Media screwed up on military suicide reporting and still hasn't noticed

Media screwed up on military suicide reporting and still hasn't noticed
by Kathie Costos
Wounded Times Blog
March 11, 2013

Maybe if I keep posting this they will finally be embarrassed enough to post the truth on military suicides. After all this time, I doubt they will.

If you read this headline Report: More Texas Army National Guard soldiers dying from suicide than from combat what would you think? Would you think all the money spent over the last 11 years was wasted? You should because most of the people paying attention to these numbers reached that conclusion a very long time ago.

If you read further into the article, you'll notice yet again, the number of suicides among "non-deployed" are mentioned but you'll also notice what has been omitted. The threat of being deployed, shot at, blown up and then abandoned by the military and VA factor into the trauma induced by close to reality combat training.

Military suicides exceed combat deaths; now what?

When you read about OEF and OIF veterans taking their own lives, you may be under the impression this is a new phenomenon. After all, you didn't read about it when Vietnam veterans were coming home, suffering with a backlog of claims, being denied while clearly wounded, losing their homes, getting divorced, going to jail because of what PTSD was doing to them while no help was there for them, giving up and yes, taking their own lives. When you read the following, notice that this was written by a Vietnam Veteran.
Dave Stancliff/for the Times-Standard
Posted: 03/10/2013

What mystifies and irks me is our government's inability to learn from historical mistakes. Why did we go into Afghanistan when we had Vietnam as an example? Couldn't anyone see the similarities?

Historians agree Vietnam was a war that should never have been fought. It was a contrived war, just like Iraq and Afghanistan. No amount of military history books detailing the mistakes America made in Vietnam were enough to stop the hawks in Washington from repeating them.

Perhaps our current crop of politicians skipped that aisle in the library devoted to U.S. military books while attending high school or college. As for those people in the Pentagon, I doubt if recent military history plays any part in their plans of conquest.

If it did, they would have chosen to avoid past mistakes. Right? Maybe not. Fact: political agendas -- influenced by the military industrial complex -- have little use for history if it gets in the way of current goals.

Rather than take on the whole issue of listing all the military mistakes made in Vietnam, I'm going to focus on the one that bothers me the most: Veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder are killing themselves in record numbers.

As a Vietnam combat veteran with PTSD, this issue is admittedly personal to me. Veterans struggling to mentally cope after coming home from repeated war zone tours are falling through the bureaucratic cracks and the results are unacceptable.
read more here

No one noticed that 28 Vietnam veterans were taking their own lives except their families. No on noticed that they were among those standing in line at the VA waiting months, years, to have their claims approved while losing everything. No one noticed they went through all of it. The most inexcusable thing is it is all still happening after the media began to pay attention causing public outrage enough to get Congress to do something but ended up just doing anything so the public got off their backs. After all, it takes months for the actions they come up with to be implemented and the results don't show up for even longer. By then, the public forgets who did what so they don't ask why it didn't work. They just turn around and "demand something be done" so Congress has another whack at it and we end up right back where it all started with mounting deaths, denials, suffering and lines at the funeral homes around the country ordering up flags to cover caskets to show the gratefulness of this nation. Nice work!

The story of Ryan Ranalli shows what has been done with all the money and all the public outrage. He suffered with PTSD and came close to taking his own life. Seven of the men he was deployed with, accomplished it.

“You’re taught in the military that you don’t ask for help,” Ranalli said. “If you do, it’s a sign of weakness, especially in the infantry, to talk to somebody or to ask for help. You’re looked down upon. It’s just kind of beat into you. You’re supposed to be self-sufficient.” He was a squad leader with the 502nd Infantry Brigade in March 2003 when it headed the 101st Airborne’s combat air assault into Iraq. The ninth anniversary of the invasion triggered memories of dates when comrades were killed and of defining firefights and battles. He recalled vivid images of combat, images he had suppressed and never discussed.

In December the Billings Gazette offered this piece of news. Veterans twice as likely to commit suicide as civilians and included this, "In Montana, where nearly 10 percent of the population has served in the military, at least 460 veterans committed suicide between 2002 and 2011, according to the Montana Department of Health and Human Services."

"Staff Sgt. Courtey Rush of Aledo, Illinois was a rising star in the Air Force – a crew chief who loved working on C-130s. In January, 10 months after her second deployment, Courtney was alone in her home off base in South Carolina when she shot and killed herself. Her parents say they think Courtney may have been trying to forget one of her last assignments, overseeing the transportation of bodies and body parts of troops killed in action. They said Courtney cried over what the military calls “HR”, or human remains, missions."

While their stories are heartbreaking, what makes all of this shatter the myth of "grateful nation" is what the media has not bothered to do. Hold anyone accountable.

Joint Session of State Senate-Assembly Briefed on Military Suicides "On Monday morning, a soldier apparently committed suicide in King of Prussia, PA; on Sunday, it was one in Illinois; on Saturday, one at Fort Knox, KY.

That stark information came from Brig. Gen Michael Cunniff, adjutant general of the state Department of Military and Veterans Affairs.

In July, there were 26 suspected suicides reported among active-duty Army personnel, and another dozen among reservists. He was speaking yesterday at a joint session of the state Senate and Assembly military and veteran affairs committees in Lawrenceville."

“That’s more than one a day,” Cunniff said. “If that doesn’t get your attention, I don’t know what will.”

And as it turns out, there were many more than one a day and that was just from what the DOD released.

month
Army
NG
Reserves
Jan
16
5
1

Feb
11
3
0
March
18
7
3
April
14
5
8
May
16
2
7
June
11
10
2
July
26
9
3
August
16
5
4
Sept
15
13
3
Oct
20
9
4
Nov
12
12
3
Dec
7
10
5

182 Army
90 Army National Guards
43 Army Reservists
315 Total Army alone

Chiarelli, Suicide a Nation Wide Problem
Marine Corps Times
Patricia Kime
48 Marines
59 Air Force
60 Navy
482 Total
Feb. 1, 2013 those numbers were revised but the media failed to notice.
“For 2012 there have been 143 potential not on active-duty suicides (96 Army National Guards 47 Army Reservists)

They also failed to notice there are many more not accounted for. Did they notice the DOD did not release monthly totals for the other branches? Did they notice when the DOD gave revised figures after all of them jumped on the released numbers ignoring the National Guards and Reservists?

NPR had this.

U.S. Military's Suicide Rate Surpassed Combat Deaths In 2012 The number of suicide deaths in the U.S. military surged to a record 349 last year — more than the 295 Americans who died fighting in Afghanistan in 2012.

NBC had this.

Military suicide rate hit record high in 2012 By Bill Briggs, NBC News contributor Service members committed suicide during 2012 at a record pace: more than 349 took their own lives across the four branches, or one every 25 hours, a Department of Defense spokesperson confirmed Monday.

CNN had this.

325 Army suicides in 2012 a record By Tom Watkins and Maggie Schneider, CNN updated 12:16 PM EST, Sat February 2, 2013

Tampa Bay had this

The military suicide epidemic EDITORIAL By TBO.COM Staff Published: February 11, 2013 Simply stated, it is a stunning and distressing statistic that should alarm all Americans: There were more suicides in the United States military in 2012 than there were military deaths caused by combat in Afghanistan. There were 295 combat deaths last year but 349 suicides.

Simply stated the media screwed up and hasn't bothered to fix it so the families shake their heads and wonder if anyone really gives a damn about any of this. If the media actually did their jobs the government wouldn't be handing out $677,000 to find out how families feel when someone they loved committed suicide.