Army post shuts down for anti-suicide event

Army post shuts down for anti-suicide event

www.cnn.com

(CNN) -- A major United States military post is shutting down for three days following a rash of suicides, the post announced.

Fort Campbell, home of the Army's 101st Airborne Division, is holding a three-day "suicide stand-down training event" starting Wednesday -- the second one it has held this year, a post spokeswoman told CNN.

At least 11 deaths of Fort Campbell soldiers this year are confirmed or suspected suicides, spokeswoman Kelly Tyler said. That's out of 64 confirmed or suspected suicides in the entire Army, according to official statistics. At that rate, the Army is on p

(visit the link for the full news article)

This is a very disturbing story. The toll on the United States Soldiers of endless rotations in and out of dual combat zones appears to be really having an effect on their mental well being.

The 101st is an elite fighting unit and one where its soldiers are often send into even more demanding situations than the average infantry soldier is.

The report sites 11 recent suicides at Ft. Campbell and 87 possible suicides military wide since the start of the year.

It makes one wonder if these numbers are being dressed down and if perhaps the real numbers and psychological assessments of the overall force getting back to the Brass and the Politicians might have something to do with why recently the Homeland Security Secretary identified returning veterans of being at risk to committing hostile acts.

I think we here in America need to rethink these wars in a hurry.


www.cnn.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Not good at all. I think our soldiers are starting to wake up to the fact that they aren't protecting the country they are fighting for some other reason they don't know the reason, but its not to protect the country.

It isn't good either way. I have the up most respect for our troops and vets, but after watching their brothers die on the battle field and losing blood and leaving limbs over there and then coming home and being labeled extremist and being treated like dog crap isn't wearing well on them mentally very well.

Originally posted by Hastobemoretolife
Not good at all. I think our soldiers are starting to wake up to the fact that they aren't protecting the country they are fighting for some other reason they don't know the reason, but its not to protect the country.

It isn't good either way. I have the up most respect for our troops and vets, but after watching their brothers die on the battle field and losing blood and leaving limbs over there and then coming home and being labeled extremist and being treated like dog crap isn't wearing well on them mentally very well.

I have to tell you I believe our Soldiers are smart enough to be piecing this together over there. Even in the early 1900's the Marines were wising up to the fact that most of the time they were sent some place, and sent some place to fight was to protect American Corporate interests.

They have to be detecting patterns in what facilities and areas are worthy of an all out response and which areas are just completely ignored no matter how much enemy activity is going on in those ignored areas.

They all tend to ask for the same thing, more men, better strategy, greater destructive power to go after concentrations of enemy troops.

Eventually they have to realize, that they aren't being allowed to go after the enemy, so that there continues to be an enmey for them to have to stay and fight against in order to keep those Corporate Facilities protected.

The galling thing has to be to them that most of the most lucrative assetts they are being charged with protecting are owned by the British and China.

We have really honestly turned out military into Wackenhut Gaurds in a very bad neighborhood!

I wonder if it really serves us well as a Nation with all this sabre rattling througout Asia, and the Middle East to have so few troops in the United States Military.

Ultimately we need to disengage from all these conflicts just as rapidly as possible while avoiding any other ones to preserve our military cohesiveness or...

We need to take some kind of drastic steps through a draft or other form of conscription to drastically increase the number of men at arms under uniform, that are properly trained and equipt and ready to deploy in large numbers.

We are going to get caught with our pants down relying this heavily on technology and with such an overworked and small pool of men and women to utilize it.