The San Fran Chron, man. According to their sources, 120 Iraq/Iran vets off themselves weekly. Dude! Bob Owens does the math.
If one veteran of the wars kills himself weekly, it’s a tragedy. These morons have turned it into a farce, though there are those who are so eager for this to be true, they’ll actually print such a fable and believe.
So, veterans of our war with Iran are offing themselves pre-emptively?
Curse you, BOOOOOOOOSH!
This is such a ridiculous claim, but I can guaranfuckingtee that the twatwaffles and moonbats will quote it for years, like they still assert the Lancet numbers.
I could give a shit either way. Suicide is a lot selfish and reflective of deep character flaws I think. You want to really piss me off, kill yourself.
Stop soliciting, hf.
Oh. That sounds kinda like thems what yells jump. I mean it different. Hard to articulate really, but if you tell me a group of certain people have a predilection for suicide, than my opinion of this group is that they’re a little sketchy, and the problem is how to get them not to be so sketchy more than how to make them stop wanting to kill themselves. But I think they’re making this shit up, cause soldiers are a lot not sketchy.
Do they kill themselves after they batter their wives during the Super Bowl?
/sarc
I think they need to try a different hobby. Maybe they could try bowling weekly instead.
These are some excellent and incisive comments; they clearly display the clarion truth that you see the combat detritus that as trash on the shoulder of your highway to hell. In other words, fuck you, troop desparigers.
How dare you make jokes at the expense of the soldiers who have suffered this ungodly pointless exercise. Disgusting.
Me I was totally serious.
So these veterans should just suck it up and get with the deal: they will have minimal support, despite having undergone a crushing ordeal. It’s an unpopular war, so into the poop shute with you! You faux patriots shouldn’t even own pets. Way too sadistic and obsessed with deleting history.
You’re so judgey. What you don’t understand is knowing someone what kills themselves is a lot the crushingest deal ever. It’s a lot a sadistic thing to do and I have zero tolerance for it, maybe zero point five. Except for sick old people.
I heard of that 121 suicides a week well prior to this and the best number I could come up with doing google-fu on the VA and casualty sites was the 120+ a year, not week. This is a wet and smelly one from the get go.
Yes, veterans are sick sadistic and manipulitive fucks who just want to make your hot water lukewarm. Cry me an ocean. You people are absolute pricks.
One is too many.
Yeah well it is what it is. Vail of tears and all that.
geeze cynn, cause it’s much better to pity them. s’why I keep a hammer under the bed. never know when RTO might snap.
I think that should be vale of tears really.
veil?
Two is too many plus one.
OK, if you want to look at it cynically, what are borderline kooks doing in our military in the first place? Secondly, why are the casualties such a figure of fun after the fact?
Either way I guess. I think the important thing to remember is that journalists what write about military suicides are the biggest fans of it. It’s so validating for them.
it’s not that they’re fun, cynn, it’s that they make up stats and try to float this story every few months and it almost always gets shot down. cause they make crap up. but by golly they care
cynn,
The press tried this one awhile back; it’s crap. Note how the story switches from Iran/Iraq vets to vets in general, too.
maggie beats me to the buzzer!
Cynn’s anger hardens my nipples.
cynn – They do it for your reaction, precisely for your reaction. They lie, and you lap it up.
oh and as SGT Ted mentioned… the NYT in January said that there were 121 suicides in 2007. seems an odd number to keep showing up at random.
I mean, you’d hope they’d care enough to at least get their #%$^$#! numbers right.
Who’s “they,” JD? Can you say with absolute certainty that we are providing surviving soldiers what they need?
well, cynn, quite a few of them seem to think they’re getting the care they need.
Hmmm. They should make a movie and just lay it all out. Maybe they could get that that nice Josh Hartnett. We can all watch it and feel. Who will start the healing?
I got something they can feel.
That’s a different outrage, cynn, and one you’ll likely find little disagreement with. Thing is, if vets aren’t offing themselves at a significantly higher rate than the same civilian demographics, then this story really doesn’t have any there there.
Now, as to the other outrage, this is what government health care looks like.
and I’m not saying it’s perfect. I know a lot of them have to fight for benefits, but that’s also just the nature of the beast. not sure how you fix that.
Soldiers need Filipino dancing girls. Only the best for our boys. “I lock GI rike huricrane.”
We’d better keep an eye on Jake Gyllenhaal and Ryan Phillippe, just to be on the safe side.
I propose that we ban all suicides, cynn. In that we cannot do so, if we are going to talk about suicides of veterans, I refuse to even engage when it is premised on a lie. There are not 121 a week, 18 a day or anything approaching that. Period, end of story. It is a lie.
Me and LMC and Cowboy have taken the “report from the battleground” title away from BJ. I am going to host a Hillary get together.
Fine, it is a lie. Sign up your yellow ass, and report back.
and I find it kind of funny I find it kind of sad
They make Vermont Teddy Bears for times like these.
Cynn, where to send your bear?
and also German oneses
gosh that’s a lot creepy really
Damn, no Wounded Soldier Bears available. I smell opportunity.
Cynn, one of the reasons I signed my “yellow ass” up was so that others would not have to.
You may not respect the right of people to choose the course of their lives, but thankfully others od.
Deliver To: Cynn’s House of Other’s Pain
Maybe they could try bowling weekly instead.
As opposed to the Obama style, bowling weakly….
Nice snit, cynn. I’d be impressed if my military service didn’t keep me so busy continually struggling to maintain a will to live. Perhaps I’ll have time later. Maybe if I slaughter the family my schedule will clear up a bit.
I have bad feet. No really, I have bad feet. No really, every morning I have take baby steps to piss.
Replace my feet and put me in, coach. No really, I have bad feet, and that’s not just my way of getting a cocoa butter foot massage. Stiff with pain! Feel my foot pain!
RTO: Respectfully, I’m not speaking to you. I’m addressing those dissmissive fuckers who think that honorable veterans who’ve had too much, and have taken their lives, as somehow stupid or inconsequential. To them I say fuck you.
To you I say thank you.
One is too many, and the rate of suicide in the military has gone up over the last couple of years. Even with the increase, it’s still a lower rate than it was before the war started and that was a lower rate than among the civilian population.
Non-military folks, who care oh so much, ought to have to sit through some of the suicide awareness training that NCOs receive. Just maybe they’d get the picture that we do care about it, and we actively work to keep those numbers as low as possible. BUt it’s probably far more effective to sit at home and wring their hands over us, especailly if it’ll prove that we are broken somehow.
Taking one’s own life, regardless of who they were or what occupation they chose, is both stupid and inconsequential (in that it changes/solves nothing).
You manage to make your thanks sound pretty patronizing, Cynn.
Nah, cynn’s the schnizzle. We are, oft times, assholes. She’s good with the reminders.
Hey look, on the Vermont Teddy web site there’s a Foot Pain Bear just for me.
Wow, Ok, RT, guess I don’t understand the value of life. Thanks for the lesson.
cynn, don’t be so dismissive. Feelings aren’t everything.
I got interested in the subject a long time ago, going so far as to quiz a shrink I knew at the time. He maintained that suicide is generally intended as an assault — that the person who kills him or her self is deliberately attempting to hurt somebody else. I have been at least peripherally associated with several suicides since then, and anecdotally at least I can confirm the hypothesis from my own experience.
This does not mean that “goodbye cruel world!” is nonexistent, but it is much rarer than you think. Suicide bombers, Muslim style, are an extreme but not an aberration. It also does not mean the suicider isn’t partly or wholly justified in assaulting his or her tormenters, but that is a whole ‘nother can of snakes.
But if happyfeet perceives suicide as an assault — and if he’s encountered a suicide, it’s likely that that’s the impression he got — his attitude is at least somewhat justified. I don’t agree with it, but I do agree that it’s a valid way to think.
Regards,
Ric
I understand the value of a dead Islamo-monkey.
Sweet Baby Jesus, Cynn, get off your damned high-horse. How dare you use these bullshit invented statistics as a club to try to beat people up for using the poor Soldiers!?!?
What the Hell do you think you’re doing right now? You’re USING this bullshit “news” to try to justify your agenda. Pure, unadulterated, 200-proof hypocrisy, right here, right now.
Are you even CAPABLE of math? 6240 suicides a year? Does that even make one flying fuckwit of sense to you?
Why don’t you go cut-and-paste that Al-Q propaganda about mass graves full of American Soldiers that the US has been “covering up?” Or, alternatively, go buy a damned bottle of the good stuff, because you’re acting like you do when you’re on the Big Lots special.
Damn, Cynn, once in a while you’re a gem, but when you’re not, you’re REALLY not.
Do you realize how stoopit you sound?
It’s not the value of life that’s really at issue. It’s the value of malignant propaganda.
The story is a lie. And not just because it invents the numbers it reports. It also portrays the miltiary as caring nothing about it and doing nothing to prevent it. Both of those are also lies.
And they count on people like Cynn to not know the truth and to buy right into the message, the Pentagon is just a meat grinder into which mothers are expected to throw their babies. I beleive that Cynn beleives that.
Another example, I jsut put up at the Pub. USA Today did a story on Stop Loss and, typically, gets the story wrong. Hope springs eternal, so I attempted to correct them.
The story broke yesterday also, that the miltary is enlisting “felons” in greater numbers. Lots of facts, and no context, which is the other tactic commonly employed.
It’s all designed to make us look callous and broken and dangerous.
You know why I get so upset at cynn? Because, at least once upon a time, she showed potential for rational thought. And I hate to see potential pissed down the drain.
If I thought she was just a useless troll, I’d just laugh or throw gibberish at her.
But maybe it’s not the booze, maybe she’s permanently lost in the maze now. Permanent moral inversion.
That would be nice, because I wouldn’t have to get upset anymore.
RTO, quit the lash-batting coyness. Everyone loves you, as long as we remember. Quit trying to leverage your own high public opinion into this catastrophic administration. You really need to separate yourself; that would say volumes about your intelligence.
Fine, it is a lie. Sign up your yellow ass, and report back.
Ah, the “Chickensuicider”? So if you don’t join me here in Basrah, your opinion doesn’t count either, cynn?
Deep breath and relax. The crowd here mocks the crude agit-prop, and some express anger at suicide as a selfish act.
Coyness? You haven’t got a clue. You couldn’t get a clue if you covered youself in clue musk and stood in a field full of horny, lusty clues, during clue mating season.
I’m not in this to be loved. My job is to defend and it’s more than a little condecending to have people who would have us give up aon that job, claim to be doing it in defense of us.
Seriously, we just don’t need that kind of help.
Frankly, your assessment of my intellect is at the bottom of my list of things to someday be concerned with, if I find the time, and/or can’t find something distracting to do instead.
cynn,
“Quit trying to leverage your own high public opinion into this catastrophic administration.”
You are a depraved and cynical person. Go away and find help.
sooo, how are things Major John?
or, I’ll just say “Hi!” I realize you probably get asked that a lot.
Howdy, MJ!
Major John!
I just like saying “Major John!”
No, I have succeeded in two areas: I have gotten both of you (whose opinions and experience I respect) flushed out of the deep weeds. I don’t care what you think about me. If you truly are military, you work for me. So you better be good.
Neither of you have addressed the issue: damaged soldiers taking their lives because WAR destroyed their minds. That is significant. You can think what you want about me and my faculties; I know what I think about yours.
Hi all. I am tired. I guess that about sums it up. I am about to start another day helping the totally defeated Iraqi 14th Division figure out what to do with all the captured JAM personnel and equipment…heh.
well, cynn, what about the people NOT in the military that kill themselves at a much higher rate? do they not matter to you?
If there were evidence that such existed, it would be an issue. But there isn’t, and I find that a positive.
cynn,
you are depraved because you impart the political on EVERYTHING. And you couldn’t flush a rabbit out of the woods, much less anyone else. If you think we neither care or know about injury due to war, you have added a deep and abiding ignorance to your cynicism and patronizing tone.
We take care of our own without making it a Pharisee-like grand public trumpeting. See Sen Reid, et al. I supposed I could just say “it’s a military thing, you wouldn;t understand” but that would be stooping to your debased level.
Oh, and cynn – I don’t “work for you”. I’d recommend picking up a copy of the United States COnstitution to see who I work for.
Bah. Back to the war I go….have a nice day, er.. night wherever you are.
Don’t call me depraved; you don’t know me. I will assume you take care of you own, and I bid you godspeed. Good night, sir!
Cynn, you’re changing the issue. The issue was a bogus story. When the suicide rate among the miltiary is roughly the same or greater than that of the civilian rate, THEN we might be able to say it was war that did it.
Instead, the rate during the war has been less than it was before the war. One possible inteprpretation is that the war has actaully prevented suicides, wihc is possible as it gives troops something other than their personal laives to think about.
And if you knew anything about suicide prevention and awareness, you’d know that that is what precipitates suicides; personal problems.
But you feel free to go right ahead drawing conclusions about proximate causes with no data or evidence to back it up.
Major John, I trust that 14th is also totaly demoralized and combat ineffective as well. Is any of that JAM equipment any good? If so I suppose that could be a way to get Iran to foot part of the bill for reconstruction in Iraq….
Cynn, you might try that “you work for me” line on a Guardsman standing post in a disaster area sometime and see what it gets you.
What the hell: I’m a civic servant; I hear it all the time every day. Quit making yourself such a royal.
cynn – Just look at what war did to Scott Beauchamp’s mind. It destroyed it before he even got there apparently. Sneaky bastard that war thing is and you can’t trust it.
Jebus, cynn, what is your problem?
The story was false, a lie, a complete fabrication. How can you go from people poking fun at the lie to them not caring about soldiers? If anything, the people who are pushing the story for their political goals are the ones not caring about the soldiers.
But, it was truthy. I mean, I can see it playing out in a movie. Mr. Susan Sarandon will be the grieving father, screaming “God DAMN you BUSH!” I don’t know who should play the soldier who offs himself. But he should have eyes that tell the whole story, if ykwim.
And, really, it’s good to see a return of the chickenhawk argument. It’s been ages.
By gum, cynn is right!
How can you not CARE about teh soldiers who are hurtin’! Because, if you cared, you’d have the same opinions as her! Because she cares! She rilly, rilly does!
I love how she doubles back into Chickenhawk mode as soon as she realizes she hasn’t a soapbox to stand on. Her entire tac is a bunch of ad hominems thrown together to the effect that we haven’t “addressed” the suicides, which means we are in Da Nile. Because, you know, that’s our job, to speak plaintively about a phenomenon that’s been going on since one tribe of apes started hitting another on the head with rocks.
Tired and lame.
Cynn’s anger hardens my nipples.
Keep your head on a swivel there thor. You never know when a couple of distraught soldiers, fresh off the boat from Eye-rack, might chuck it all and impale themselves on your finial teats.
I’m having trouble figuring out how, when the San Francisco Chronicle passes along a lie, it’s our fault.
I think it is pretty awful the way cynn picks up a dead soldier and waves that as a club to beat her ideological enemies with. Care? I doubt she cares, she found a useful tool adapted to her passive-aggressive ways.
‘cynn’ is the right handle.
Well, McGehee, we haven’t unproven the stat. I mean, sure, there was no supporting data (except, if I read the article correctly, a reference to an email) — but until WE DISPROVE it, it must stand as fact.
Because of the truthiness, you haters.
Fine, it is a lie. Sign up your yellow ass, and report back.
That was originally directed at me, and had I not been so busy planning ways to kill myself, I would have responded sooner. Since I served a long time ago, I am not sure where this comes from. cynn, you appear to be lashing out at everyone. Are you feeling alright? Lots of stressors in your personal life? Take a deep breath. Step back. Relax.
Cynn. Our dead soldiers don’t work for the San Fran Chron. But the left who abhors the military will take every opportunity to enlist them for their purposes. THAT is what we are arguing here. I don’t know any of those people. I certainly don’t don’t know what personal hell would make them take their own lives, but it is the height of cynical hypocrisy to hold them up in the public forum and decry; Look . Look what Bush has done.
Take care of yourself Major.
She had a moment. Somebody give her a big, warm hug.
Lemon-yellow sunshine and dancing rainbows.
Call out my name. And wherever, yo, I’m running!
Winter, Spring, Summer or Fall, all you have to do is call because you’ve got a friend.
Cynn is full of love and pity and sadness for the imaginary 120 soldiers a week who off themselves (hopefully before they batter their wives), but full of dismissiveness for any real soldiers who have managed to survive the crushing depression of having served in this useless, illegal war but fail to appreciate that cynn is on THEIR SIDE!!!11!!
Have I captured it?
Sorry, cynn. You get nothing.
[…] highlight of that thread, though, in response to the absurd report on military suicides and what it reveals about sick […]
Hugs not rubs!
Not directly applicable to the suicide theme here, but the Army is doing a lot to rehabilitate amputees at Walter Reed (yeah, that place.) As usual, the press doesn’t even attempt to get the story straight.
Problems at Walter Reed: Scandal, the Army isn’t spending money on it and the living conditions stink. Spend money on Walter Reed: Scandal, the place is on the Base Realignment and Closing list, the Army is wasting money.
Some soldier is injured overseas and receives a letter asking that part of his reenlistment bonus be paid back. The Army is heartless. What if the same soldier was in the process of being separated from the Army for other reasons before he is hurt? The law (you know, the one the Congress passed, not the Army) mandated that the Army recoup the money? The first letter said soldier received is a result of the administrative action…
Everything is clear when you know one side of the story. These are stories where what you read was true, just incomplete. Now the press stoops to lying, because half truths are not enough. Newspaper revenues are declining. I wonder why?
“Fine, it is a lie. Sign up your yellow ass, and report back.”
Well, it didn’t take long for the leftist to pull out the chickenhawk retort. Speaking as someone who enlisted in 2003 and just got out a few months ago, by your logic if YOU actually gave a shit about the troops, you’d sign up yourself to take the role of leading them and helping the mission succeed rather than standing on the sidelines ragging on how terrible everything is going. Why is activism only noble in pursuit of liberal ideals?
“If you truly are military, you work for me. So you better be good.”
Bullshit–the military doesn’t take orders from regular civilians, but from the president, the secretary of defense, and the officers appointed over them. Unless you have been elected CinC or have some stripes or brass on your shoulder we can’t see, then STFU about the military’s supposed “duty” to do what you say.
Thanks to all for a truly entertianing thread. Especially to cynn. It couldn’t have happened without you, cynn. And to our sodliers past and present. We couldn’t have the looney radicals in our midst without you protecting their right to embarrass themselves.
Everytime the thinking gets hard, cynns mind collapses and she starts blathering nonsense.
If you truly are military, you work for me. So you better be good.
Effing wow, is that ignorant and appalling.
Rest comfortably cynn, not only would you never serve, you don’t know anyone who has.
“Last year [2002], the Army reported a 12-month suicide rate of 11.1 for each 100,000 soldiers and is expected to report 12 for each 100,000 this year, matching the military’s overall rate.”
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/1230-01.htm
That’s the best source I can find doing a quick search. I suspects the Chron reporter has a decimal point problem. 12 per 100K *annually* sounds about right, and close to twice the civilian suicide rate IIRC.
1) At least cynn didn’t call herself a “civil” servant, because that would have been a bridge too far.
2) It does speak, however, to the poor quality of “civic” service exams. On the other hand, maybe I misunderstood that, maybe she works on Hondas.
3) Thanks, tim macguire, I believe also that we don’t say enough about the brave and determined sod liers that help keep our cities green.
Oh, wait, that last one was a typo, sorry. :)
I found this:
“Among young people 20 to 24 years of age the suicide rate was 12.7/100,000, or 2,285 deaths among 17,594,000 people in this age group.
The 1999 gender ratio for this age group was 6:1 (males: females).”
So the military suicide rate is likely far lower than the rate for others of the same sex and about the same age.
War! What is it good for,??? Gee – on an individual selfish level, having a loved one die for an abstract “big picture” idea is always against personal interest. I have had relatives die or get seriously injured in every war since the Civil War, including the Phillipine Insurrection 1899-1900 and Nicaragua. It would be rather tacky and pointless to scream at , say Barack Obama, that his freedom was at too high a price of my relatives who died in the Civil War. Same for the liberation of Europe in WWII – we have paid a personal price in blood. Getting self-righteous and using troop deployment as a talking point to advance your narrow partisan politics? Try it at our family get togethers – with pictures of dead relatives, in uniform, on the walls. And I will love it all the more if you are hardcore left-wing – [likely a white person, preaching to me about illegal/immoral occupations – in LOS f###ing ANGELES! ha ha ha . So you and your ilk will be leaving right after the sermon, right!?] Come the revolution things’ll be different! [you have no idea!] Buenos Dias, Companero.
P.S. – for the record we love white people – we marry the lucid-thinking ones. Also – Thank the Lord that California is part of the USA: Where the civilians control but respect the military , cops don’t take cash payment of “bail”, and different police agencies don’t get in gun battles….with each other. [and you can still find decent Mexican food and yet drink the tap water – sigh, I live in paradise…an overcrowded one, but paradise nonetheless. Er, I meant it is HELL on earth here!! Stay away! Race riots! No Culture! Traffic! Crappy food! And everyone is ugly, ugly, ugly!!] Did I mention the Hell on earth part?
Lt. Col. Jerry M. Swanner, head of the Army’s suicide prevention program, stressed that there is no correlation between low morale and elevated suicide rates.
In 2003, 24 soldiers deployed to Kuwait and Iraq committed suicide  a rate of 17.3 per 100,000. The overall Army suicide rate during the same time period was 12.8 per 100,000 soldiers. This compares to the Army’s rate of 12.2 for 2003 and 11.9 from 1995 to 2002.
The suicide rate for deployed troops dropped dramatically in 2004. Swanner said no suicides were reported in January or February, and just one soldier took his own life in March. The cause of another fatality has not yet been determined.
Despite the spike, officials said these figures remain lower than the national average of 21.5 per 100,000 for males ages 20 to 34. This is the age bracket for most U.S. soldiers in Iraq.
Swanner insisted that “any suicide is one too many” and that the Army is committed to further reducing the rates.
Californio, I think I’m happier in Texas.