Here's a little bit of the exchange between Amy Goodman and Mark Benjamin regarding military suicide and murders from Benjamin's article of February 9,
2009. Here's a link to the article, which is a series:
http://www.salon.com/news/special/co...tro/index.html
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"Amy Goodman: Well, the news website Salon.com just completed an in-depth investigation into a rash of suicides and murders since 2004 at one army base, the Fort Carson base in Colorado. They found most of the deaths were preventable and could have been avoided, but for the neglect and inadequate care returning combat veterans got from the Army.
Mark Benjamin: An interesting twist, and I think this is unfortunately indicative of some of the attitude at Fort Carson, before Adam died, he painted on the wall his suicide note in big black letters, black paint, where he blamed the Army for his death. He blamed the mistreatment for his death, in this suicide note. “The Army took my life,” he wrote. And his mother flew out there soon after the suicide attempt and found that the Army was responding to the suicide attempt in part by charging Adam with destruction of government property. When his mother found out, she was so angry she half-jokingly offered to paint over the suicide note if they would drop the charges. The Army took her up on it, gave her a can of paint. She painted over her own son’s suicide note, and the Army still charged Adam anyways.
What’s interesting is that when we looked at these deaths—and again, there’s a lot of focus on the suicides in the Army because, as you may have mentioned, there were more suicides, more soldiers died of suicide in the month of January 2009 than died in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. But there’s also these murders going on, as well. When we talked to the Army, basically what they did is they gave us a list of initiatives that they are undertaking to prevent suicide: you know, hiring more counselors, putting together hotlines, putting out memos that are so that people get better diagnosed. But when you go to a place like Fort Carson and you hang out on the base and you meet with the soldiers and you walk the barracks and you go to the hospital and so on and so forth, they just don’t seem to be happening. I mean, these—they look good on paper. You know, when I interviewed the Army, the initiatives that they list sound terrific. They’re just not happening out in the field. And as a result, you know, an unknown number of soldiers are involved in violence, are not getting treatment, they’re self-medicating, and they’re acting out against themselves and against innocent people."
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Fair assessment or not?