Soldier Stationed At Fort Hood Found Dead

Millville Soldier Stationed At Fort Hood Found Dead
January 3, 2013
By Steve Beck

FORT HOOD, Texas (CBS) – A soldier who was found dead in his barracks at Fort Hood in Texas was from Millville, New Jersey.

Sergeant Jose Joaquin Suarez, 24, was found unresponsive in his barracks room at Fort Hood the day after Christmas. Suarez was pronounced dead at Carl R. Darnall Medical Center the same day.
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Medevac crews in Afghanistan increase en-route patient care

Medevac crews in Afghanistan increase en-route patient care
January 4, 2013
US Army
By Capt. Richard Barker

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Jan. 4, 2013) -- During the course of the last several months, two Medevac companies in Task Force Hammerhead, Company C, 3rd Battalion, 25th Aviation Regiment, and Company C, 1st Battalion, 169th Aviation Regiment, Army National Guard, have participated in a trial program developed by the 25th Combat Aviation Brigade, or CAB, that enables flight medics to administer blood products to wounded Soldiers during the Soldiers' en-route flight care and movement to a medical facility.

The 3-25th General Support Aviation Battalion, 25th CAB, is the first conventional Medevac unit anywhere in the Army to conduct this mission.

"Specifically we implemented a new blood transfusion process for critically-injured patients on Medevac aircraft," said Capt. Nathaniel Bastian, a Forward Support Medevac platoon leader of C, 3-25.

As of December 2012, 80 medical patients have received blood products through the program, which is currently operating at five locations in southern Afghanistan.

More than 60 percent of casualties in Regional Command-South, known as RC-South, are caused by improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, and gunshot wounds. These types of injuries cause patients to lose a large amount of blood. As a result, the patient's chances of survival are increased by an immediate replenishment of blood plasma and red blood cells prior to their arrival at the next level of medical treatment.
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Abortions, guns, raises and suicides in new Defense Bill

If you think Defense Bills are just about money going to contractors, this should open your eyes.

Obama Signs $633B Defense Bill
Jan 03, 2013
Associated Press
by Matthew Daly

As suicides among active-duty soldiers have accelerated, the bill also allows a commander officer or health professional to ask if a member of the services owns a firearm if they consider the individual at risk for either suicide or hurting others.

The bill includes a Senate-passed provision sponsored by Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., that expands health insurance coverage for military women and their dependents who decide to have abortions in cases of rape and incest. Previously, health coverage applied only to abortions in cases where the life of the mother was endangered.

The measure includes a 1.7 percent pay raise for military personnel.

Do you think the 113th Congress will save veteran lives?

UPDATE
The enemy within: Soldier suicides outpaced combat deaths in 2012
By Bill Briggs
NBC News contributor

Some Army families who recently lost members to suicide criticize the branch for failing to aggressively shake a culture in which soldiers believe they'll be deemed weak and denied promotion if they seek mental health aid. They also blame Army leaders for focusing more heavily on weeding out emotionally troubled soldiers to artificially suppress the branch's suicide stats versus embracing and helping members who are exhibiting clear signs of trouble.

Furthermore, in September, two U.S. lawmakers pressured the Pentagon to immediately use unspent money specifically appropriated to the agency to help slow the suicides within the military. Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., and Rep. Leonard Boswell, D-Iowa, also pushed for increased anti-suicide funding for the Department of Defense in 2013. “The Pentagon hasn’t spent the money that it has for suicide prevention for this year — and that money wasn’t nearly enough money to reach all the soldiers who need help.

Now we are hearing about bureaucratic technicalities at the Pentagon that are preventing them from acting. This is unconscionable,” Rep. McDermott said. “The Pentagon is funded to help soldiers and needs to do much more on the epidemic of suicides."

Do you think the 113th Congress will save veteran lives?
by Kathie Costos
Wounded Times Blog
January 4, 2013


There is another bill coming out of congress touted as "suicide prevention" but if you think it will really make a difference, you need to know about all the others. Once you know what has failed, they will point to what succeeded so that you don't put it all together.

I could have been famous if I sucked up to the right people. The problem was I more interested in doing the right thing. I was a hell of lot more interested in holding politicians and military brass accountable than pandering to them. As for the groups of bloggers and reporters out there playing political games, they are a huge part of what has happened.

In 2001, with troops sent into Afghanistan, Republicans controlled the White House and the House. Yet for all the talk about how much the troops meant to them, none of them saw fit to increase the people working for the VA to take care of the wounded that would return from there. The 108th Congress was all Republican and so was the 109th. The 110th was in Democratic control as well as the 111th. The 112th was split again with the Senate in Democratic control and the House in Republican hands just as now as we begin the 113th.

What's my point? The suicides and attempted suicides went up every year. Money spent on "addressing" suicides and PTSD kept going up but what was not happening was accountability. I get the impression too many want to support their own political views instead of actually supporting the men and women these politicians send into combat. So when I say that Democrats are better at taking care of the troops and veterans, it is with evidence. The same evidence that also proves they suck at it too.

On one of my old blogs, Screaming In An Empty Room, there is a comment from one of the first families to contact me on military suicides.

JulieW said... We lost our Josh, an Iraqi War Vet, US Army Reserves to PTSD just 8 weeks ago. Please help us spread the word about this killer disease! Statistics are now showing that up to 50% of our Vets are returning from Iraq with some degree of PTSD. This is an epidemic the Government is trying to hide under the rug because the VA is not equipped to handle this huge number, nor do they have the funding to do so! HELP US, spread the word and send Josh's site (with his story, research/studies/etc) to EVERYONE you know, post it on the main page of your blogs, GET THE AMERICAN PUBLIC to take notice!

Here is Josh's site

This is the from the family of Joshua Omvig. The Joshua Omvig Suicide Prevention Bill is one of the first suicide prevention bills.

The post was PTSD Claims More Lives. Why? I was fed up almost 7 years ago when I wrote it. The same month I posted More lives lost for Bush from suicides. I cared a lot longer about all of this going back to 1982.

I didn't care about politics or playing nice with others.

I still don't as long as these men and women are losing the last battle for their lives. Too many are not asking the right questions. How is it a warfighter manages to stay alive in combat against bullets and bombs, seeing what they see, hearing what they hear, smelling what they smell and enduring all the hardships of deployments into combat and then take their own lives after all of it?

In 2006 I put up the first PTSD video on YouTube later transferred to Great Americans.

PTSD and suicides are only part of the story. Too many times you don't get to know about the ones surviving combat and attempted suicides. I do. The families know about them. While it sounds good that the Veterans Crisis Line has done 30,000 successful interventions across the country since 2007 it is not good because that means at least 30,000 veterans reach the point of wanting to die more than they wanted to live. There were hundreds of thousands of calls to crisis line in those years, yet no one was asking why they wanted to die after combat deployments ended and they were back home. No one is asking about the results the past attempts to address and treat PTSD have produced these disgusting results or who is responsible for all of this.

So now that you have some background on all of this, maybe now you'll understand why I cannot rejoice about one more Suicide Prevention Bill coming out of Washington.

New Law to Require Better Military Suicide Prevention Programs
NBC News
KNDU
Posted: Jan 03, 2013

WASHINGTON D.C. - Military Services will soon be improving their suicide prevention programs. Today, President Obama signed U.S. Senator Patty Murray's amendment into law.

As part of the National Defense Authorization Act, the law requires that the Pentagon implements a standardized and comprehensive suicide prevention program.

Murray crafted the amendment after a study by the RAND Corporation found inconsistencies in military suicide prevention, and that the number of active duty suicides continued to rise in 2012. read more here

CIA veteran on what ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ gets wrong

A CIA veteran on what ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ gets wrong about the bin Laden manhunt
By Jose A. Rodriguez Jr.
Washington Post
Published: January 3

Jose A. Rodriguez Jr.is a 31-year veteran of the CIA. He is the author of “Hard Measures: How Aggressive CIA Actions After 9/11 Saved American Lives,” written with former CIA spokesman Bill Harlow, who also contributed to this essay.

It is an odd experience to enter a darkened room and, for more than 21 / 2 hours, watch someone tell a story that you experienced intimately in your own life. But that is what happened recently as I sat in a movie theater near Times Square and watched “Zero Dark Thirty,” the new Hollywood blockbuster about the hunt for Osama bin Laden.

When I was head of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center from 2002 to 2004 and then director of the National Clandestine Service until late 2007, the campaign against al-Qaeda was my life and obsession.

I must say, I agree with both the film critics who love “Zero Dark Thirty” as entertainment and the administration officials and prominent senators who hate the movie for the message it sends — although my reasons are entirely opposite theirs.

Indeed, as I watched the story unfold on the screen, I found myself alternating between repulsion and delight.
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