6,570 Soldiers killed by Iraq War every year.

[flamin lib]

John McCain loves our veterans and shows it by voting against almost all spending bills to fund their care after they return from doing all the horrible things we ask them to do. But this isn’t about John McCain, it’s about how we treat the men and women we send off to do our bidding, many of which leave some part of their body or soul on a dusty, dirty street in a country that most of us can’t even find on a map. Make no mistake, we ask them to do and see terrible things and those things extract a very heavy price.

About a year ago the reporters at CBS news noticed what seemed like a lot of stories about retuning veterans committing suicide. Their first stop in the investigation was the Veteran’s Administration where Dr. Ira Katz, the VA's top official for mental health, told them the total number of veteran suicides for all of 2007 was 790, about average for the population at large. Still, the anecdotal evidence didn’t seem right so they kept digging. Guess what? They discovered emails between Katz and various other VA administrators that reveal a very serious problem with suicide rates among returning veterans.

In one email, Subject: Not for CBS News Interview Request; Katz wrote: "Shh! Our suicide prevention coordinators are identifying about 1000 suicide attempts per month among veterans we see in our medical facilitates," and, "is this something we should (carefully) address ourselves in some sort of release before someone stumbles on it?" In another email Katz admitted that there are about 18 veterans committing suicide per day. So how many are there? The 2 per day Katz told CBS about, the 33 per day the suicide prevention coordinators identify or the 18 per day he later admits to? We don’t really know because the VA won’t go on record with real numbers but even the best case scenario is a rate almost ten times normal.

Since the Iraq war started more than 100 veterans per day have applied for treatment at the VA. That doesn’t include the 18 who kill themselves or the uncounted who try to tough it out on their own. In 2006 the Veterans Health Administration requested $76 Billion in funding. Bush gave them $31. In 2007 the budget was cut an additional 3%. The budget for 2008-2010 is cut an additional 2% each year.

If we are to care for those who voluntarily see, hear, do and smell things that no rational human being should be willing to just because we ask them, we need to raise $660 Billion for Iraq War veterans alone.

And they’ll call us tax and spend Democrats.

http://cbs2.com/national/veterans.affairs.suicide.2.706452.html

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/04/22/MNQK109AA7.DTL&type=health
http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/4716