Marine killed in rocket attack identified; Detachment sent to Iraq
Stars and Stripes
Chris Church
March 20, 2016
MANAMA, Bahrain — The Marine killed in a rocket attack in Iraq Saturday was assigned to the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, which has deployed a detachment to Iraq, defense officials said Sunday.
Staff Sgt. Louis F. Cardin, of Temecula, Calif., was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment, 26th MEU out of Camp Lejeune, N.C., the Pentagon said in a statement.
The U.S.-led coalition fighting the Islamic State announced Sunday that a detachment from the 26th MEU had been deployed to Iraq for "the support of Iraqi security force and coalition ground operations."
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The military's suicide-prevention fight has moved to Facebook and Twitter
Military Times
Patricia Kime
March 20, 2016
“If it wasn’t for social media, we never would have known what was going on in his head and he would have gone through with [suicide],” Boyd told Military Times during a phone interview from Uganda, where he is deployed with Special Purpose Marine Air Ground Task Force Crisis Response-Africa.
The Defense Department as been at the forefront of some notable suicide research, especially in the realm of social media.
(Photo: DoD)
Marine Corps Sgt. Raheem Boyd was in his barracks room at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, last May when a friend sent him an urgent message through Facebook. Another Marine had made some troubling posts, and while Boyd can’t recall the exact words, they hinted at suicide.
“It seemed strange," he recalled. "Just didn’t seem right."
Boyd, who knew the Marine from a previous assignment in Okinawa, immediately looked up the command’s phone number, dialed the duty office and headed to find the devil dog. The Marine’s barracks room was empty but a search was underway. Someone spotted him in his car in the parking lot with an assault rifle beside him. But as the searchers approached the vehicle, the troubled service member took off.
The Defense Department has not released an official tally of suicides among active-duty troops in 2015, but a Pentagon source with access to the data said the number was close to 290, including the 28 confirmed suicides by Marines from January through October. While the number of active-duty suicides has remained somewhat steady since it reached a peak of 321 in 2012, the rate — nearly 20 per 100,000 troops in 2014 — remains significantly higher than before Sept. 11, 2001, when it hovered around 10 per 100,000 service members, and the military appeared to offer protective measures against a rising suicide trend in the U.S. civilian population.
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The math doesn't work on that part unless they are not adding in the National Guards and Reservists.
First Quarter
In the first quarter of 2015, there were 57 suicides among service members in the active component, 15 suicides among service members in the reserve component and 27 suicides among service members in the National Guard. (99)
Second Quarter
In the second quarter of 2015, there were 71 suicides among service members in the active component, 20 suicides among service members in the reserve component and 27 suicides among service members in the National Guard. (118)
Third Quarter
In the third quarter of 2015, there were 72 suicides among service members in the active component, and 70 suicides in the reserve component, which includes 38 suicides among reserve service members and 32 suicides among service members in the National Guard. (142)
Every disabled American needs to be upset about these stories since they also mean anyone with a service dog is not being allowed in!
Restaurant boots veteran due to service dog
Seacoast Online
By Elizabeth Dinan
Posted Mar. 20, 2016
Ex-Army Ranger says it's an opportunity for education
Former Army Ranger Brian Zagata, who served three tours in Iraq, is seen with his service dog Franklin. Zagata, who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, was denied service at a Portsmouth restaurant because restaurant staff were unaware of federal law. Courtesy photo
A war veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder, Brian Zagata was asked to leave Portsmouth's Domo Japanese Restaurant because his service dog, Franklin, wasn't welcome.
"This is a good opportunity to let people know that service dogs are allowed public access," he said. "I think the education piece is really important."
Zagata said he served as an Army Ranger and was deployed to Iraq three times. When he returned home, he said, he struggled with service-related stresses and took up yoga, meditation and, through Operation Delta Dog, was paired with Franklin, a mixed-breed rescue dog.
Zagata said on March 5 he and his girlfriend went to Domo on State Street for dinner with her parents when the manager and a bartender both told them Franklin was not allowed in the restaurant. Zagata said he produced a card with information about federal law pertaining to service dogs, but it was returned to him by restaurant staff who said again Franklin wasn't welcome inside.
Zagata said he told the bartender it's "against the law" to deny access to service dogs and was told, "I don't care."
"So we left," he said.
Domo manager Michelle Zheng said last week that she remembers the incident and wasn't aware of the federal law pertaining to service dogs when Zagata and Franklin were told to leave. She said Zagata and his party were angry and didn't give her enough time to call the health department, or her lawyer, to verify the law.
"I did not have any time because they were so mad," she said.
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Roller-coaster ride ends with son's last day as Marine
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Jim Stingl
March 19, 2016
"I want this last chance to remind people that families and these military people are still sacrificing. People forget," said Trish, an administrative assistant at Marquette University.
Trish Johnson (front) and her husband Curtis remove the yellow ribbons around the tree in their front yard now that Trish's son Colin Glavan is out of the Marines and done with his wartime service. Each ribbon represented one of Colin’s three deployments. Credit: Michael Sears
As his family looks back, the time slipped by surprisingly fast since Colin Glavan joined the Marine Corps, went off to boot camp and then to war.
Last week, his parents, Trish and Curt Johnson, snipped three yellow ribbons from the large oak tree in front of their Brookfield home, one for each of Colin's deployments. And they removed the service flag and its blue star from their front window.
Colin's last day as a Marine was Wednesday.
Rain fell softly as the tattered ribbons released their grip, leaving behind ghostly rings. "I cried on the day he left," Trish said, "and I'm feeling kind of pitiful crying on the day he gets out."
I followed this one family's journey in three previous columns, the first in 2006 when Colin, fresh out of Brookfield East High School, headed to boot camp in California. "I'll be honest," Trish said then as our country waged war in Iraq and Afghanistan. "I didn't want him to do it."
The second was in 2008 as Colin, then 20, left for seven months in Iraq. "It's just one of those things I have to do," he said during a trip home to say his goodbyes.
The mood was happier in 2011 when I wrote about Colin surprising his youngest sister, Kailee, at her middle school. He had just returned home from Afghanistan.
For nearly a decade, the emotional ups and downs for this military family — for any military family — had Trish comparing life to a roller-coaster ride. The final terrifying twists and turns are behind them.
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Wanting To Do Something Not The Same As The Doing The Right ThingWounded Times
Kathie Costos
March 20, 2016
Caring about veterans and wanting to make a difference is not good enough. We have to take the time to give it all careful thought and research or we'll just keep repeating what has already been done and failed to achieve the stated purpose.
There is a veteran who subjected himself to a hardship that left me speechless. The reason to do something must have been based on caring about veterans but while the purpose may have been pure, the awareness was questionable.
Ryan Weldon walking 5,000 miles to "raise awareness" and set up a GoFundMe. Willing to walk that many miles to "do something" yet didn't read the report or he wouldn't still be using "22 a day" when talking about suicides.
“The journey is to get the word out there and let people know how serious it is,” Weldon said. “Twenty-two veterans a day take their own life due to post-traumatic stress and as a Marine, I refuse to sit by and do nothing.”
In another report after he finished the walk there was this from NBC.
Ryan Weldon was greeted by throngs of supporters when he reached San Francisco coastline.
Ryan Weldon, a 34-year-old from North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, started his treck in February 2015 to raise awareness for military and law enforcement veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. His journey started on the East Coast, in Delaware and spanned 5,000 miles.
According to that article he only raised $8,000 for a 5,000 mile walk, so obviously it wasn't about financial gain for himself. His service as a Marine wasn't about financial gain either. No one puts their lives on the line in the military for a big paycheck. When you actually think about what they make risking their lives and enduring endless hardships, they are making under minimum wage and well below the folks who protested to make $15 an hour to work in fast food services.
He documented the walk on Facebook. This veteran knows how to use technology and apparently he does care or he wouldn't have subjected his body to what he just went through. We are just left wondering what the point was.
Doing "something" is not the same as doing something that can change what is happening.
There is a lot of that going on all over the country. Folks wanting to do something but never taking the time to discover what was already done anymore than they take the time to study the subject they want to raise awareness on.
PTSD is not the only cause for suicides tied to military life but it is tied to the majority of them. As Weldon points out, there are law enforcement veterans committing suicide as well as current ones and firefighters and emergency medical technicians.
The thing is, no one is going to change something they do not understand. All the good intentions on this "awareness" raising has completely missed the opportunity to change what needs to be changed.
Veterans already know they are killing themselves, so quoting a 59 page report down to a slogan isn't helpful at all.
There was a followup to that study involving 21 states and this VA Suicide Report was from 23 states, released in 2014.
As you can see, that was after all these veterans were trained in "prevention" which clearly didn't work especially when you factor in the redeployment risk of PTSD raised by 50% which the Army figured out back in 2006.
"When we look at combat, we look at some very horrific events," said Col. Ed Crandell, head of the Army's Mental Health Advisory Team, which polled 1,461 soldiers in Iraq in late 2005. "They come back, they know they're going to deploy again," and as a result they don't ever return to normal levels of stress, Crandell said.
"The most likely explanation . . . is that a number of soldiers returned" to Iraq "with acute stress/combat stress symptoms" that were unresolved from previous tours, it said.
The report also found a doubling of suicides among soldiers serving in the Iraq war from 2004 to 2005, the latest period for which data are available. Twenty-two soldiers took their own lives in Iraq and Kuwait in 2005, compared with 11 in 2004 and 25 in 2003, Army officials said.
Despite what they knew, suicides went up and so did the number of redeployments. But too many only want to focus on the veteran suicides without ever thinking about the numbers going up in those committing suicide while still in the military.
We don't want to talk about the training these men and women had that were supposed to prevent them from happening or the fact that we've spent billions on them. What do members of Congress do about any of this? They don't even mention the prevention programs when they hold hearings, so the over 900 prevention programs continue and do do the suicides.
Military Suicides Rise, Despite 900 Programs
But what is not addressed in this testimony and what my post did address is that the 900 programs are not targeting the appropriate register of experience to heal the deep anguish that service members and veterans experience and often leads them to take their own lives. Stigma reduction, yes; availability of screening and mental health care, yes; peer counselors, yes. But these are not enough.
Nothing will change as long as we walk away from the facts. Nothing will give the veterans hope until we actually start telling them they are not stuck suffering the way they are today and can heal their lives even though they cannot change their past. They need hope but they won't believe any of us if we allow something that just isn't true to be repeated over and over again.
If you really want to make a difference here's what all of us need to do.
1. Stop repeating the number 22.
That study was from limited data from just 21 states. The VA and the CDC are working on a more detailed report but first we need to understand the breakdown on the report already used and how what is being talked about is not the whole story.
While the figure is often cited in connection with recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (it also was used by Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, the group that pushed for the Clay Hunt act), the study was more telling of suicides among older veterans. The average age of male veteran suicides was 59.6 years old — older than non-veteran male suicides. (The Gallup pollshows the percentage of veterans climbs dramatically as the population gets older, making up a majority of those older than 65.) “It is therefore possible that epidemiologic characteristic of suicide in the general population (i.e. higher rates of suicide among older adult males) may contribute to a comparatively high prevalence of Veterans among those who die from suicide,” the VA report noted.
2. Stop saying "It's just a number" when that fact is pointed out to you.
It is not just a number to be taken lightly. They were members of the military willing to die for someone else yet found it impossible to survive back home.
3. Find out what has already been done by others and join them.
Wanting to do something is great but means you are also willing to repeat the same mistakes by thinking no one else thought of it and has already done it.
4. If you are a family member dealing with the loss, join or start a support group.
You may not be qualified to take on a troubled veteran but more than qualified to help another family with what they are going through. You know the pain they feel all too well and they need support, advice and encouragement to heal. They also need reassurance that it was not their fault. They did the best they could with what they knew at the time. It would also be a good idea to invite someone looking for support while their veteran is still alive but won't seek help.
5. Research the subject you want to raise awareness on as if your life depended on it.
Make sure you understand what is already available in your area so you know what is lacking and fill in the gaps. Don't just read something online about the limited attempts and then repeat them.
6. Don't think your attempt is the only thing that is needed.
Service Dogs are helpful but not the only answer. Some veterans do not like dogs, others are allergic to them, do not have the time or place to properly take care of them. There have been veterans committing suicide even with a wonderful service dog.
Sports and outings are great, get veterans out with others and put them into an different environment for a day, but after it is over, they are back with their thoughts, struggles and problems.
Peer Support is also limited. If the one offering the support has not been trained or does not know anything more than the veteran needing support, it can do more harm than good for both of them. Let's face it. It is stressful.
7. Find out what is going on in your own state.
The Department of Veterans Affairs has an interactive map with every state, the number of veterans, how many males and female veterans as well as how many from each generation. There are 400,000 veterans charities out there already that may be doing some good but evidently not good enough. Plus top that off with the fact there are less than 22 million veterans in this country and you get the point.
8. Stop blaming the VA for everything since Congress has had jurisdiction over it since 1946 and no problem is a new one.
Plus there is the simple fact that most veterans do not go to the VA no matter if they know they need it or not.
9. Understand that it does not matter if it is a Republican or Democrat in the White House since every President has left the following one a backlog of claims in the 100's of thousands.
There was a backlog of claims in the 90's as well as years of waiting for approvals. My family was in that mess.
10. PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT IS SUPPOSED TO BE IMPORTANT TO YOU AND INVEST THE TIME OR NOTHING WILL EVER CHANGE!
