Army Suicides, "Things are getting better." Huh?

This was caught a short while ago:

Number of Army Suicides Expected to Top Last Year's Number

The U.S. Army says it expects the number of suicides among active duty soldiers to top last year's numbers, although it says progress is being made in addressing the issue...>>>>

Army thinking seems to not have changed after the previous CiC leadership and all that entailed as to failed leadership, extremely failed policies and total incompetence. More suicides is making progress, Right!

Which leads into this found at Veterans Today

Bush VA Appointees:'Believe in God, You Won't Have PTSD'

God, the Army, and PTSD
Is religion an obstacle to treatment?

by Tara McKelvey

When Roger Benimoff arrived at the psychiatric building of the Coatesville, Pennsylvania veterans’ hospital, he was greeted by a message carved into a nearby tree stump: “Welcome Home.” It was a reminder that things had not turned out as he had expected.

In Faith Under Fire: An Army Chaplain's Memoir, a memoir about Benimoff’s life as an Army chaplain in Iraq, Benimoff and co-author Eve Conant describe his return from Iraq to his family in Colorado and subsequent assignment to Walter Reed Army Medical Center. He retreated deep into himself, spending hours on the computer and racking up ten thousand dollars in debt on eBay. Above all, he was angry and jittery, scared even of his young sons, and barely able to make it through the day. He was eventually admitted to Coatesville’s “Psych Ward.” For a while the lock-down facility was his home. He wondered where God was in all of this, and was not alone in that bewilderment and pain.

Snip

During the Iraq war, however, the great difficulty veterans experienced in getting psychiatric care—greater than before—was not a product of cost-cutting, but of conviction: many Bush administration officials believed that soldiers who supported the war would not face psychological problems, and if they did, they would find comfort in faith. In a resigned tone, one prominent researcher who worked for the VA, and asked that he not be identified because he was not authorized to speak to the press, explained that high-ranking officials believed that “Jesus fixes everything.” Benimoff and the others who returned with devastating psychological injuries found a faith-based bureau within the VA. At veterans’ hospitals, chaplains were conducting spirituality assessments of patients.

Snip

Things had already begun to change dramatically at the VA by early 2005, shortly after Roger Benimoff left for his second deployment to Iraq. Many appointees at the agency were disturbed that so many Iraq veterans showed symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In part the concern grew from skepticism about the diagnosis itself, which some believed to be a legacy of the Vietnam-era anti-war movement....>>>>>

That ones a long read but worth it.

How wide spread was this? And if well embedded at the time in the VA Health Care System was it done at Walter Reed, a Military Care Facility as well? Now this might be an issue to keep in mind as to the extremely tragic killings of the soldiers at Ft Hood by a soldier who was a Major and a mental health care psychiatrist in the military at Walter Reed and then Fort Hood but wasn't of the christian faith!

TROOPS ON TV:

IS FOX NEWS WORKING FOR ISRAEL AGAINST AMERICA?

FOX/MURDOCH/ISRAELI POLICY TO KEEP US IN AFGHANISTAN NOT VERY "PRO AMERICAN"

Fox News is using retired military officers surrounded by uniformed active duty troops in an attempt to derail debate on disengagement in Afghanistan. After 8 years, the US is heading the same way Russia did, the more troops we send, the more die. Absolutely nothing has been accomplished in 8 years in Afghanistan other than to start a major war in Pakistan too. I understand Fox News. They are controlled by the powerful Israeli spokeman, Rupert Murdoch. Israel wants this war to go on forever. Though Murdoch now is an American citizen, it doesn't seem to have "taken."

What is good for Israel isn't always good for the US. Active duty military who try to make their own foreign policy are not just total morons but are in violation of a number of laws. They are technically at war with the United States of America. If it is necessary for veterans to take up weapons to fight against members of our military who are part of an insurrection run by a foreign power, tell me where to sign up.

To the former officers, always quick to take a payoff from a defense contractor or the Bush Pentagon as a "pundit," reading from whatever script Karl Rove has written for the day, you dishonor yourselves, your oath and the United States. The oath I remember was:..>>>Rest Found Here

"HE KEPT US SAFE"

THE DECLINE OF AMERICAN CHARACTER

THE "CRINGING WIMP" GENERATION

For years we hear little else, "But he kept us safe." The "but" refers to bankrupting the country, stealing elections, suspending Constitutional Rights, poisoning the air and water and turning the country over to racketeers from oil, drug, insurance and crooked financial services..........

Gee, now who could Gordon be talkin about?

Our crimes are so heinous that our new government is fearful of allowing trials for the criminals, believing the entire world would rise against us if they knew what we had done. The process of declassification intended to bring the truth to the world has stopped as we are faced with unimaginable acts of cowardice, brutality and greed, all hidden behind the words, "But he kept us safe." ...........>>>>>Rest Here

Still wondering, well read the rest of what he writes. As I add my meager two cents, and that's not even worth what it used to be, below.

Oh and on this: "believing the entire world would rise against us if they knew what we had done", they already know, a few have participated, but more important in the two theaters of occupations they knew long before us here on the "homeland?", and not just in the occupation zones but the whole region. They had already started growing their ranks, taking to retaliation and the knowing blowback, these acts only adding to those committed against them in the invasions and now long running occupations. Killing and maiming the U.S. and other nations soldiers, anyone working with the occupation, and the citizens, women and children included, who we also killed, not joining them in their brutal attempts to rid their countries of the occupiers and puppet regimes!

These last years only enhanced, greatly, the already growing hatreds from our past failed foreign policies in meddling in their countries, resources, and politics. They have greatly increased the numbers of those we label as al Qaeda or Taliban and especially the new 21st century label, for all who oppose us and our actions, similar to theirs, "Terrorist", as we wage our Terror! Only ours is High Tech terror,, with greater destruction and death, theirs low tech, so ours is righteous, it cost more, and well we're the supreme power and leader of freedom? and democracy?!! "God Bless America"?!!

Gordon just lays out what many others have in a justifiable rant, he does that often, of a society of "cringing wimps" that still exists, as it fears holding those Responsible to the Accountability for their crimes committed, In Our Names!

DIVIDED AND CONQUERED:

AMERICA'S MILITARY AND VETERANS

As Gordon Duff, Marine combat veteran writes:

CAN WE TURN AMERICA'S "STEP CHILDREN" INTO A UNIFIED FORCE?

RESTORING RESPECT FOR MILITARY AND VETERAN VOTERS

And points out:

Let's leave fighting the "boogeyman" to those best armed for that war, the TV and radio "talking heads," and begin standing, united for once and for all.

As he also gives a couple of thoughts from a recently passed on brother of great respect with Vets as well as Country:

The military and veteran vote has always been considered as going to Republican candidates. The officer corps, especially graduates of the service academies, as Dave Hackworth called them, "the perfumed princes of the Pentagon," range from "conservative" to well into the "totalitarian" and even "feudal nobility" range.

And points out:

VETERAN'S GROUPS ARE "THE TAIL".....WE ARE "THE DOG"....AND WE CAN BITE

Organizations that support candidates who vote for new expensive and useless weapons but could care less if a veteran and his family lose their homes or a returning reservist is pushed out of his job can no longer be allowed to pretend to speak for anyone but their puppeteer masters...........

You can find the rest here