Despite Army Efforts, Soldier Suicides Continue

[unhappycamper]

Amelia and Armando G. Aguilar Sr. at home in Blessing, Tex., with a photo of their son, Specialist Armando G. Aguilar Jr., who killed himself in August.


Despite Army Efforts, Soldier Suicides Continue
By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
Published: October 10, 2010

FORT HOOD, Tex. — At 3:30 a.m. on a Saturday in August, Specialist Armando G. Aguilar Jr. found himself at the end of his short life. He was standing, drunk and weepy, in the parking lot of a Valero station outside Waco, Tex. He had jumped out of his moving pickup. There was a police officer talking to him in frantic tones. Specialist Aguilar held a pistol pointed at his head.

This moment had been a long time coming, his family said. He had twice tried to commit suicide with pills since returning from a tough tour in Iraq a year earlier, where his job was to drive an armored vehicle to search for bombs.

Army doctors had put him on medications for depression, insomnia, nightmares and panic attacks. Specialist Aguilar was seeing an Army therapist every week. But he had been getting worse in the days before his death, his parents said, seeing shadowy figures that were not there, hallucinating that he heard loud noises outside his trailer home.

~snip~

Specialist Aguilar was one of 20 soldiers connected to Fort Hood who are believed to have committed suicide this year. The Army has confirmed 14 of those, and is completing the official investigations of six other soldiers who appear to have taken their own lives — four of them in one week in September. The deaths have made this the worst year at the sprawling fort since the military began keeping track in 2003.

The spate of suicides in Texas reflects a chilling reality: nearly 20 months after the Army began strengthening its suicide prevention program and working to remove the stigma attached to seeking psychological counseling, the suicide rate among active service members remains high and shows little sign of improvement. Through August, at least 125 active members of the Army had ended their own lives, exceeding the morbid pace of last year, when there were a record 162 suicides.

[HillbillyBob]

1. Put the blame where it belongs on the Bush Maladministration and

all the asinine cheerleaders for war on innocents and enablers who never risked a hair but stayed here and stole from the rest of us.

[dkf]

2. Yet where are the prosecutions of the criminals that caused this man to take his life?

[bemildred]

3. This is all so Vietnam. nt

[pinboy3niner]

4. +1

Twenty years after I got back from VN, I learned that my first radio man killed himself shortly after he returned. Over the years, several other vet friends committed suicide.

It is so tragic to see this happening all over again with these OIF/OEF troops and vets...

[bemildred]

10. Yeah, I had a lot of friends that served, back in the day. I think we all did.

I thought for a while there we were going to wise up after that, but then they shoehorned in Raygun and it all got even worse.

[pinboy3niner]

11. We did wise up for a short time

It was only because of the lessons of VN that the American public would not permit full-scale combat involvement in Central America in the '80s. Unfortunately, those lessons didn't stick for long.

We wised up in another way, but suffered unintended consequences. Ironically, improvements designed to prevent the high levels of battlefield psychiatric casualties seen in WWII and Korea contributed to PTSD among VN vets. In WWII, 25 percent of all medical evacuations of U.S. troops were psychiatric casualties. Those casualties were reduced in the Korean War, and reduced even further in VN. While the battlefield psychiatric casualties went down, there was an explosion of delayed (post-traumatic) symptoms in vets after their return.

[maryf]

5. 18 veteran suicides a day...

Was the last I heard...trying to find the sources. Sure saves a lot of money for the VA... It is not good for anyone's psyche to kill, and when one is asked to do so again and again...

K&R this needs to be out there on a regular basis.

[whathehell]

6. This poor soldier took his life after one deployment, but I hear many say that it is largely

the result of multiple deployments, which I find horrible.

I believe I just signed a petition put out by the IAVAW to STOP this...I'll try and find it so as to put for DUers to sign.

[pinboy3niner]

7. I posted it in Vets' Forum...

Someone else also posted it more recently in GD. Here's the link to the Vets' Forum OP, which has a link to the petition:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=259x29651

[whathehell]

9. Thanks, pinboy...I should have done the same, but didn't think of it. n/t

[pinboy3niner]

12. If you want, you could post the petition in GD again

The other GD posts, by annm4peace, were Oct. 1 and Oct. 8:

Take the Pledge: Operation Recovery: Stop the Deployment of Traumatized Troops
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x9235026

Vets fro Peace member gets letter in Friday's Strib pleading for wounded vets
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=160x40472

[whathehell]

13. Okay, I've done that...Thanks for the suggestion. n/t

[whathehell]

8. Petition to Stop Deployments of Injured Veterans...Please Sign.

The son of an acquaintance of mine was "re-deployed" ten days after he tried to kill himself..He did make it back alive and in one piece, though I have no word as to his mental health.

Apparently, the policies on re-deployment have NOT improved.....Apparently, they are now deploying vets who are physically injured, even with Traumatic Brain Injury!

This is abusive and immoral and as John Kerry noted: nothing but a Back-Door DRAFT...If these goddamn wars are so important, why don't they call a real DRAFT where, as in Vietnam, you at least only had to serve ONE Tour, if I'm not mistaken.

They know from their experience in Vietnam that if they institute the Draft, their freaking wars will END due to massive protests...When the children of the middle and especially UPPER middle class have to go, it will be "Hell no, we won't go" again.

Please sign this petition. Thanks.

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2010/09/24/sign-the-petition-for-operation-recovery-stop-deploying-injured-troops/

[Gaedel]

15. Vietnam draft

"This is abusive and immoral and as John Kerry noted: nothing but a Back-Door DRAFT...If these goddamn wars are so important, why don't they call a real DRAFT where, as in Vietnam, you at least only had to serve ONE Tour, if I'm not mistaken."


Vietnam was a one year (12 month) tour. If drafted for two years, by the time you had finished training, they could only get a single tour out of you. Even a three year enlistee only pulled one tour in his hitch. The career guys went back several times. If you were a helicopter pilot, it was a year in Nam, a year in the states, a year in Nam, a year in Germany, and back to Nam.

Some guys with a good job stayed in Nam for a long time (kept extending their tour). I ran into a Sergeant Major there who went to Vietnam in 1962 and didn't leave till Henry the K declared "peace with honor" in 1973.

[whathehell]

16. Yes, it seems one at least had a choice in the matter. n/t

[gratuitous]

14. But they all volunteered!

Whew, that takes care of any responsibility the rest of us have for this. Not our fault. They signed on the dotted line. Voluntary. Free will. Nobody's to blame. Hey, didja see The Amazing Race last night?

Folks, this happens every time we go to war. Every. Fucking. Time. As surely as night follows day, or a hangover follows a night of binge drinking, we get a bunch of men and women who come back to us badly changed by their experience. Even the most righteous cause is going to fuck up people who kill others. It's even worse when the war is launched under false pretenses, waged against civilians and other people who can't get away, can't fight back, and who did nothing to us in the first place.

But there we were in 2001 and 2003, handing George W. Bush a 90% approval rating, which he ran with to start up two enormously expensive wars to be fought mostly by the poor for the benefit mostly of the wealthy. In fact, Bush and his pals even cut the tax rate for the well off so they could have even more money, while the country plunged deeper into debt.

By the way, those people would like to run the country again, because now they're all fiscally sound and stuff, and very concerned about the deficit.

[pinboy3niner]

17. "...because now they're all fiscally sound and stuff, and very concerned about the deficit."

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: