January military suicides show spike

[sabra]

Source: MSNBC


Just one week after the Army announced that more U.S. soldiers killed themselves in 2008 than in any other year on record, the U.S. Army announced today that they had 24 possible suicides during the month of January.

That is more than the nine soldiers killed in Afghanistan last month, and the 14 killed in Iraq -- combined.

These numbers are up dramatically from the past few years' Januaries, too: January 2008 (4), 2007 (6), 2006 (10), 2005 (4), 2004 (3).

Just last week the Army announced a new service-wide training initiative to educate soldiers about suicide among the ranks. As many as 143 soldiers took their own lives last year, with 128 confirmed and 15 still pending investigation.

Read more: http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2009/02/05/1782403.aspx

[NYC_SKP]

1. This is only active dute military. Among all US veterans, it's 18/day.

per DAY!

On Monday, CBS News showed the e-mail to Rep. Bob Filner, D-Calif., who chairs the House Committee on Veterans Affairs.

"This is disgraceful. This is a crime against our nation, our nation's veterans," Filner told CBS News. "They do not want to come to grips with the reality, with the truth."

And that's not all.

Last November when CBS News exposed an epidemic of more than 6,200 suicides in 2005 among those who had served in the military, Katz attacked our report.

"Their number is not, in fact, an accurate reflection of the rate," he said last November.

But it turns out they were, as Katz admitted in this e-mail, just three days later.

He wrote: there "are about 18 suicides per day among America's 25 million veterans."

That works out to about 6,570 per year, which Katz admits in the same e-mail, "is supported by the CBS numbers."

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/04/21/cbsnews_investigates/main4032921.shtml

I've written OPs on the topic.

:patriot: