Military Suicides should have been at the top of the fold

When I started writing THE WARRIOR SAW, Suicides After War I thought that I knew just about everything that was happening. Because of families asking me to tell their stories, I figured it would be emotionally draining but considered the fact I had so many reports, it wouldn't be that hard to find the stories. I was wrong.

I thought I'd have it done by January, but it just went up this week on Amazon and Kindle.

There was a time when I was talking to friends, thinking it would never be done. One report ran into another and another. Two weeks into writing it I had one of those "Oh My God!" moments when I finally realized as much as I knew from tracking these reports across the country, there was a whole new world of information I hadn't discovered yet.

I knew the Department of Defense has a site with press releases because I am in there all the time. I didn't know that each branch puts out a Posture Statement every year. I didn't know they also have Department of Defense Suicide Event Report. I knew they were spending a lot of money on "suicide prevention" and "resilience training" but what I didn't know was that it was worth billions a year. Why didn't I know any of this? Because reporters failed to tell us. I trusted they were reporting on everything we needed to know.

I didn't know that while the DOD is spending billions a year, so is the VA, the Department of Health and the National Institute of Mental Health. While I was appalled by what Congress was doing, I didn't how little they were in fact doing when it came to holding anyone accountable.

Reporters again failed because as they were reporting on the VA claims backlog, they forgot they were also reporting the same thing years ago but dropped the story as soon as something else came along they thought would get them more attention.

I was sickened by the growing list of "charities" raising money to "take care of our veterans" when in fact it appears they have raised more for themselves than actually doing what they need to do to save the lives of our veterans.

Sickened by the fact families had no clue what PTSD was or what they could do to help someone they loved when there was still time to save their lives.

This week we had a perfect lesson on what the media does. Two huge stories happened. One in Boston and one in Texas.

Boston was attacked by two deranged bombers. 3 were killed and about 200 wounded. Really terrible and deserved attention especially with the manhunt on for the murderers. In Texas there was an explosion at West Texas fertilizer plant claiming the lives of at least 14, 200 injured and 60 people still missing and 50 homes damaged. Some of the missing are firefighters. What did we see all week? Almost every major news station was covering what happened in Boston as if they just didn't have the time to do both stories.

That is the way they have operated for far too long. One station's producer decides to cover something and every other station does the same.

What we end up with is missing too many important stories that also need our attention.

We needed them to pay attention to what was happening to the troops and investigating why it was happening. I had to do it! I am not a reporter. I rely on them to do the reporting and I just research what they report so that everyone who wants to know can find the reports in one place, or at least as best as I can considering I am only one person and work 70 hours a week.

They should have cared all along and treated it as if lives depended on them letting us know what was happening. They failed and more troops died from suicide than combat. But they even got those numbers wrong because they forgot about Army National Guards and Reservists also included in the reports from the DOD every month but not in the top section.

All reporters cared about was making it into the top of the fold. (news paper term meaning what people see when the paper is folded to go the public.) Could you imagine them only paying attention to Army suicides and forgetting about the Marines, Navy and Air Force?