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Progress towards stability in Iraq has meant that more soldiers were killed in January by their own hand than in combat in Afghanistan and Iraq combined. As a result, the USArmy is planning a forcewide program in suicide prevention. NBC's Ron Mott covered the mental health effort last Friday from Fort Benning. Now David Martin files from the Pentagon for CBS. Martin used a particularly macabre example. There has been a cluster of five suicides at a single recruitment office in Houston that uses 70-hour work weeks: one recruiting sergeant hanged himself; another strangled himself with a dog chain. Army brass blamed the "plague" on a "toxic mix of job stress, poor leadership and personal problems."
I learned from the news recently that there have been more suicides of the young men currently serving in our military, than have been war deaths, in our current society! This is because our government currently has no limits on the amount of tours they demand of these young men, especially the ones serving on the front lines of battle. And once you are in the military, you have no way out. You have no free speech, you have no free will, you are at the mercy of the brutal wars you are forced to keep fighting, and killing, and being subjected to, over and over. Many of these young men are on their FOURTH tour!
There are a number of family videos posted on the web, describing the men's horror they feel, of experiencing death and killing over and over, and their loved ones describing the suicides and anguish the men felt.
I ask that this be brought to the attention of a Federal government committee, so they can put a limit on the amount of war tours they force these young men to suffer, to have a new Federal Law stating that a young man cannot be forced to serve over 2 tours, maximum, with a special exception for the men sent to the front lines, that their actual battle tour on the front lines be shortened to 1/2 a tour, with the rest spent on non-battle territory.
I would go AWOL before I killed myself because of the military's abuse of my spirit! I think that their tours should not be limited to 2, but only 1. One tour is enough if you are drafted to serve. And if you are drafted to fight on the front lines, your tour should not be limited to 1/2 tour on the front, and the rest of it on the back, but only WEEKS, like 8 WEEKS or so, MAX. Maybe that's even too much. Forced killing, and seeing the killed and the dead, over and over, day after day, is brutality to your spirit, like we can hardly imagine. It's like being forced to see REALLY BRUTAL, SCARY HORROR MOVIES over and over, one worse than the next. That would really make anyone crazy, and I can see why they are committing suicide. Their "remedy" of now forcing the men to go to a "class" about "how not to commit suicide when forced with these horrors", is a JOKE! Get real! That's like saying, "go to a class that will tell you not to cry when you see your family get killed right in front of you", and you'll be better!
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