The Truth About Veteran Suicides

[Joanne98]

By Aaron Glantz
Eighteen American war veterans kill themselves every day. One thousand former soldiers receiving care from the Department of Veterans Affairs attempt suicide every month. More veterans are committing suicide than are dying in combat overseas.

These are statistics that most Americans don’t know, because the Bush administration has refused to tell them. Since the start of the Iraq War, the government has tried to present it as a war without casualties.

In fact, they never would have come to light were it not for a class action lawsuit brought by Veterans for Common Sense and Veterans United for Truth on behalf of the 1.7 million Americans who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. The two groups allege the Department of Veterans Affairs has systematically denied mental health care and disability benefits to veterans returning from the conflict zones.

The case, officially known as Veterans for Common Sense vs. Peake, went to trial last month at a Federal Courthouse in San Francisco. The two sides are still filing briefs until May 19 and waiting for a ruling from Judge Samuel Conti, but the case is already having an impact.

“Shh!”
That’s because over the course of the two week trial, the VA was compelled to produce a series of documents that show the extent of the crisis effecting wounded soldiers.

“Shh!” begins one e-mail from Dr. Ira Katz, the head of the VA’s Mental Health Division, advising a media spokesperson not to tell CBS News that 1,000 veterans receiving care at the VA try to kill themselves every month.

“Our suicide prevention coordinators are identifying about 1,000 suicide attempts per month among the veterans we see in our medical facilities. Is this something we should (carefully) address ourselves in some sort of release before someone stumbles on it?” the e-mail concludes.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/05/11/8868/

[libodem]

1. These tragic deaths

should be included in the overall casualty count of Iraq and Afghanistan war deaths. I wonder how many suicide deaths have actually occurred?

[Democrats_win]

2. Terrible! It's hard to hear the screams of soldiers when you're in the pockets of rich men.

bush/cheney have never heard the screams of our soldiers. They DO, hear the screams of Wall Street though. Rich men don't want to hear our soldiers' screams so they tell the preachers to talk about gays.

Surely they are all guilty before God.

[elocs]

3. A full famous quote by my only famous ancestor:

"I am sick and tired of war. Its glory is all moonshine.
It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard
the shrieks and groans of the wounded
who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation.
War is hell."--William Tecumseh Sherman

It certain fits with Bushco.

[Elspeth]

5. Why we have to rediscover this every generation I don't know

sigh.

[midnight]

4. Because of the black out of real news, I would have never

guessed that this was happening: "More veterans are committing suicide than are dying in combat overseas".

[struggle4progress]

6. John Kerry before Committee on Foreign Relations (22 April 1971)

Legislative Proposals Relating to the War in Southeast Asia Thursday, April 22, 1971 United States Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, Washington, D.C.

The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 11:05 a.m., in Room 4221, New Senate Office Building, Senator J. W. Fulbright (Chairman) presiding. Present: Senators Fulbright, Symington, Pell, Aiken, Case and Javits

Statement of John Kerry, Vietnam Veterans Against the War

Mr. Kerry: Thank you very much, Senator Fulbright, Senator Javits, Senator Symington, Senator Pell. I would like to say for the record, and also for the men behind me who are also wearing the uniforms and their medals, that my sitting here is really symbolic. I am not here as John Kerry. I am here as one member of the group of one thousand, which is a small representation of a very much larger group of veterans in this country, and were it possible for all of them to sit at this table they would be here and have the same kind of testimony ...

I understand 57 percent of all those entering the VA hospitals talk about suicide. Some 27 percent have tried, and they try because they come back to this country and they have to face what they did in Vietnam, and then they come back and find the indifference of a country that doesn't really care, that doesn't really care ...

http://www.c-span.org/2004vote/jkerrytestimony.asp

[happydreams]

7. As a veteran I am impressed with how hard the

people at the VA hospitals work to make life better for vets. There has been a sea-change from years ago.

[fed-up]

8. k/r nt

[elehhhhna]

9. "Is this something we should (carefully) address ourselves..."

Say WHAT? That's a chilling question coming from the head of VA mental Hlth, don'tcha think?