More Soldiers Dying From Suicide than Combat.

Suicides are sky-rocketing among the 1.4 million active-duty military personnel , averaging one per day since the beginning of 2012, the fastest pace in the nation's decade of war. That's not counting all the soldiers who have come home. Once they are discharged, they immediately begin falling through the cracks, so much so that it’s doubtful there are any accurate numbers on suicide rates among veterans of recent wars. One thing we do know is that the numbers are very high.

The 154 suicides for active-duty troops in the first 155 days of the year far outdistance the U.S. forces killed in action in Afghanistan — about 50 percent more — according to Pentagon statistics obtained by The Associated Press.The 154 suicides for active-duty troops in the first 155 days of 2012 far outnumber U.S. forces killed in action in Afghanistan — about 50 percent more — according to Pentagon statistics obtained by The Associated Press.

Kim Ruocco, widow of Marine Maj. John Ruocco, a helicopter pilot who hanged himself in 2005 between Iraq deployments, said he was unable to bring himself to go for help.

"He was so afraid of how people would view him once he went for help," she said in an interview at her home in suburban Boston. "He thought that people would think he was weak, that people would think he was just trying to get out of redeploying or trying to get out of service, or that he just couldn't hack it - when, in reality, he was sick. He had suffered injury in combat and he had also suffered from depression and let it go untreated for years. And because of that, he's dead today."

One man responded to the article:

I was very moved by this article. Being a soldier who was made a example after I reported I was having problems and suicidal. The military has not changed since my discharge 20 years ago.Recently I was forced to use the military confidential line and was first hung up on, then put on hold, and finally told to call back Monday. This was a crisis line. To my horror after obtaining a copy of my medical records for treatment and services outside the VA medical system. There was a note by my doctor saying I made a call and was "Babbleing". I have still not been seen nor helped with this problem(s).That General lied, and the VA doesnt care. Just pick up the phone and call the confidential number. I cannot explain the cost of my reporting being suicidal as a active duty soldier. But it ruined my life. If your in the service your best off doing it and dont live as I am and have been.Thank you for this article and getting the word out. I will be more than happy to share my medical records publicly for any doubters.

Is it any wonder that so many take their lives after they find out they're fighting a global war for corporate plunder by those who profit from death and destruction?

War Is A Racket - Smedley Butler, 1935

Who Pays The Bills?

[T]he soldier pays the biggest part of the bill.

If you don't believe this, visit the American cemeteries on the battlefields abroad. Or visit any of the veteran's hospitals in the United States. On a tour of the country, in the midst of which I am at the time of this writing, I have visited eighteen government hospitals for veterans. In them are a total of about 50,000 destroyed men -- men who were the pick of the nation eighteen years ago. The very able chief surgeon at the government hospital; at Milwaukee, where there are 3,800 of the living dead, told me that mortality among veterans is three times as great as among those who stayed at home.

Boys with a normal viewpoint were taken out of the fields and offices and factories and classrooms and put into the ranks. There they were remolded; they were made over; they were made to "about face"; to regard murder as the order of the day. They were put shoulder to shoulder and, through mass psychology, they were entirely changed. We used them for a couple of years and trained them to think nothing at all of killing or of being killed.

Then, suddenly, we discharged them and told them to make another "about face" ! This time they had to do their own readjustment, sans [without] mass psychology, sans officers' aid and advice and sans nation-wide propaganda. We didn't need them any more. So we scattered them about without any "three-minute" or "Liberty Loan" speeches or parades. Many, too many, of these fine young boys are eventually destroyed, mentally, because they could not make that final "about face" alone.

In the government hospital in Marion, Indiana, 1,800 of these boys are in pens! Five hundred of them in a barracks with steel bars and wires all around outside the buildings and on the porches. These already have been mentally destroyed. These boys don't even look like human beings. Oh, the looks on their faces! Physically, they are in good shape; mentally, they are gone.

There are thousands and thousands of these cases, and more and more are coming in all the time. The tremendous excitement of the war, the sudden cutting off of that excitement -- the young boys couldn't stand it.