Sorkin: Bumper stickers don't help our troops

Sorkin has got it all wrong. Everybody knows that the best way to honor our troops is to vote Republican and keep them at war.

Bumper-Sticker Patriotism Is No Way to Honor Our Veterans

By Aaron Sorkin

November 11, 2011 | Huffington Post

URL: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/aaron-sorkin/supporting-our-troops_b_781543.html

Another year, another record for Army suicides

Oh my, Lib'rul Media, you aint what you used to be. Look at you, ignoring the elephant in the room.

Here CNN writes about record numbers of army suicides and drug abusers, but conveniently fails to mention that they're being deployed to s***holes Afghanistan and Iraq over and over again. CNN doesn't even speculate why so many soldiers are killing themselves. Likewise, the Army is officially baffled. I guess CNN considers it a big, unsolvable mystery, too. Anyway, I bet the solution is more frequent psychiatric testing and counseling. Yeah, that's the ticket.

Army suicides set another yearly record

By Mike Mount
November 18, 2009 | CNN

Suicides among soldiers this year have topped last year's record-breaking numbers, but Army officials maintain a recent trend downward could mean the service is making headway on its programs designed to reduce the problem, Army officials said Tuesday.

Since January, 140 active-duty soldiers have killed themselves while another 71 Army Reserve and National Guard soldiers killed themselves in the same time period, totaling 211 as of Tuesday, Gen. Peter Chiarelli, U.S. Army vice chief of staff, told reporters at a briefing Tuesday.

But he said the monthly numbers are starting to slow down as the year nears its end.

"This is horrible, and I do not want to downplay the significance of these numbers in any way," Chiarelli said.

For all of 2008, the Army said 140 active-duty soldiers killed themselves while 57 Guard and Reserve soldiers committed suicide, totaling 197, according to Army statistics.

The Army is still trying to tackle why soldiers are killing themselves.

[If the Army's cluelessness doesn't undermine your faith in their intelligence, then I don't know what will. But of course they know why. They just can't say it. - J]

"We still haven't found any statistically significant causal linkage that would allow us to effectively predict human behavior. The reality is, there is no simple answer -- each suicide case is as unique as the individuals themselves," Chiarelli said.

He also said there were troubling new statistics showing an increase in suicide rates among young soldiers who have never deployed, another factor puzzling Army researchers.

To add to the Army's problems, Chiarelli said there is a rise in numbers of soldiers abusing prescription drugs and alcohol upon returning from the war zones.

But Chiarelli said the news was not all grim.

"I do believe we are finally beginning to see progress being made," he said referring to a downward trend in suicide numbers in recent months. "The general trend line with the exception of a couple of months has been down."

"We attribute this reduction in the number of suicides to the many actions we have taken since February to inform and educate leaders and soldiers on this important issue," Chiarelli said.

Since March, the Army has implemented numerous programs and policies in an attempt to quickly slow the rate. Programs range from a suicide prevention task force to a day off from official duties to focus on suicide prevention. The service has implemented what it calls a Comprehensive Soldier Fitness Program, giving every soldier a mental assessment twice a year in the same style the Army tests soldiers for fitness.

"It gives the same emphasis to psychological, emotional and mental strength that we have previously given to physical strength," Chiarelli said.

The Army also has tested a program that gave mental-health evaluations to a group soldiers returning from the war zone. Some were treated face-to-face with mental-health providers while others were treated online by providers.

Chiarelli said the initial results were promising, and doctors said they could have great success treating patients online.

The test seems to give the Army some answers on how to treat the variety of soldiers from young to old.

"Younger soldiers prefer the online method of evaluation more than they do the face-to-face, and older soldiers -- some of you might not find this so surprising -- find face-to-face more to their liking," according to the general.

Chiarelli also gave examples of Army bases that seem to have shown improvement in suicide warning signs and prevention this year resulting in decreased number of suicide rates, including Fort Hood in Texas, Fort Bragg in North Carolina and Fort Drum in New York.

Fort Bragg has had six suicides to date, Fort Hood has had two and Fort Hood has had 11, but it is the largest U.S. military base with 60,000 troops.

There are Army posts, however, that were not showing signs of improvement.

"We are very concerned with the increase this year of suicide at Fort Campbell, Fort Stewart and Schofield Barracks," Chiarelli said.

Fort Campbell, in Kentucky, has had 18 suicides so far this year, with 11 of them occurring in the first quarter of 2009. Fort Stewart in Georgia has had 10 deaths, six of them occurring over the first five months of the year. And Schofield Barracks in Hawaii has had seven deaths.

All of the bases Chiarelli mentioned have different populations and deployment levels and reflect different suicide rates and ratios.

Chiarelli stressed his frustration with getting answers to the suicide problem.

"Everywhere I try to cut this and look at it to try to find out what the causal effect is, I get thwarted. And that's why we think that we've got to look in its totality at a whole bunch of different issues, and it's going to take time," he said.

Pentagon: Meet your robot masters

Didn't the people at the Pentagon see Terminator? Or T2: Judgment Day? Or T3: Rise of the Machines? Or The Simpsons episode number 107, "Itchy and Scratchy Land?"

Don't they know how this story always ends??

Seriously though, here's a shocking statistic for all you Big Gubument haters: In 2006, the U.S. budget for military R&D was $71 billion – more than any other country spends on its entire defense! In the next 5 years, the Pentagon will spend $2 billion on robots.

Thank God, at least they won't be wasting that money on welfare (or education, health care, disaster relief, border control, or port security) for people!

RoboCop in Iraq
In the next five years, according to DefenseLink, the Pentagon plans to spend $2 billion on robots, breaking the monopoly of human soldiers in an army

By Allen McDuffee
January 9, 2008 | In These Times

Improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, have killed 1,678 U.S. military personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan since July 2003, according to Georgia-based Iraq Coalition Casualty Count. The death toll could have been much higher without the help of 5,000 IED-detecting robots that, according to CBS News, have found 10,000 roadside bombs in Afghanistan and Iraq. But the next step in the evolution of wartime robots looks to go from saving lives to taking them.

The U.S. Army soon plans to deploy armed robots with firepower into the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Designed by Foster-Miller, these robots, known as SWORDS (Special Weapons Observation Reconnaissance Detections Systems), are operated and fired by remote control. They can be outfitted with M240 or M249 machine guns or Barrett .50 caliber rifles.

The 5th Special Forces in Iraq evaluated the system, and three other systems have completed evaluation with the 3rd Infantry Division and deployed to Iraq in 2007. Meanwhile, the Army continues to assess alternative weapons, including grenade launchers and anti-tank rocket launchers. Each unarmed version of the robot costs $60,000.

SWORDS first received major media attention in 2005, when the Associated Press reported, "Military officials like to compare the roughly three-foot-high robots favorably to human soldiers: They don't need to be trained, fed or clothed. They can be boxed up and warehoused between wars. They never complain. And there are no letters to write home if they meet their demise in battle."

In addition to Foster-Miller, iRobot, founded in 1990 by MIT roboticists, is one of several robotic companies contracting with the military—though it may be most well known for its Roomba, the popular robotic, home vacuum cleaner. On Oct. 21, 2007, CBS reported that iRobot's Warrior is expected in Iraq by 2009. The Warrior "is a serious robot," said Joe Dyer, iRobot's president of Government & Industrial Robots Division. "This is a 250-pound robot that will be able to run a four-minute mile." Depending on the intensity of the mission, the Warrior could last up to 16 hours.

Warrior, like SWORDS, is currently being designed to have human operators, but engineers are simultaneously testing the ability of robots to "think" for themselves. This "disruptive technology," Dyer said, is "going to change the way we fight, the way we live—it's going to change our entire lives."

Max Boot, senior fellow for National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, agrees. "These are periods of momentous change when new technologies combine with new doctrines and new forms of organization to transform not only the face of battle but also the nature of the state and of the international system," he says.

Boot, author of War Made New: Technology, Warfare, and the Course of History, notes that the U.S. budget for research and development for military technology alone—$71 billion in 2006—is more than any other country spends on its entire defense. And it's only a fraction of the annual U.S. military budget, which is now at $500 billion—almost as much as the rest of the world combined.

In the next five years, according to DefenseLink, the Pentagon plans to spend $2 billion on robots. As Jim Braden, project manager of the Army's Joint Robotics Program, told CBS, "It's a tremendous capability to put a robot where you do not want to put a man."

But it also raises serious concerns about the likelihood for increased military aggression when the potential for deaths for U.S. soldiers is eliminated or decreased in the equation of war. The problem, according to Peter W. Singer, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of the forthcoming book, Wired for War, is that "we have an assumption of who fights wars that is increasingly outdated. While our understanding of war … assume[s] that combatants are only soldiers serving on behalf of states, the reality of war today is that combatants range from soldiers to terrorists to warlords to contractors, and now to unmanned systems."

Singer adds, "To be clear, it doesn't mean that the state or human soldiers are disappearing by any means, but that their monopoly is being broken." He says history will look back at this period as "notable for the loss of the state's 200-year-old monopoly over warfare and that of humankind's 4,000-year-old monopoly over doing the job of fighting wars."

Iraq Vets Against the War

IVAW is an organization of real U.S. soldiers who really oppose the Iraq war. Check it out -- especially the soldiers' individual profiles!

http://www.ivaw.org/view/profiles

From its inception, IVAW has called for:

• > Immediate withdrawal of all occupying forces in Iraq;
  

• > Reparations for the destruction and corporate pillaging of Iraq so that Iraqi people can control their own lives and future; and
  

• > Full benefits, adequate healthcare (including mental health), and other supports for returning servicemen and women.

Finally, check out their reasoned and dead-on response to the interim report on the "surge's" progress in Iraq:

http://www.ivaw.org/node/1250

CNN: Thousands of veterans return with mental illness

Study: Thousands of veterans return with mental illness

SAN FRANCISCO, California (CNN) -- Nearly a third of veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan who received care from Veterans Affairs between 2001 and 2005 were diagnosed with mental health or psychosocial ills, a new study concludes.

The study was published in the March 12 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine and carried out by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco and the San Francisco VA Medical Center.

They looked at data from 103,788 veterans; about 13 percent of them women, 54 percent under age 30, nearly a third minorities and nearly half veterans of the National Guard or Reserves.

Of the total, 32,010 (31 percent) were diagnosed with mental health and/or psychosocial problems, including 25,658 who received mental health diagnoses. More than half (56 percent) were diagnosed with two or more disorders.

Post-traumatic stress disorder was the most common disorder, with the 13,205 veterans who got the diagnosis accounting for more than half (52 percent) of mental health diagnoses.

Post-traumatic stress disorder, an anxiety disorder that can occur after the experience or witnessing of a traumatic event, can lead to depression, substance abuse, problems of memory and cognition, and other problems of physical and mental health.

Others included anxiety disorder (24 percent), adjustment disorder (24 percent), depression (20 percent) and substance abuse disorder (20 percent).

Of all veterans of Iraq or Afghanistan who sought VA services, post-traumatic stress disorder affected 13 percent, the study said.

That's slightly less than the 15.2 percent tallied for veterans of the Vietnam War, but far above the 3.5 percent reported in the general population.

Differences between genders and races were "minimal," the study said.

But the youngest group studied -- veterans 18-24 years of age -- appeared to be at greatest risk.

"Our results signal a need for improvements in the primary prevention of military service-related mental health disorders, particularly among our youngest service members," the authors wrote.

Still, youth may have had nothing to do with it, the authors acknowledged, noting that active-duty military are typically among the youngest military.

And, "because they are young, they are more likely to be of lower rank and more likely to have greater combat exposure than their older active-duty counterparts," the authors wrote.

In addition, the study's conclusions may not apply generally to all veterans of the wars, since the study included only those veterans who got VA care.

The authors warned, "Our results may overestimate the burden of mental health disorders because veterans with mental health disorders may be more likely to seek treatment at a VA facility than those without."

The findings did not surprise former Sen. Max Cleland, a veteran who was grievously wounded during the Vietnam War and suffered depression.

"This is the price of war," the Democrat from Georgia said. "You can't send young Americans to Iraq and Afghanistan ... and expect them to come home and just fit right in. They bring that trauma with them."

He added, "If you don't intervene with the emotional aftermath of the war up-front and early, it can slide down a precipitous path to hell."

Military Times Poll: More troops unhappy with Bush, course in Iraq

And as Rosa Brooks of the LA Times pointed out, citing data from the same Military Times poll:

"The Military Times released its annual poll of active-duty service members, and the results showed something virtually unprecedented: a one-year decline of 10 percentage points in the number of military personnel identifying themselves as Republicans. In the 2004 poll, the percentage of military respondents who characterized themselves as Republicans stood at 60%. By the end of 2005, that had dropped to 56%. And by the end of 2006, the percentage of military Republicans plummeted to 46%."

Moreover, if you look closely at a lot of the troops' answers to the poll questions, a good 10-20% say they have "no opinion" or "decline to answer." We can surmise that if they were supportive of their mission and their commander-in-chief, they would have given positive responses to these questions. That's just good soldiers being loyal. They don't want to criticize their own country, even though they can't make themselves lie and say something positive. Thank goodness we're smart enough to read between the lines and know what our troops are really thinking.

December 29, 2006

Poll: More troops unhappy with Bush's course in Iraq

By Robert Hodierne

Senior managing editor | The Army Times

The American military — once a staunch supporter of President Bush and the Iraq war — has grown increasingly pessimistic about chances for victory, according to the 2006 Military Times Poll.

For the first time, more troops disapprove of the president's handling of the war than approve of it. Barely one-third of service members approve of the way the president is handling the war.

When the military was feeling most optimistic about the war — in 2004 — 83 percent of poll respondents thought success in Iraq was likely. This year, that number has shrunk to 50 percent.

Only 35 percent of the military members polled this year said they approve of the way President Bush is handling the war, while 42 percent said they disapproved. The president's approval rating among the military is only slightly higher than for the population as a whole. In 2004, when his popularity peaked, 63 percent of the military approved of Bush's handling of the war. While approval of the president's war leadership has slumped, his overall approval remains high among the military.

Just as telling, in this year's poll only 41 percent of the military said the U.S. should have gone to war in Iraq in the first place, down from 65 percent in 2003. That closely reflects the beliefs of the general population today — 45 percent agreed in a recent USA Today/Gallup poll.

Professor David Segal, director of the Center for Research on Military Organization at the University of Maryland, was not surprised by the changing attitude within the military.

"They're seeing more casualties and fatalities and less progress," Segal said.

He added, "Part of what we're seeing is a recognition that the intelligence that led to the war was wrong."

Whatever war plan the president comes up with later this month, it likely will have the replacement of American troops with Iraqis as its ultimate goal. The military is not optimistic that will happen soon. Only about one in five service members said that large numbers of American troops can be replaced within the next two years. More than one-third think it will take more than five years. And more than half think the U.S. will have to stay in Iraq more than five years to achieve its goals.

Almost half of those responding think we need more troops in Iraq than we have there now. A surprising 13 percent said we should have no troops there. As for Afghanistan force levels, 39 percent think we need more troops there. But while they want more troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, nearly three-quarters of the respondents think today's military is stretched too thin to be effective.

The mail survey, conducted Nov. 13 through Dec. 22, is the fourth annual gauge of active-duty military subscribers to the Military Times newspapers. The results should not be read as representative of the military as a whole; the survey's respondents are on average older, more experienced, more likely to be officers and more career-oriented than the overall military population.

Among the respondents, 66 percent have deployed at least once to Iraq or Afghanistan. In the overall active-duty force, according to the Department of Defense, that number is 72 percent.

The poll has come to be viewed by some as a barometer of the professional career military. It is the only independent poll done on an annual basis. The margin of error on this year's poll is plus or minus 3 percentage points.

While approval of Bush's handling of the war has plunged, approval for his overall performance as president remains high at 52 percent. While that is down from his high of 71 percent in 2004, it is still far above the approval ratings of the general population, where that number has fallen into the 30s.

While Bush fared well overall, his political party didn't. In the three previous polls, nearly 60 percent of the respondents identified themselves as Republicans, which is about double the population as a whole. But in this year's poll, only 46 percent of the military respondents said they were Republicans. However, there was not a big gain in those identifying themselves as Democrats — a figure that consistently hovers around 16 percent. The big gain came among people who said they were independents.

Similarly, when asked to describe their political views on a scale from very conservative to very liberal, there was a slight shift from the conservative end of the spectrum to the middle or moderate range. Liberals within the military are still a rare breed, with less than 10 percent of respondents describing themselves that way.

Seeing media bias

Segal was not surprised that the military support for the war and the president's handling of it had slumped. He said he believes that military opinion often mirrors that of the civilian population, even though it might lag in time. He added, "[The military] will always be more pro-military and pro-war than the civilians. That's why they are in this line of work."

The poll asked, "How do you think each of these groups view the military?" Respondents overwhelmingly said civilians have a favorable impression of the military (86 percent). They even thought politicians look favorably on the military (57 percent). But they are convinced the media hate them — only 39 percent of military respondents said they think the media have a favorable view of the troops.

The poll also asked if the senior military leadership, President Bush, civilian military leadership and Congress have their best interests at heart.

Almost two-thirds (63 percent) of those surveyed said the senior military leadership has the best interests of the troops at heart. And though they don't think much of the way he's handling the war, 48 percent said the same about President Bush. But they take a dim view of civilian military leadership — only 32 percent said they think it has their best interests at heart. And only 23 percent think Congress is looking out for them.

Despite concerns early in the war about equipment shortages, 58 percent said they believe they are supplied with the best possible weapons and equipment.

While President Bush always portrays the war in Iraq as part of the larger war on terrorism, many in the military are not convinced. The respondents were split evenly — 47 percent both ways — on whether the Iraq war is part of the war on terrorism. The rest had no opinion.

On many questions in the poll, some respondents said they didn't have an opinion or declined to answer. That number was typically in the 10 percent range.

But on questions about the president and on war strategy, that number reached 20 percent and higher. Segal said he was surprised the percentage refusing to offer an opinion wasn't larger.

"There is a strong strain in military culture not to criticize the commander in chief," he said.

One contentious area of military life in the past year has been the role religion should play. Some troops have complained that they feel pressure to attend religious services. Others have complained that chaplains and superior officers have tried to convert them. Half of the poll respondents said that at least once a month, they attend official military gatherings, other than meals and chapel services, that began with a prayer. But 80 percent said they feel free to practice and express their religion within the military.

http://www.armytimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-2449372.php

Bush 'moved' by visit to wounded Vets

As the Associated Press reported, at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center on Friday, Bush continued "an annual pre-Christmas tradition of comforting soldiers that he began after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003." From March 2003 to November 2006, 22,032 U.S. soldiers were wounded in Iraq. Bush met with 38 of them on Friday.

Wow, what a great new Christmas "tradition." If only Bush could be elected president again and again, I'm sure this grand tradition would continue for decades, as the dead and wounded piled up in military graves and hospitals, respectively.

If real life were a zombie movie -- and sometimes I wish it was -- Bush would be the prick who threw grandmothers and children to the undead mob to save his skin for a few more minutes. But he would also get his just desserts in the end, being torn apart by a dozen of the hungriest zombies (some of them those very same grannies and kids) while still conscious, watching them pull out his slimy entrails and lumber away munching his bloody limbs as he's writhing and screaming in agony.

I feel sorry for those soldiers, I really do, especially the amputees. Man, I wish I could know their thoughts when Bush came to their bed side: the little rich boy who got a cushy stateside National Guard assignment during Vietnam; the GOP scion who never had to work a day in his life, or worry about the future. What did they really think of him when they looked into his smirking face, trying but failing to show gravitas? What did they really want to do -- shake his hand, or punch him in the face?

I do like to think Bush has some vestigial conscience that maybe comes into play sometimes, like when he's sleeping. I like to hope he sweats and cries like a little baby at night, seeing those wounded and dead soldiers in his sleep, at last seeking their just revenge, coming to claim his health, his limbs, his life. Over and over and over again, all night, night after night. I like to think it gets so bad that Laura now has to sleep in another room, that the Secret Service detail knows but keeps it to themselves.

Alas, life does not offer nearly so many opportunities for justice as art. I'm sure those wounded soldiers at Walter Reed were all "yes, sir," "fine, sir," and "Merry Christmas, sir." I guess I can't blame them for that. And I'm sure Bush sleeps like a baby, the very picture of mental and physical well being. I blame him like hell for that.