Suicides among United States military veterans ballooned by 26 percent from 2005 to 2007, according to new statistics released by the Veterans Affairs (VA) department. "Of the more than 30,000 suicides in this country each year, fully 20 percent of them are acts...
Have Overseas Bases Been a Mistake?
Still Not Home for the Holidays
While most of the rest of us celebrate the holidays with family and friends, several hundred thousand U.S. troops will – once again – be separated from their loved ones. Currently, there are some 117,000 U.S. troops in Iraq and another 68,000 in Afghanistan, with...
Why Are Military Families in Holiday Need?
Today, alongside the country's meekest and poorest, thousands of children and wives of deployed soldiers are lining up for charity in order to make their holidays as full of cheer as the rest of ours. How easily we accept that military children – in part because of...
Grinding Down the US Army
Last week, the U.S. Army released its suicide figures for November. Twelve soldiers on active duty were classified as "potential suicides" for the month, bringing the yearly suicide total to 147, 19 more than for all of 2008, and the fifth year in a row the...
Soldiers Forced to Go AWOL for PTSD Care
With a military health care system over-stretched by two ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, more soldiers are deciding to go absent without leave (AWOL) in order to find treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Eric Jasinski enlisted in the military in...
Whistleblower Psychiatrist Warns of Soldier-on-Soldier Violence
MARFA, Texas - Kernan Manion, a psychiatrist who was hired last January to treat Marines returning from war who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other acute mental health problems borne from their deployments, fears more soldier-on-soldier...
The Children’s Crusade
"It really boils down to one of two decisions, getting out or getting in." - President Lyndon Johnson, speaking about Vietnam "Soldiers came to school today," announced the kindergarten kid. "They only kill bad people. They don't kill good people."...
Out of Iraq, Into the Gulf
So here's the mystery. You have a country that only recently had upward of 300 military bases, monster to micro, in a single war-torn land, Iraq. It probably now has something like 300 bases combined in Iraq and Afghanistan (where base-building is on the rise)....