lest we forget:: 120 War Vets Commit Suicide Each Week

[donsu]

http://alternet.org/waroniraq/68713/


The military refuses to come clean, insisting the high rates are due to "personal problems," not experience in combat.

-long snip-

There is something so smugly superior in the way we talk about suicide bombers and the cultures that produce them. But here is an unsettling thought. In 2005, 6,256 American veterans took their own lives. That same year, there were about 130 documented deaths of suicide bombers in Iraq.* Do the math. That's a ratio of 50-to-1. So who is it that is most effectively creating a culture of suicide and martyrdom? If George Bush is right, that it is despair, neglect and poverty that drive people to such acts, then isn't it worth pointing out that we are doing a far better job?

*I say "about" because in the aftermath of a suicide bombing, it is often very difficult for observers to determine how many individual bodies have been blown to pieces.
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[DangerDave921]

1. What a story

I never would have thought of pursuing such a story. Very interesting.

I do have a question. The article says veterans make up 11% of the population. What percentage of suicides are veterans? Is it out of line with statistics from non-veterans?

Also, seems a little bit of a stretch to me to blame military service for a suicide that takes place decades after the military service. Hard to say how much of a connection between military service in 1970, for example, and suicide in 2007.

Also, is this only for veterans who saw combat or even desk-jockeys?

[madokie]

2. very troubling

[stellanoir]

3. There was a thread posted about this

a couple weeks ago that I meant to get back to and then couldn't find it.

So thanks for posting this.

That is an overwhelming number of suicides.

I can begin to imagine all those devastated families and shattered lives.

Warfare is just so wrong on so many levels.

May we see an end to this idiocy in our time.