House and Senate Committees Death Panels

House and Senate Committees Death Panels
Wounded Times Blog
Kathie Costos
June 26, 2013

My friends are in low places right now. They are not high and mighty. They don't have the money to hire anyone to fight for them. There was a time when members of Congress actually did but those days are long gone. The truth is pretty ugly but few know what is really going on. Now I am wondering if the high and mighty have any clue at all.

I am about as angry as I can be with good reasons. First the press has been sleeping on the job. They have failed to do basic research. They are the biggest reason why the American people have not held Congress accountable for anything.

Start with the reports on the VA backlogs. The truth is the majority of the claims are from Vietnam veterans, not Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. The truth is, this problem is not new. The ugly truth is, we didn't take care of Vietnam veterans and we are still not taking care of our veterans from all of the wars they were sent to fight. The press didn't bother to look up the history of backlog claims. Members of Congress were too busy playing political games to remind them of what went on before.

In 2006 there were more than 500,000 veterans with pending claims and of those 100,000 were over a year old without resolution according to the VA. By March of 2007, the Boston Globe reported that the backlog of claims had gone from 69,000 in 2000 to 400,000 in 2007 taking 177 days to process an original claim and 657 days to process an appeal. The news got worse with a staggering 915,000 in 2009 with 803,000 with the Board of Appeals.

“Backlogs are at the point where veterans must wait an average of six months for a decision on benefits claims and some veterans are waiting as long as four years,” number of unprocessed veterans claims exceeds 915,000 — a 100,000 jump since the beginning of the year.” (Have VA Pay old claims automatically, Rick Maze, Marine Corps Times, June 30, 2009)

Congress knew what redeployments were doing to the troops back in 2006, but did not do anything to correct this.

“U.S. soldiers serving repeated Iraq deployments are 50 percent more likely than those with one tour to suffer from acute combat stress, raising their risk of post-traumatic stress disorder, according to the Army's first survey exploring how today's multiple war-zone rotations affect soldiers' mental health.” (Repeat Iraq Tours Risk of PTSD Army Finds, Ann Scott Tyson, Washington Post, December 20, 2006)

The House Veterans Affairs Committee along with the Senate have spent billions on "prevention" but the result has been deadly.

"This 12,000 attempted suicides per year shows clearly, without a doubt, that there is an epidemic of suicide among veterans," said Paul Sullivan of Veterans for Common Sense.” (VA Hid Suicide Risk, Internal E-Mails Show, CBS and Associated Press, April 21, 2008)

In 2012 we were told by the DOD that most of the suicides were not tied to deployment. A year before, it was a different story.

DEPLOYMENT: The suicide rate was highest among those who are currently deployed (18.3 deaths per 100,000) and dropped after deployment (15.9 per 100,000). For the entire TAIHOD dataset (from 2004 through 2008), 23 percent of the soldiers studied were currently deployed, 42 percent had never been deployed and 35 percent had been previously deployed but were not currently deployed. (Army STARRS Preliminary Data Reveal Some Potential Predictive Factors for Suicide March 22, 2011)

That study didn't come from the DOD but came from the National Institute of Mental Health.

From THE WARRIOR SAW, SUICIDES AFTER WAR
They went up for a reason and here they are.

2003 Army 79 26 while deployed
2004 Army 67 13 while deployed
2005 Army 87 25 while deployed
2006 Army 99 30 while deployed
(Army Suicide Prevention Program Fact Sheet, Army Public Affairs, August 17, 2007)
2007 Army 115 36 while deployed (50 deployed prior to suicide and 29 not deployed)

Those numbers came before all the "efforts" went into force.

The following is from the Department of Defense Suicide Event Report.
Air Force Suicides Confirmed and Pending (2011 page 93)
2008 45
2009 43
2010 60
2011 50
241 Airmen who attempted suicide in 251 separate incidents.

Army Confirmed and Pending Suicides (2011 page 128)
2008 140
Suicide attempts 570
Of the 140 suicides, 34 (24%) occurred in OIF-OEF. One hundred sixteen suicide attempts (12%) were reported to have occurred in OIF-OEF. Nineteen percent of Soldiers with completed suicides, and 14% of Soldiers with suicide attempts, had a history of multiple deployments to Iraq and/or Afghanistan. Of suicide events reported as occurring in theater, the majority was reported to have occurred in Iraq.

2009 164
Army DoDSERs Submitted for Non-Fatal Events 2,047 Army DoDSERs for non-fatal events were submitted for 2009. Of these, 502 (25%) were submitted for suicide attempts, 347 (17%) for instances of self-harm without intent to die, and 1198 (59%) for suicidal ideation only.

2010 160
DoDSERs provide data on suicide attempts for 400 individuals. Two attempts were reported (DoDSERs submitted) for 11 (2.75%) individuals, and three for one individual (0.25%). Additionally, four Soldiers with a 2010 suicide attempt DoDSER subsequently died by suicide in 2010 and were also included in the preceding section.

2011 167
440 DoDSERs for 2011 Army suicide attempts. As indicated in Table 5.29, these DoDSERs provide data on suicide attempts for 432 individuals. Two suicide attempt DoDSERs were submitted for 8 (1.85%) individuals

2011 Army suicide attempts 432 individuals with 440 attempts

Marines Confirmed and Pending
2008 42
2009 52
2010 37
2011 32
2011 156 Marines who attempted suicide in 157 separate incidents

Navy Confirmed and Pending
2008 41
2009 47
2010 38
2011 52
2011 87 Navy suicide attempts

Department of Defense Suicide Event Report for 2011
For 2011 there were 935 attempted suicides in the military with 915 individuals trying to kill themselves. 896 tried once, 18 tried twice and 1 tried three times.
Before all the money was spent the number of attempted suicides was higher, so that is one good bright spot.

“In 2006, the Army documented 2,100 attempted suicides; an average of more than five per day. In comparison, there were 350 attempts in 2002, the year before the war in Iraq began. The method of choice was a firearm. There is no firm data on Soldiers who had thoughts of suicide.” (Suicide Gets Army’s Attention, Army, Debbie Sheehan, Fort Monmouth Public Affairs October 14, 2009)

Or at least it is easy to think it is until you think about the "personality disorder" discharges that were happening. They are still doing it. They don't have to count them once they are discharged.

It is important you know those numbers because of what is in this book. For 2012 it was reported that there were 179 attempted military suicides and the headlines all seemed to read the same way. 349 suicides were successful. The reporters broke down the numbers like this.

Marine Corps 48, Navy 60, Air Force 59 and Army 182 but what the reporters forgot about were the Army National Guardsmen and Army Reservists the DOD did in fact include in the Army Suicide numbers. Army National Guards 96 and Army Reserves 47. That is where we are. That is about as telling as it can be because in 2008 the Department of Defense was telling the nation that they had a plan to prevent suicides.

The plan was to train the troops to become “resilient” and actually believe they could prevent Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. What we saw was an increase in the number of service men and women taking their own lives.

When they keep spending more and more money on what has failed, they have become death panels instead of really taking care of the troops and our veterans.

Every section of THE WARRIOR SAW, SUICIDES AFTER WAR has been sourced back to reporters as well as government reports.

The question is, since all this information has been there all along, why has the press been so reluctant to tell the truth? Why have members of Congress been able to just say whatever they want and spend whatever money they want without any accountability? Why has the DOD been able to just push through whatever they want without being held accountable?