Cocky Ignorance

Now that Senator Barack Obama has become the Democrats' nominee for President of the United States, to the cheers of the media at home and abroad, he has written a letter to the Secretary of Defense, in a tone as if he is already President, addressing one of his subordinates. The letter ends: "I look forward to your swift response."

With wars going on in both Iraq and Afghanistan, a Secretary of Defense might have some other things to look after, before making a "swift response" to a political candidate. Because of the widely publicized statistic that suicide rates among American troops have gone up, Senator Obama says he wants the Secretary of Defense to tell him, swiftly:

"What changes will you make... [snip]
"What training has the Pentagon provided... [snip]
"What assistance are you providing... [snip]
"What programs has the Pentagon implemented... [snip]

What has been widely publicized in the media is that suicides among American troops have gone up. What has not been widely publicized is that this higher suicide rate is still not as high as the suicide rate among demographically comparable U.S. civilians...

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[Barry might want to receive this blog - could have saved a stamp;

FLASHBACK 5/30/08:

Army Deploys Prevention Programs to Combat Soldier Suicides
WASHINGTON, May 29, 2008 - The Army is deploying a multitude of prevention programs as part of efforts to stop soldiers from taking their own lives, senior Army officials said
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[quick points on this topic, as it's getting wide MSM coverage reporting the 108-115 suicides (reports have varied) in '07 without any accompanying context whatsoever. Unimportantly (but interesting) is that Russia's military suicides numbered 341 for '07.

Importantly, our military's current level is below its peace-time average. And critically, the service member suicide rate is consistently below that of the 'general' US population for the same age group. None of which makes any rate acceptable - but does put the lie to the epidemic-because-we're-at-war subtext the much of the old media has been trying to imply.]