Salon.com > Military Suicides

Congress forwards DADT repeal

Sat, 18 Dec 2010 17:01:00 +0000

In a landmark vote for gay rights, the Senate on Saturday voted to advance legislation that would overturn the military ban on openly gay troops known as "don't ask, don't tell."

The 63-33 test vote all but guarantees the legislation will pass the Senate, possibly by day's end, and reach the president's desk before the new year.

The House had passed an identical version of the bill, 250-174, earlier this week.

Repeal would mean that, for the first time in American history, gays would be openly accepted by the military and could acknowledge their sexual orientation without fear of being kicked out.

More than 13,500 service members have been dismissed under the 1993 law.

Rounding up a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate was a historic victory for President Barack Obama, who made repeal of the 17-year-old policy a campaign promise in 2008. It also was a political triumph for congressional Democrats who struggled in the final hours of the postelection session to overcome GOP objections on several legislative priorities before Republicans regain control of the House in January.

"As Barry Goldwater said, 'You don't have to be straight to shoot straight,'" said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., referring to the late GOP senator from Arizona.

U.S.A to end Iraq combat operations

Sun, 08 Aug 2010 15:38:00 +0000

Iraq’s military is ready and able to take over security operations as the United States ends it combat role and prepares for a major troop withdrawal, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq said Sunday.

Gen. Ray Odierno said Iraq’s military has “stepped up” to the challenge even as Iraqi politicians continue to squabble over the formation of a new government and new incidents of extremist violence are reported.

“We do believe they are ready to assume full operations in Iraq,” Odierno said on ABC’s “This Week.” He praised the Iraqi security forces for their professionalism and neutrality during the months of political uncertainty that followed elections earlier this year.

Odierno added, however, that it is critical for Iraq to form a government after five months of delay, warning that insurgents will try to take advantage of the political vacuum.

“The Iraqis have to understand the importance of forming the government,” he said.

Violence has dropped dramatically in Iraq since 2008, but insurgent attacks remain a daily occurrence, especially in the capital Baghdad, preventing the city from regaining a semblance of normalcy seven years after the insurgency broke out.

Army report: Service is failing suicidal soldiers

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 19:35:00 +0000

An Army report on the record number of soldier suicides says the trend reflects a rise in risky behavior including drunken driving and drug abuse in a military stretched to the breaking point by the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The report says the Army is failing its soldiers by missing signs of trouble, or by looking the other way as commanders try to keep to tight schedules required to meet deployment schedules.

The Army vice chief of staff, Gen. Peter Chiarelli, said Thursday that statistics on levels of drug and alcohol abuse, car accidents and crime suggests that soldiers are taking more risks while discipline has slipped.

The Army counted 160 suicides last year, the highest total ever. The rate was above that of the civilian population for the second year in a row.

The study counted an additional 146 deaths in 2009 that it says were due to murder, drug overdoses or other causes the Army lumps together as risky behavior.

There were also 1,713 known suicide attempts last year.

The ramped-up tempo of Army life, with faster deployments and too little time at home, underlies the problem but is not its sole cause, Chiarelli said.

Most suicides occur early in a soldier’s Army career, and some come before a soldier has deployed.

Utah Air Force base dealing with rash of suicides

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 21:32:00 +0000

Utah’s Hill Air Force Base has hired a psychologist and others to deal with a rash of suicides, mostly among civilians complaining of harsh working conditions.

Ogden Air Logistics Center commander Maj. Gen. Andrew Busch says two civilians and an airman have committed suicide this year.

A Hill spokesman says that brings to at least 25 confirmed suicides since 2006 that were mostly committed off the base.

Bonnie Carroll, a military widow who founded the advocacy group Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors, says suicides also have been a problem at Fort Campbell, an Army base in Kentucky and Tennessee.

She says the Defense Department has added thousands of mental health professionals to the ranks of the military because of a greater awareness of the problem.

The Army denies that combat stress causes homicide

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 10:19:00 +0000

The harsh combat in Iraq, including potential war crimes that were witnessed by soldiers, contributed to a series of brutal murders by soldiers based at this Army post near Colorado Springs after they returned home, according to a hard-hitting Army study released Wednesday. Many of the findings in the study, which was announced by senior Army brass at a press conference on the post, mirror those in Salon’s Coming Home series, which identified a pattern of preventable homicides and suicides at Fort Carson among soldiers who served in Iraq with combat stress and failed to receive proper medical treatment.

According to the report, “Survey data from this investigation suggest a possible association between increasing levels of combat exposure and risk for negative behavioral outcomes.” The study also says that “combat intensity/exposure . . . may have increased the risk for violent behaviors” and that its “findings are consistent with recent research on combat exposure and subsequent behavior outcomes among Soldiers.”

Branded

Wed, 09 Jun 2004 19:11:00 +0000

Day after day, Army Spc. Cheyenne Forsythe roamed around Saddam Hussein's magnificent palace compound in Tikrit listening to dazed and tearful soldiers, many of them barely out of high school. With its lush palm gardens and ornate frescos, the palace was an incongruous place to be counseling American troops shaken by the harrowing montage of combat. There were dazed young men whose skulls had been grazed by 9 mm rounds. Tearful soldiers who had seen their buddies' bloody limbs blown off by roadside bombs. Thousand-mile-stare soldiers whose convoys had been ambushed by invisible combatants firing rocket-propelled grenades. Soldiers like Staff Sgt. Georg-Andreas Pogany, who came to see Forsythe after being deployed "about two inches from hell" near the town of Samarra, deep in the insurgent-infested Sunni Triangle.

Forsythe, a member of the Combat Stress Control Team in the 85th Medical Detachment, pulled up a couple of plastic chairs on the edge of a marble veranda and listened to Pogany's story, taking notes in what he calls his "little green book." It was Oct. 2, 2003. Forsythe had never met Pogany and has not seen him since. Here are some of the things that Pogany said, according to Forsythe's notes: