Army Sets New Suicide Record - Again

With 160 active-duty soldiers killing themselves last year, the US Army set a new record for suicides. As Jason Ditz reports, “This surpassed the previous record of 140 in 2008, and the previous record before that was 115 in 2007. The Army has been keeping track of suicides since 1980, with the level suddenly rising to epidemic levels in recent years.”

First released by the AP on Friday, this story has been almost completely ignored by the mainstream media. Part of the reason, I imagine, is that it was a fairly busy news weekend, what with the president throwing a surprise birthday party for the first lady and all. But I suspect there’s more to it than that. I suspect part of the reason is that the MSM (and I include Fox News here) realizes that people just don’t want to hear it.

The American people, those loveable idiots who drive around with Support Our Troops ribbons on the backs of their cars, just don’t want to hear bad things about our troops. When anonymous government officials claim that Jessica Lynch fought a John McClane-like battle before being taken captive by Iraqi soldiers, that’s all the networks can talk about. That’s all people want to hear about. Rambo in Iraq. Hell yeah, pass the popcorn.

But nobody wants to expose themselves to anything that would challenge their deeply-held, Hollywood-inspired beliefs about war. They’ll give a shout-out to our troops during Sunday morning church service; they’ll encourage their first-graders to write letters showing their support. But they don’t want to know what’s really happening.

They don’t want to hear that, far from turning our boys into men, these wars are destroying them. There’s, of course, the physical destruction, as many American soldiers keep coming home in body bags. (Expect as many as 500 a month come this summer, warns retired General Barry McCaffrey.) But there’s also the tremendous psychological destruction.

Any war is going to inflict hell on its participants, but “the Long War" has been particularly harsh. Multiple deployments, some of them coming as the result of the military’s stop-loss program, have pushed many of our troops to the breaking point. Psychiatrist Kernan Manion, who’s treated several returning Marines, states: “Frankly, in my more than twenty-five years of clinical practice, I’ve never seen such immense emotional suffering and psychological brokenness—literally, a relentless stream of courageous, well-trained and formerly strong Marines deeply wounded psychologically by the immensity of their combat experiences” (h/t Antiwar Radio).

Manion continues: “There’s currently simply no terminology in the APA [American Psychiatric Association] literature for this. When you’re dealing with cumulative stress from constant guardedness because of continuous exposure to danger—multiple firefights, patrols, losses of buddies and utter exhaustion from deployment—and then you have family problems, and relationship problems, and then on top of all of that you have commanders telling you you’re nothing but a worthless piece of shit, you simply can’t think straight anymore, and who could be expected to.”

In an attempt to cope, many soldiers turn to drugs and alcohol, and many others, as Friday’s AP story reminds us, end up killing themselves. Needless to say, the effects of this psychological destruction remain even after one leaves the service. As Dahr Jamail points out, “A 2008 court case in California revealed a Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) email that revealed 1,000 veterans who are receiving care from the VA are attempting suicide every single month, and 18 veterans kill themselves daily.”

But again, the American idiocracy, with all its meaningless symbols and gestures, doesn’t want to hear any of this. Which is why we need to bring this to the idiocracy’s attention and explain why it’s yet another reason to bring our troops home.

Vile War Propaganda

Some conservative Republican I know on Facebook posted this despicable poster:



















Note the vile propaganda. The brown people having their heads blown off in ______ (fuck it, I can't even keep track of all the countries we're in anymore--fill in the blank yourself) are not civilians, insurgents, children, bystanders, or people using self-defense against a brutal occupying force. Certainly they are not human beings. No, no. They are "terrorists." History started on 9/11, doncha know (the terrorists just woke up one morning and decided that they hated freedom) and so now our brave, heroic "snipers" are out there shooting "terrorists" in the name of freedom!

In reality, the military is loaded with idiots who barely graduated high school, bullies who get off on harming others, murderous psychos (Timothy McVeigh, anyone?), control freaks, rapists, and other piss-ignorant yahoos and authoritarian types. The sniper in this picture would likely be scrubbing port-a-potties if he wasn't out randomly shooting "terrorists" on the taxpayer's dime. Hell, I wonder if he can even read.

The sniper is little else than a cold-blooded, murderous animal who loves killing, wounding and hurting others. He rationalizes his murders by deluding himself into thinking they are "terrorists." But they are real, living human beings.

The only terrorist is the coward hiding behind his gun in the hills.

The Face of War

He believed that he was fighting for his country. He was actually fighting for the power and greed of a few.

In a way, I believe this picture is symbolic. It shows the inner monster that develops as a result of war. He was probably a happy young man at one time, but now he is a scarred, demonic product of the war machine. Chewed up and spit out, just like that.

All the bullshit "freedom'n'democracy" rhetoric that the Hannitoids and Rushbots were spewing in 2004? Just mindless Republican propaganda that lost any relevancy years ago. Nobody cares. It's old news. Was it worth getting his face blown off for the short-term political fiesta of the GOP and its media shills?

Just some things to consider before you volunteer to be a murderous, trigger-happy tool of the state. The state does not give a FUCK about you.

Meet the face of war.

I Don’t Support Our Troops

But you see, anyone who works for the government is special, and we must all join together in sorrow when they pass on. And we must always show the greatest respect for them.

Take war veterans, for example. Thanks to movies like Saving Private Ryan, together with the barrage of government propaganda, I feel like I’m supposed to salute and sing “God Bless America” every time I see a f*cking veteran. If I’m in line in the bank, I’m supposed to get a rush of patriotic fervor and let him get ahead of me. If I’m driving and a guy with a veteran license plate cuts me off, I’m not supposed to flip him the bird. And why, you might ask? Because they (ready the drums and dramatic music)… Fought For My Freedom.

Maybe someone can clue me in. How exactly did killing Koreans and Vietnamese make me more free? Were there slanty-eyed Communists hanging outside my house preparing to ambush me, and just in the nick of time G.I. Schmoe swoops in and cuts him down with a few .223 rounds?

Vic Rattlehead

Think Twice

Doug Stanhope on Some Troops


"He's not fighting for your freedom," says Stanhope of one asshole, "he's fighting cause he's a psychopath that can't wait to kill people."

Of others who join the military because of the lure of "college money" and such, he makes a good point: "They're not yanking kids out of the inner city and making them fight a war."

The truth is that the ranks are filled with either psychopaths or war whores (those that prostitute themselves to the US military in exchange for the benefits they will be given from stolen taxpayer money). Neither deserves any sympathy or "support".

I'll confess that I myself am in the armed forces, but it's not something that I'm particularly proud of anymore, but it's a mistake a made when I was much more naïve and have to suffer the punishment for my naivety just a bit long. Sure I could desert, but that benefits of that would be miniscule compared the terrible consequences and hardships that would be wrought on my family. No, I must suffer this imprisonment as a consequence of my own mistakes for the sake of my family. If I have gained anything from my own experience in the military it is the chance to see firsthand the sick satisfaction some of these people get from being part of America's crusade of slaughter and murder. If it weren't for my time here, I would not truly know the lack of honor among these men that glorify the deaths of "rag heads" or anyone unlike themselves.
- Think Twice When Honoring Veterans

Stefan Molyneux talks to a young man thinking of selling his soul:

What do you think 5 years being ordered around by a bunch of sociopaths, doing work which is fundamentally against your moral principles, serving a corrupt and evil empire and contributing potentially to the deaths of innocents around the world, what is that going to do to you as a human being?