. Gen. Richard Natonski, who heads the department.
“While the possibility of individual corruption remains undetermined, the existence of corrupted MRAP processes is likely, and worthy of (inspector general) investigation.”
Gayl, who has clashed with his superiors in the past and filed for whistle-blower protection last year, uses official Marine Corps documents, e-mails, briefing charts, memos, congressional testimony, and news articles to make his case.
He was not allowed to interview or correspond with any employees connected to the Combat Development Command. The study’s cover page says the views in the study are his own.
Maj. Manuel Delarosa, a Marine Corps spokesman, called Gayl’s study “predecisional staff work” and said it would be inappropriate to comment on it. Delarosa said, “It would be inaccurate to state that Lt. Gen. Natonski has seen or is even aware of” the study.
Last year, the service defended the decision to not buy MRAPs after receiving the 2005 request. There were too few companies able to make the vehicles, and armored Humvees were adequate, officials said then.
Hejlik, who is now a major general and heads Marine Corps Special Operations Command, has cast his 2005 statement as more of a recommendation than a demand for a specific system.
The term mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicle “was very generic” and intended to guide a broader discussion of what type of truck would be needed to defend against the changing threats troops in the field faced, Hejlik told reporters in May 2007. “I don’t think there was any intent by anybody to do anything but the right thing.”
The study does not say precisely how many Marine casualties Gayl thinks occurred due to the lack of MRAPs, which have V-shaped hulls that deflect blasts out and away from the vehicles.
Gayl cites a March 1, 2007, memo from Conway to Gen. Peter Pace, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in which Conway said 150 service members were killed and an additional 1,500 were seriously injured in the prior nine months by IEDs while traveling in vehicles.
The MRAP, Conway told Pace, could reduce IED casualties in vehicles by 80 percent. He told Pace an urgent request for the vehicles was submitted by a Marine commander in May 2006. No mention is made of Hejlik’s call more than a year before.
Delivering MRAPs to Marines in Iraq, Conway wrote, was his “number one unfilled warfighting requirement at this time.” Overall, he added, the Marine Corps needed 3,700 of the trucks — more than three times the number requested by Hejlik in 2005.
More than 3,200 U.S. troops, including 824 Marines, have been killed in action in Iraq since the war began in March 2003. An additional 29,000 have been wounded, nearly 8,400 of them Marines. The majority of the deaths and injuries have been caused by explosive devices, according to the Defense Department.
Congress has provided more than $22 billion for 15,000 MRAPs the Defense Department plans to acquire, mostly for the Army. Depending on the size of the vehicle and how it is equipped, the trucks can cost between $450,000 and $1 million.
As of May 2007, roughly 120 MRAPs were being used by troops from all the military services, Pentagon records show. Now, more than 2,150 are in the hands of personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Marines have 900 of those.
There Are Never Acceptable Excuses for the Mistreatment of Women
Sunday, February 10th, 2008A wonderful writer who has expressed her strongly held and compellingly reasoned opinions on a wide range of social justice issues has written a powerful piece on the ways in which our government and military are failing women. She focuses on three very disturbing examples in making the case that there can be no excuses for the ways in which women are being victimized as a direct result of war. Her words are unequivocating: “…caring for emotional wounds of its service men and women isn’t the only moral imperative for today’s military. An essential component to that moral and humanitarian imperative is for the Military to take a forceful stand against any tacit condoning of violence against women, internationally, domestically, and in zones where US citizens work as civilian contractors. You cannot work to protect basic human rights without seeing this one as absolute: freedom isn’t freedom if it’s only for half of the population.”
Here is her piece:
Sarah Werthan Buttenwieser
| Sarah Werthan Buttenwieser’s work has appeared in magazines including Brain Child, Bitch & New England Watershed, frequently on the web for Mothers Movement Online, Literary Mama & Mamazine as well as Women in News & Media’s group blog. Her opinion pieces have appeared in newspapers including the Philadelphia Inquirer, Newsday & USA Today. |
War Crimes, Crimes Against Women and the Imperative to Heal
International law has finally—after mass violation of women and girls occurred in Kosovo and Rwanda—recognized these crimes as distinct ones under international law. That’s obviously a critical development on behalf of women’s safety and women’s integrity worldwide. Three recent stories, though, remind us of the fact that war culture and utter disregard for women go hand in hand, and not just in far-off places. These stories take place, if not always geographically within our borders, within our own society.
Firstly, Representative Louise M. Slaughter, along with over 100 of her congressional colleagues, recently pressed Secretaries Gates and Rice to provide answers on the record to prove they will ensure that the grisly gang rape and torture Jamie Leigh Jones, a KBR employee, endured in Iraq by a group of her fellow employees, including the ensuing cover-up by the US military and the security company, will never happen again. Slaughter writes that while the Army created a rape kit, it then handed the kit over to the contractor KBR, and it was promptly “lost.” Two years after the brutal attack on Jones, there is still no word about an investigation from the Departments of Justice, State or Defense. This kind of collusion doesn’t sit well with Slaughter and fellow congressional members. Accountability, writes Slaughter, merits “rocking the boat.”
Although not directly related, after Persian Gulf War Veteran James Allen Selby hung himself in jail awaiting sentencing for at least 27 counts that included rape, armed robbery and attempted murder, he was, in death, granted a full military burial. In a recent opinion piece that appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Ann Ream questions this procedure. She writes: “The military policy of allowing honors burials for veterans convicted of rape sends a chilling message to victims: Even the most heinous sexual violence does not trump prior military service,” a position she deems as “ethically indefensible as it is inconsistent.”
And the murder of Lance Marine Corporal Maria Lauterbach, eight months pregnant, by a fellow Marine, Cesar Laurean, a man she feared and at least at one time accused of sexual assault (although he was never even switched from the same unit), completes this trifecta of military protectionism for men who potentially have perpetrated violence against women. Her purported rape fell into an area some deem as “gray,” as if date rape or saying “no” isn’t enough to make it real. This grisly murder was real, though and it occurs as the media has begun to shed light on how many military personnel have returned from Iraq and Afghanistan with such severe emotional trauma that a spike in murder, domestic violence, and suicide rates amongst those veterans is undeniable.
I don’t highlight these crimes to argue that one problem is bigger than the other or that men are more important than women or vice versa. The ways traumatized military men or veterans act—these extreme cases and many unreported ones—signals that the Military has a formidable job to do in the wake of war. The Military must take on—as its moral imperative, and its humanitarian imperative—a boldly different and compassionate and comprehensive way to care for its veterans returning from war with such deep trauma that at best their young lives are forever altered.
It’s that caring for emotional wounds of its service men and women isn’t the only moral imperative for today’s military. An essential component to that moral and humanitarian imperative is for the Military to take a forceful stand against any tacit condoning of violence against women, internationally, domestically, and in zones where US citizens work as civilian contractors. You cannot work to protect basic human rights without seeing this one as absolute: freedom isn’t freedom if it’s only for half of the population.
Compassion isn’t linear. Compassion must move fluidly, in many directions in order to do its job, and begins with absolute intolerance for violence against women anywhere in the world, by anyone, at any time, in any uniform, “gray” or no. And it extends to those who served in inhumane conditions, to try to make it so that their broken selves can be restored. These priorities must be paired to make today’s world a safer, more just, more humane place.
© Sarah Werthan Buttenwieser. All rights reserved.
PTSD AND THE ALARMING INCREASE IN IRAQ WAR SOLDIERS’ SUICIDES
Sunday, February 3rd, 2008I saw both of these articles this morning and they definitely caught my attention. This war, that our two leading Republican candidates are making it clear would continue indefinitely if they are elected, is causing increasing tragedies for our soldiers and their families. If you are living in a Super Tuesday state and you need another reason to be sure to vote, here it is. What could already have been accomplished had Bush been gone in the last year to end this insane war? The connection between PTSD and suicide was firmly established in earlier wars, and particularly in the Vietnam War, but as these articles indicate the refusal to acknowledge the need so many currently serving soldiers and veterans have for mental health treatment so as to avoid the expenditure and commitment of resources treatment would require, is having catastrophic consequences. We need to write our Congresspeople and tell them that our soldiers need our support if they are to ever resume the lives they left to serve our country. What they are experiencing in Iraq and Afghanistan is staying with them when they return and leading them to hurt themselves and others. That is unacceptable…
STUDY: PTSD, NOT BRAIN INJURY, MAY CAUSE VET’S SYMPTOMS
- Story Highlights
- Study: Symptoms usually linked to vets’ concussions were actually related to PTSD
- 5 percent of soldiers surveyed reported battle concussions/loss of consciousness
- Critic: Doctors shouldn’t dismiss true brain injury symptoms as psychological only
By Yvonne Lee
CNN
NEW YORK (CNN) — Sgt. Ryan Kahlor has the same nightmare every time, a vision of walls painted in blood and fat, and men on top of houses, throwing pieces of Marines’ bodies off rooftops. It’s a vision he can’t shake, because he lived through it while deployed to Iraq last year.
“I have nightmares. I dwell on it. I think about it all the time,” said Kahlor, 24. “Staying asleep is hard. I associate a bed with the dreams I have. My parents think I’m crazy, but I sleep better when I’m on the floor.”
Kahlor has post-traumatic stress disorder, which can develop after surviving a traumatic event in which a person is physically threatened or injured.
He also experienced concussions while surviving four explosions during his 14 months in Iraq. He said these events left him with a detached retina, vertigo, memory problems and dizziness.
A new military study published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine says soldiers who suffered concussions in Iraq were not only at higher risk of developing post-traumatic stress disorder and depression, but also that the depression and PTSD, not the head injuries, may be the cause of ongoing physical symptoms.
Five percent of the 2,500 soldiers surveyed by Walter Reed Army Institute of Research said they had concussions in which they lost consciousness during combat. Forty-four percent of these soldiers ended up with PTSD.
Researchers were surprised to find symptoms normally associated with concussions — headaches, dizziness, irritability and memory problems — were actually related to PTSD or depression. 
Watch Dr. Sanjay Gupta explain the study. »
“It isn’t the combat exposure or physical injury, it’s the PTSD that seems to drive these symptoms. That’s a surprise,” said Joseph A. Boscarino, Ph.D., who studies PTSD at the Geisinger Center for Health Research in Danville, Pennsylvania. “You would expect they would have these other symptoms related to traumatic brain injury, that maybe they have a permanent injury, but it’s explained by whether they have PTSD or depression.”
About 8 million American adults have PTSD. A 2003 New England Journal of Medicine Study found that 15 percent to 17 percent of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans were suffering from PTSD, and more than 60 percent of those showing symptoms were unlikely to seek help because of fears of stigmatization or loss of career advancement opportunities.
As of June 30, 2007, the Department of Defense reported 3,294 soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan suffering from traumatic brain injuries, or TBIs. Bomb blasts caused nearly 70 percent of those TBI cases.
Dr. James Kelly, a neurology professor at the University of Colorado and a co-author of guidelines the military uses to identify traumatic brain injury, expressed concerns that doctors will attribute lingering health problems to psychological issues.
“I think if people misunderstand or overextend beyond what this survey shows, they could dismiss true brain injury features as psychological only,” Kelly said. “It would be a terrible disservice to our military for that to happen.”
Kahlor is worried this study will make it harder for soldiers to get appropriate medical care.
“The military doesn’t want to diagnose people with brain injury,” he said. “So what they’ll do is play it off as PTSD as the sole injury for everyone, because PTSD and traumatic brain injury have very similar symptoms,” he said. “The disability [compensation] is a lot higher for traumatic brain injury. What the military is saying is, you can’t be diagnosed from a brain injury unless you get better from PTSD. It’s kind of like a paradox.”
Kahlor says he has documents saying he has concussion injuries such as a detached retina, seizure activity in the brain, inner-ear expansion and post-concussion syndrome, which gives him bad headaches. Still, he has been unable to get an official diagnosis of traumatic brain injury.
“A doctor in Fort Irwin looked at me and glanced at my records for 10 minutes and wrote on my records that he thought my symptoms, my claims were psychosomatic, where I made them up myself,” Kahlor said. “He’s basically seen me once. He wanted to send me to a med board to get me out of the Army as soon as possible and pawn me off to the VA system.”
In response to concerns that this study could make it more difficult for soldiers to get a diagnosis of traumatic brain injury, study author Col. Charles Hoge said, “Hopefully it clarifies things a bit, that soldiers who have had concussions with loss of consciousness are at higher risk of PTSD. We want to make sure they are seen and get help. It also clarifies that the symptoms they are experiencing may be multiple reasons for that.”
Kelly said one of the problems with the study is that it describes symptoms such as headache, dizziness and fatigue as possibly psychosomatic and related to PTSD and depression. But these are symptoms also commonly associated with postconcussive syndrome, he said.
“They don’t know that these soldiers didn’t have post-concussion syndrome,” he said. “They are components of post-concussion syndrome and PTSD… It’s absolutely confusing. My concern with this article is people can over-attribute all the lingering problems to psychological issues only, when it started with a biomechanical brain injury. I think it’s unfair to unlink what happened to the brain and the psychological aftermath of what happened in that scenario.”
In an accompanying editorial, Richard A. Bryant, Ph.D., says this study should encourage doctors to be more cautious when attributing health problems to mild traumatic brain injury, because PTSD and depression may be the problem.
“Incontrovertible evidence now shows that psychological factors play a significant role in postconcussive symptoms,” Bryant said.
“Soldiers should not be led to believe that they have a brain injury that will result in permanent change.”
He said the study also highlights the need for a clear definition of mild traumatic brain injury.
“The study retrospectively assesses for mild traumatic brain injury by inquiring about having a loss of consciousness, being dazed, or not remembering the inquiry. Each of these reactions can be attributed to acute stress,” Bryant said.
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CONCERN MOUNTS OVER RISING TROOP SUICIDES
Story Highlights
Average of 5 soldiers per day tried to commit suicide in 2007, Army figures show
Sen. Jim Webb introduces legislation to improve care for soldiers
Army psychiatrist says soldiers must overcome stigma of treatment
Psychiatrist: “We know that soldiers don’t want to go seek care”
WASHINGTON (CNN) — Every day, five U.S. soldiers try to kill themselves. Before the Iraq war began, that figure was less than one suicide attempt a day.
The dramatic increase is revealed in new U.S. Army figures, which show 2,100 soldiers tried to commit suicide in 2007.
“Suicide attempts are rising and have risen over the last five years,” said Col. Elspeth Cameron-Ritchie, an Army psychiatrist.
Concern over the rate of suicide attempts prompted Sen. Jim Webb, D-Virginia, to introduce legislation Thursday to improve the military’s suicide-prevention programs.
“Our troops and their families are under unprecedented levels of stress due to the pace and frequency of more than five years of deployments,” Webb said in a written statement. Watch CNN Senior Pentagon Correspondent Jamie McIntyre on the reasons for the increase in suicides »
Sen. Patty Murray, D-Washington, took to the Senate floor Thursday, urging more help for military members, especially for those returning from war.
“Our brave service members who face deployment after deployment without the rest, recovery and treatment they need are at the breaking point,” Murray said.
She said Congress has given “hundreds of millions of dollars” to the military to improve its ability to provide mental health treatment, but said it will take more than money to resolve the problem.
“It takes leadership and it takes a change in the culture of war,” she said. She said some soldiers had reported receiving nothing more than an 800 number to call for help.
“Many soldiers need a real person to talk to,” she said. “And they need psychiatrists and they need psychologists.”
According to Army statistics, the incidence of U.S. Army soldiers attempting suicide or inflicting injuries on themselves has skyrocketed in the nearly five years since the start of the Iraq war.
Last year’s 2,100 attempted suicides — an average of more than 5 per day — compares with about 350 suicide attempts in 2002, the year before the war in Iraq began, according to the Army.
The figures also show the number of suicides by active-duty troops in 2007 may reach an all-time high when the statistics are finalized in March, Army officials said.
The Army lists 89 soldier deaths in 2007 as suicides and is investigating 32 more as possible suicides. Suicide rates already were up in 2006 with 102 deaths, compared with 87 in 2005.
Cameron-Ritchie, the Army psychiatrist, said suicide attempts are usually related to problems with intimate relationships, but they are also related to problems with work, finances and the law.
“The really tough area here is stigma. We know that soldiers don’t want to go seek care. They’re tough, they’re strong, they don’t want to go see a behavioral health-care provider,” Cameron-Ritchie said.
Multiple deployments and long deployments appear to exact a toll on relationships, thereby boosting the number of suicide attempts, she said.
Traditionally, the suicide rate among military members has been lower than age- and gender-matched civilians. But in recent years the rate has crept up from 12 per 100,000 among the military to 17.5 per 100,000 in 2006, she said. That’s still less than the civilian figure of about 20 per 100,000, she said.
The “typical” soldier who commits suicide is a member of an infantry unit who uses a firearm to carry out the act, according to the Army.
Post-traumatic stress disorder also may be a factor in suicide attempts, Cameron-Ritchie said, because it can result in broken relationships and often leads to drug and alcohol abuse.
“The real central issue is relationships. Relationships, relationships, relationships,” said U.S. Army Chaplain Lt. Col. Ran Dolinger. “People look at PTSD, they look at length of deployments … but it’s that broken relationship that really makes the difference.”
To reduce suicides, the Army said it is targeting soldiers who are or have been in Iraq for long periods and teaching them to notice signs that can lead to suicide.
That training came too late for Army Specialist Tim Bowman. The 23-year-old killed himself in 2005 after returning from Iraq.
“As my family was preparing for a 2005 Thanksgiving meal, our son Timothy was lying on the floor, slowly bleeding to death from a self-inflicted gunshot wound,” said his father, Mike Bowman, in testimony to a House Veterans’ Affairs committee hearing in December. “His war was now over.”
He said veterans return home to find an “understaffed, under-funded, under-equipped” Veterans Affairs mental health system.
“Many just give up trying,” he said.