Intro: "For the second year in a row, more US soldiers killed themselves (468) than died in combat (462). 'If you... know the one thing that causes people to commit suicide, please let us know,' General Peter Chiarelli told the Army Times, 'because we don't know.' Suicide is a tragic but predictable human reaction to being asked to kill - and watch your friends be killed - particularly when it's for a war based on lies. Perhaps being required to bag the mangled flesh of fellow soldiers could be another reason that some are committing suicide."

An American soldier grieves during a memorial service for a comrade killed by an explosive device in Afghanistan. (photo: Chris Hondros/Getty Images)

More US Soldiers Committed Suicide Than Died in Combat

By Project Censored

01 March 12

or the second year (2010) in a row, more US soldiers killed themselves (468) than died in combat (462). “If you… know the one thing that causes people to commit suicide, please let us know,” General Peter Chiarelli told the Army Times, “because we don’t know.” Suicide is a tragic but predictable human reaction to being asked to kill – and watch your friends be killed – particularly when it’s for a war based on lies. Perhaps being required to bag the mangled flesh of fellow soldiers could be another reason that some are committing suicide.

Body Bagging… ever heard the term? Marines in the Corps’s Mortuary Affairs unit at Camp Al Taqaddum, Iraq, are assigned the job of collecting and cataloging the bodies of dead Marines. They sift through the remains and effects, from prom photos to suicide notes and love letters, and put them into a bag, then into a metal box and then into a refrigerator to await the flight home. One soldier, Jess Goodell, recounts a Marine brought into the unit still breathing. She frantically called to her superiors, who replied simply, “Wait.” She watched while he died. When she returned to the US, Goodell, like many others, was diagnosed with deep depression, substance abuse, PTSD and anxiety.

Sources:

“Death and After in Iraq”, Chris Hedges, Truthdig, March 21, 2011. http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_body_baggers_of_iraq_20110321

“More US Soldiers Killed Themselves Than Died in Combat in 2010,” Cord Jefferson, Good, January 27, 2011.?http://www.good.is/post/more-us-soldiers-killed-themselves-than-died-in-combat-in-2010

“Can You Face the True Consequences of War? The Horror of Bagging Soldiers’ Bodies in Iraq,” Chris Hedges, Alternet, March 21, 2011.?http://www.alternet.org/world/150322/can_you_face_the_true_consequences_of_war_the_horrors_of_bagging_soldiers%27_bodies_in_iraq/?page=1

“Ten Reasons the Iraq War Was No Cakewalk,” Medea Benjamin and Charles Davis, Alternet, March 18, 2011. http://www.alternet.org/world/150297/ten_reasons_the_iraq_war_was_no_cakewalk

Student Researcher: Bay Ewald, San Francisco State University

Faculty Evaluator: Kenn Burrows, San Francisco State University

Comments

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-8 # BobbyLip 2012-03-01 08:41

They hate us for our freedoms.

+37 # portiz 2012-03-01 10:27

Quoting BobbyLip:

They hate us for our freedoms.

I'm giving you a 'thumbs-up' under the assumption that you're using a Bush-ism sarcastically. Please tell me that I'm right!

0 # barney1968 2012-05-28 09:53

I would guess so too...that's a Ze Frank duck if I'm not mistaken.

+40 # Archie1954 2012-03-01 09:07

So the general doesn't know why. Well it's his fault along with the army trainers. They didn't work hard enough to destroy the recruits' consciences. You know most normal people would not be able to live with the knowledge that they kill men, women and children every day for their wonderful country.

+27 # ABen 2012-03-01 18:42

Your comment implies the root of this tragedy. The military spends countless hours training soldiers to be very efficient weapons, but precious little time helping them learn how to deal with the memories of their actions upon returning from combat. Native American cultures used a ritual of honor, respect, and spiritual cleansing to help their warriors return to "normal" life. Our society could sorely use a similar process.

-5 # RLF 2012-03-02 04:49

I can tell him...being too long in a place where there is no hope of fixing anything and being there for no good reason any more except it is a good employment plan...way to go Obummer! Let's go get Iran...it is a great republican elimination plan!

+38 # firefly 2012-03-01 09:59

I think that the armed services have attracted many young people who had little chance of getting a job otherwise, due to high unemployment and inadequate education. Although I have no personal experience with killing people, it seems that disobeying one of the 10 Commandments (whether or not one is a devout Christian) would create severe mental dissonnance which, left untreated, would inevitably lead to problems for the person who had been paid to do that.

+8 # michele6933 2012-03-01 10:30

Better suicide than brag about how many unarmed civilians you slaughtered, it shows there's still a conscience in that mind .

-11 # Kootenay Coyote 2012-03-01 10:36

i.e., if the Taliban &c don’t kill them, we will.

+38 # XXMD48 2012-03-01 11:11

Those soldiers, who return from Iraq/Afghanista n witnessing monstrous, unjustly and incomprehensibl e human brutality and develop PSTDS have natural response of normal sensitive human beings. Those, who return from the slaughter house and continue to be cheerful selves - those really scare me.

+26 # Terrapin 2012-03-01 11:56

“If you… know the one thing that causes people to commit suicide, please let us know,” General Peter Chiarelli told the Army Times, “because we don’t know.”
How the FUCK did you get to be a "General"?
Figure it out, BrightBoy. They were only sent off to kill anyone that got in the way of enforcing the will of EMPIRE. To be murderous thugs, bound by the chain of command, to do and witness the unthinkable. FOR WHAT?
So Mr. General Peter Chiarelli, TELL THEM what they died for, got maimed for, got shot at for, what they bombed, killed, tortured, raped, humiliated other human beings for!
If you REALLY can't understand what causes them to commit suicide, you must really be too stoopid to live.

-7 # Doubter 2012-03-01 14:52

"you must really be too stoopid to live."

Cut the guy some slack.
After all, he's a General.

As Einstein said; "God" wasted a big brain on him, when all he needed was a backbone.

+18 # Windy126 2012-03-01 12:59

This has gone on in every war. It was called "shell shock", or cowardice, or what ever people wanted. I have seen it in WWII vets. They don't want to discuss what happened. Instead it eats away at them. Some become alcoholics, many Viet Nam vets became drug addicts. Our minds just refuse to accept what our eyes are seeing. It against all that is good in us.
Bring home our troops from all around the world and let them live in PEACE.

+15 # itchyvet 2012-03-01 22:23

Windy126,
Apt name sport. As a Vietnam vet myself, I can categorically state you are so full of it, you haven't the faintest idea of what this is about.
*shell shock, cowardice* ? Crap.
Terrapin 2012-03-01 11:56 is the only poster here who has got it close.
Try examining the double standards practiced by your Govt, the so called rules of your society which folks grow up under from the cradle, believing all sorts of crap spoon fed to them all their lives, then you throw them into a war, where NONE of anything they've known/been taught all their lives applies, worse if they have a so called Christian upbringing, all of a sudden they discover everything they've ever been taight from the cradle is a LIE, they committ attrocities they've always laid at the feet of their drummed up enemies and get away with it scott free, witness how many soldiers have been incarcerated for committing or being implicated in murder in Iraq or Afghanistan, very few indeed and then a token incarceration at that.
They get hardwired in their heads, to do things unimaginable to folks like you, then when they come home, are expected to toughen up, get on with it, pretend none of it ever happened.
But the worst of it is, they now KNOW they've been lied to all their lives, how do you now, re-insert yourself in the parralel World that folks like you are living in ?

+2 # barney1968 2012-05-28 10:23

itchyvet, I didn't get that Windy was calling it "shell shock" or "cowardice" herself...that' s what it's been labeled in the past (by those "experts," I imagine, who would rather sweep PTSD under the carpet). She said, not unlike you did, that what soldiers see (and do) goes against everything "good" they have ever known. And it eats them up...so they try to escape, via drugs or alcohol (or even, as above, suicide). I don't see any huge conflict between what she was trying to say and what you're saying, although you've elaborated upon what that disconnect and dissociation entails, as well as upon the rottenness at the heart of American nationalism and idealism. Perhaps it was clumsily put, but it sounds like she doesn't want any more soldiers put through those horrors, which you are right to call "unimaginable" to U.S. civilians. You are not enemies. Sounds like you know who the real ones are.

-13 # CeciliaMarie 2012-03-01 13:42

the majority of these responses to this disheartening and very sad article make me almost as worried as the article itself does! have you know clue or respect what soldiers have in the past or present fought for?! and this is what you have to say?! regardless of religious or political ideals how can you be so ignorant?!
Slaughter? How dare you call them murderous thugs, or say they have inadequate education!!!
do you know any soldiers, marines, or airmen?! It is just like any person or profession and each individual is different!
your unjust descriptions disrespect my family members and my fiance, as none of them have ever done anything like that or could in any way be described in that many.
I am a very liberal minded person, so do not confuse my comment with your cowardly and ignorant views as conservative close-mindednes s. But I have the utmost respect for those who serve our country.

+24 # XXMD48 2012-03-01 17:17

To CeciliaMarie:
Unlike many other professions, soldiers job is to kill.
You very obviously live all your life in the US and yourself never experienced the real slaughter field, never had to be running in front of tank and to see the bloodshed. You just blindly respect them all - the decent soldiers who come damaged from what they experienced and those who just zoom through. Remember private L. England having naked prisoner on leash? Is that what you admired?
It is you and people like you who go to street wawing the flag, admiring our troops indiscriminatel y and perpetuating the acceptance of US initiated wars. Did it escape to you, that some your heroes did actually killed, raped, mamed and tortured totally unarmed civilians? Is that what you call heroism? Or you simply want to deny any brutality happening - as long as it happens on the soil of another country and Your freedom to live in brainwashed ignorance is defended? What is sad is that the richest country in the world is impoverishing own people, denying them education and decent jobs, thus increasing recruitment into military and then sending our soldiers to invade other countries to fight not for your freedom and liberty, but for interest of rich and powerful who are sacrificing freely our soldiers and many more civilian lives in order to maintain their profits, power and sense of superiority. The last time US soldiers were liberators was in the end of World War II in Europe in 1945.

+10 # Billy Bob 2012-03-01 19:32

Thank you. I've always thought that in a situation like this the sane soldiers are the ones who end up insane. The ones who come back "well adjusted" are the ones we all need to worry about.

+20 # colvictoria 2012-03-01 13:52

Because we don't have a draft the wealthy young people don't have to fight the MIC's dirty little wars. The war mongers have also gotten smarter after Vietnam. They have the media outlets very well controlled so we the public don't see the carnage don't see the holocaust being waged in the Middle East. Those fighting these wars (mainly working class, poor disenfranchised youth) are forced to follow orders to kill and destroy.
What a horrific job seeing your own friends being blown up and being told to shoot men women and children. Who would not want to kill themselves when they must replay these images of death everyday?
It just goes to show that those who run the MIC don't care about the mental health of the troops coming home nor how many millions die in the Middle East.
For the MIC it is all about the profits of war. Even worse is when soldiers discover that they are being paid a pittance as compared to mercenaries working for companies like Blackwater.

+11 # Stank 2012-03-01 17:15

If you want to know why kids are committing suicide you should look into the treatment of Soldiers by they're NCO's. I landed in a piss poor unit on Ft Drum and had power hungry Sergeants who would constantly badger and harass us, Deployed and at home! Most of the Army's problems come from lack of accountability. Its amazing how they treat these people who gave up they're life for something bigger than themselves and they get treated like they are the enemy and threatened on a regular basis!! So I hope this helped! I think the problem lies in the way we handle our Soldiers..

+14 # ABen 2012-03-01 18:19

This is a national tragedy of staggering dimensions. I don't give a (expletive deleted) whether we agree with the war/police action or not, to not support our returning combat vets is both immoral and unethical. If there is one lesson the Vietnam era should have taught us, it is to separate the war from the warrior. Support our vets (if not our wars).

+12 # Billy Bob 2012-03-01 19:30

Being asked to commit murder for oil and finding out that the side you're fighting for tortures and "trophy hunts" children and takes pictures of soldiers pissing on corpses, might weigh on you as well. I've said it before:

MORAL = MORALE

-15 # CeciliaMarie 2012-03-01 19:31

the generalization of people here is unfair and disrespectful! no I have not lived my entire life in the US. You want to attack and preach then go ahead, but a soldiers job is not soley to kill. If the situation comes to it, the obviously yes. but there is sooo much more to that they are required to do then you obviously know!!!
and if people have so much apparent disrespect for the people that serve your country then go to a different country to live!!!

share your opinion, but don't fucking preach to me like I don't know what's going on or like I don't know my history!!!!!!!! !

+19 # itchyvet 2012-03-01 22:31

CeceliaMarie,
Sorry to rain on your parade dear, but going by your posts, it's true, you have no idea of what's going on, that is not a condemnation of you, in fact it should spure you on to discover the truth as unpleasant as it may be.
Unfortunately for you, the U.S. has a disasterous history of using it's military for hedgemony and foriegn policy even before WW 1 or 2 for that matter. Even in WW 2 the U.S. contrived to involve it'self, don't start me on Vietnam either, again another situation where it was the U.S. that exaberated the issue, Cuba ring a bell, seriously, there are literly hundreds of cases where the U.S. involved themselves and ended up murdering thousands of innocent people, just like they did in Vietnam/Iraq/Af ghanistan/Libya and now Syria.
Not ONE of those nations, ever fired a shot at the U.S. or ever threatened them, but hundreds and thousands of folk died, and are STILL dying as a direct result of those actions.
Spare us your rehtoric and study some of the shameful history that is there for anyone wishing to see past the blinkers they wear.

-9 # CeciliaMarie 2012-03-02 15:35

you are not raining on my parade because I do have an idea what's going on. So spare me your preaching. I know my history and have my own opinion. I do not care if it is different then yours. Because I choose to respect something that some do not does not mean I have no idea of my history. So you spare me. I am not ignorant of situations that have gone on, but I DO NOT choose to disrespect or demean the soldiers.

And FYI Dear, don't fucking call me dear.

+13 # XXMD48 2012-03-03 06:25

CeciliaMarie

I truly hope your fiancee won't be deployed to foreign country and won't come back a different person. Most of American people respect and support our soldiers and veterans. Please try to consider what had been said about the treatment of POW by our soldiers in Iraq, the killing of innocent children, women and men by our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, the rapes that our women in uniforms experience by some soldiers. And if you still choose to respect our soldiers indiscriminatel y, do not be disrespectful to veteran who tries to describe to you the reality in contrast to what you hear from the media and army recruiters.

+9 # carioca 2012-03-03 05:00

I know: Told to kill and destroy people who never did you any harm. That's what causes suicide.

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