these are startling figures

benefits taken away, money for schooling cut, no treatment or shoddy treatment. these men and women VOLUNTEERED to serve their country. the LEAST we can do is take care of them. THE LEAST
Soldier suicides could trump war tolls: US health official
Suicides and "psychological mortality" among US soldiers who served in Iraq and Afghanistan could exceed battlefield deaths if their mental scars are left untreated, the head of the US Institute of Mental Health warned Monday.
Of the 1.6 million US soldiers who have been deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, 18-20 percent -- or around 300,000 -- show symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression or both, said Thomas Insel, head of the National Institute of Mental Health.
An estimated 70 percent of those at-risk soldiers do not seek help from the Department of Defense or the Veterans Administration, he told a news conference launching the American Psychiatric Association's 161st annual meeting here.
If "one just does the math", then allowing PTSD or depression to go untreated in such numbers could result in "suicides and psychological mortality trumping combat deaths" in Iraq and Afghanistan, Insel warned.
More than 4,000 US soldiers have died in Iraq since the US invasion of 2003, and more than 400 in Afghanistan since the US led attacks there in 2001, of which some 290 were killed in action and the rest in on-combat deaths.....

these are startling figures

they are probably UNDER reported too - as in civilian life. what is the answer? kick women out of the military some would say. i would say, PUNISH THE RAPISTS - just like in civilian life. women are NOT objects. no is no here there and everywhere. no is no to your next door neighber, to your fellow soldiers AND to your commanding officer or your doctor.

let's let congress continue to investigate steroids in mlb and ignore rape in the military.

Rapists in the ranks
Sexual assaults are frequent, and frequently ignored, in the armed services
By Jane Harman
The stories are shocking in their simplicity and brutality: A female military recruit is pinned down at knifepoint and raped repeatedly in her own barracks. Her attackers hid their faces but she identified them by their uniforms; they were her fellow soldiers. During a routine gynecological exam, a female soldier is attacked and raped by her military physician. Yet another young soldier, still adapting to life in a war zone, is raped by her commanding officer. Afraid for her standing in her unit, she feels she has nowhere to turn.These are true stories, and, sadly, not isolated incidents. Women serving in the U.S. military are more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire in Iraq. The scope of the problem was brought into acute focus for me during a visit to the West Los Angeles VA Healthcare Center, where I met with female veterans and their doctors. My jaw dropped when the doctors told me that 41% of female veterans seen at the clinic say they were victims of sexual assault while in the military, and 29% report being raped during their military service. They spoke of their continued terror, feelings of helplessness and the downward spirals many of their lives have since taken.Numbers reported by the Department of Defense show a sickening pattern. In 2006, 2,947 sexual assaults were reported -- 73% more than in 2004. The DOD's newest report, released this month, indicates that 2,688 reports were made in 2007, but a recent shift from calendar-year reporting to fiscal-year reporting makes comparisons with data from previous years much more difficult. ..........

some more consequences of the war

this time they have names (and they are NOT just the veterans, THEY ARE THE FAMILIES)
Injury in Iraq was just start of troubles
By Barbara Barrett McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON — When Army National Guard Lt. Michael McMichael returned to Franklinton, N.C., from Iraq in January 2005, it took a while for his wife to recognize the changes in him.
They came on slowly at first: A hotter temper. Migraines. Sore bones.
Then the problems grew. McMichael lost his job, exploded at home and walked out on his family. In the three years since his return from Iraq, McMichael has tumbled from being a skinny but content war veteran to a troubled husband and father who's unemployed, walking with a cane and suffering tremors and nightmares.
His wife, Jackie McMichael, has suffered, too. Even when she repeatedly tried to get help, calling doctors in tears, officials turned her away, citing confidentiality requirements about her husband's health, she said.
The isolation of military families has become a common story in Congress, where lawmakers still are trying to understand how they can help veterans returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Laws and rules have been passed to get counseling to troops in war zones, to expand research into traumatic brain injury and to ease the bureaucratic transition from the Department of Defense to the Department of Veteran Affairs........

.........."My assessment is the VA doesn't see the human face behind the patients they're treating," ...............

i thought i misread this

but i re-read the figure and i didn't. the new york times found 121 instances where combat veterans of afghanistan and iraq were charged with OR proven to have committed a killing (back home). that figure, to me, is ASTOUNDING. and remember, this is ONLY WHAT THEY FOUND. who the hell really knows what the real figures are. who the hell really knows how many are suicidal OR WILL commit some sort of major crime in the future. we MUST do something and do it NOW. our veterans NEED HELP. their families need help. where is the public outcry? why is congress investigating steroid use in mlb? why the fuck aren't they doing something out THIS instead?

War Torn
Across America, Deadly Echoes of Foreign Battles
By DEBORAH SONTAG and LIZETTE ALVAREZ
Late one night in the summer of 2005, Matthew Sepi, a 20-year-old Iraq combat veteran, headed out to a 7-Eleven in the seedy Las Vegas neighborhood where he had settled after leaving the Army. This particular 7-Eleven sits in the shadow of the Stratosphere casino-hotel in a section of town called the Naked City. By day, the area, littered with malt liquor cans, looks depressed but not menacing. By night, it becomes, in the words of a local homicide detective, “like Falluja.”
Mr. Sepi did not like to venture outside too late. But, plagued by nightmares about an Iraqi civilian killed by his unit, he often needed alcohol to fall asleep. And so it was that night, when, seized by a gut feeling of lurking danger, he slid a trench coat over his slight frame — and tucked an assault rifle inside it. ........

The New York Times found 121 cases in which veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan committed a killing in this country, or were charged with one, after their return from war. In many of those cases, combat trauma and the stress of deployment — along with alcohol abuse, family discord and other attendant problems — appear to have set the stage for a tragedy that was part destruction, part self-destruction. Three-quarters of these veterans were still in the military at the time of the killing. More than half the killings involved guns, and the rest were stabbings, beatings, strangulations and bathtub drownings. Twenty-five offenders faced murder, manslaughter or homicide charges for fatal car crashes resulting from drunken, reckless or suicidal driving.

4471?

nope, try 20,000. seems like even some of the vets WITH EVIDENT injuries are getting the runaround. what about those whose symptoms are a bit harder to detect? king george sends them to war (an unjust illegal and immoral one at that) and when they come home, kicks them in the ass

20,000 vets' brain injuries not listed in Pentagon tally
By Gregg Zoroya, USA TODAY
At least 20,000 U.S. troops who were not classified as wounded during combat in Iraq and Afghanistan have been found with signs of brain injuries, according to military and veterans records compiled by USA TODAY.
The data, provided by the Army, Navy and Department of Veterans Affairs, show that about five times as many troops sustained brain trauma as the 4,471 officially listed by the Pentagon through Sept. 30. These cases also are not reflected in the Pentagon's official tally of wounded, which stands at 30,327.
HIDDEN WOUNDS: Marine didn't recognize signs of brain injury
The number of brain-injury cases were tabulated from records kept by the VA and four military bases that house units that have served multiple combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.
One base released its count of brain injuries at a medical conference. The others provided their records at the request of USA TODAY, in some cases only after a Freedom of Information Act filing was submitted..........

luis sinco tries to do something

king george and his court SHOULD be doing. SAVING A VETERAN (ALL veterans)

reporters are supposed to be neutral (photographers as well). i'm glad some of them are NOT. why aren't we as a nation embarrassed? AT THE VERY LEAST, embarrassed........

Rescue operation aims to save a wounded warrior

Despite concerns of overstepping, Times photographer Luis Sinco feels compelled to help the Iraq vet he made famous.
By Luis Sinco : Times Staff Photographer, Second of two parts November 12, 2007
James Blake Miller was in a world of pain, and I figured I should be by his side.A veterans' treatment program in West Haven, Conn. -- arguably the best in the nation -- offered hope. Moe Armstrong, a pioneer in vet-to-vet counseling, had heard of the Marlboro Marine's troubles and sent him feelers about coming for a visit. Despite my reservations about getting too involved, I had flown from Los Angeles to Kentucky to help Miller grab this lifeline. I coaxed him into my rental car and we headed north. I questioned myself. Was this the right thing to do? For Miller, yes. But for me? What awaited us at the end of this journey? I caught Miller's eyes reflected in the rearview mirror, droopy and lifeless. He hadn't slept well, and a long road led from his home in the Appalachian coal country to New England.........

photo: This is the photo that made Marine Lance Cpl. James Blake Miller -- the "Marlboro Marine" --famous. This photo also changed my life. I’m Luis Sinco, a Los Angeles Times staff photographer, and I took it while embedded with his Marine unit in Fallouja. We had spent the previous night in a traffic circle, pinned down by enemy fire, and just before I snapped this photo, a tank had blasted an insurgent position next door to ours. Many people looked at the photo and saw a heroic figure; I saw, in his eyes, a man at the point of breaking. It was how I felt, too.
(Luis Sinco / LAT)
November 9, 2004

i take umbrage with them calling wicca (UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE)

a 'neo-pagan cult'. it's NOT an effing CULT AND it's been around a LOT LOT LOT longer than judiasm and christianity and islam and the lot

at any rate, the armed services is now 'allowing' pentacles on headstones (and of course it's about time) in military cemeteries

'Wiccans' win place in US military cemeteries

Adherents to the neo-pagan cult Wicca soon will be permitted to place their symbol the pentacle -- a five-pointed star inscribed inside a circle -- on headstones in military cemeteries, US officials said Monday.
After months of legal wrangling, the US Department of Veterans Affairs agreed to allow Wiccans to place the symbol on headstones, as do adherents to the Christian, Muslim and Jewish and other faiths. The policy change will go into effect in the next few months, officials said.
"VA will be adding the pentacle to its list of approved emblems of belief that will be engraved on government-provided markers," said Matt Burns a spokesman for the federal agency...........

UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE

a MUCH better article where 1) they don't call wicca a CULT and 2) they mention how wicca is sometimes MISTAKEN for devil worship

Use of Wiccan Symbol on Veterans’ Headstones Is Approved
By NEELA BANERJEE
Published: April 24, 2007
WASHINGTON, April 23 — To settle a lawsuit, the Department of Veterans Affairs has agreed to add the Wiccan pentacle to a list of approved religious symbols that it will engrave on veterans’ headstones..................
..........Though it has many forms, Wicca is a type of pre-Christian belief that reveres nature and its cycles. Its symbol is the pentacle, a five-pointed star, inside a circle.
Until now, the Veterans Affairs department had approved 38 symbols to indicate the faith of deceased service members on memorials. It normally takes a few months for a petition by a faith group to win the department’s approval, but the effort on behalf of the Wiccan symbol took about 10 years and a lawsuit, said Richard B. Katskee, assistant legal director for Americans United.
The group attributed the delay to religious discrimination. Many Americans do not consider Wicca a religion, or hold the mistaken belief that Wiccans are devil worshipers...............