32,000 Vets To Be Warned About Suicide-Linked Drug

ABC News/Washington Times Investigation Leads To Action

32,000 to be notified? 32,000 Veterans, how many are probably suffering from PTSD/Depression already, apparently are in this program unearthed by ABC News and the Washington Times, 32,000!

The report:

'Outrageous'; Meanwhile WH Slams ABC News Report

Look I'm so F**KING PISSED OFF AGAIN, I really can't wrap my mind around the words to describe this BULLS**T!!

I may, or may not, add more, or just let comments take charge.

Veterans Used To Test Suicide-Linked Drugs

An ABC News and Washington Times Investigation Reveals Vets Are Being Recruited for Government Tests on Drugs with Violent Side Effects

Who are the Total Idiots within the ranks of the Military Health Care that thought this would help?

Nearby Firing Ranges Complicate Soldiers' Recovery From Stress

Firing Range a Reminder for Soldiers with PTSD

Promoted by GH.

[originally posted at dkos. There's quite a bit of current news on this subject, so I thought it was worth posting again here.]

The caller wasn't coherent.

All I could gather was that he'd been to Iraq and now he thought he was going crazy. At first he wasn't talking about what was wrong with him, but what was wrong with his insurance coverage. He was rambling, yelling, cussing, crying. I thought he was a recent veteran, but then it sounded like he was still active duty. I couldn't tell if he was out of the military or still in it.

He wasn't able to answer my questions, so I let him vent for a while. When he stopped to breathe I asked: "you mean you're active duty, now? You're in the military?"

Well sir, right now I'm AWOL.

Originally posted 2008-04-30 09:45:04 - worth a second look - standingup

The silverbacks are grooming and posturing at the microphones.

Cammo and khaki, wall to wall. Bob Ireland, an Air Force psychiatrist and consultant to the Air Force Surgeon General, welcomes the audience to the Department of Defense's sixth annual Suicide Prevention Conference and makes jokes about how suicide prevention has been the DoD's bastard child, homeless and parentless.

In January 2008, the child nobody wanted finally managed to find a home. The Defense Center of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury assumed responsibility for an issue and an injury that the military has hidden and denied for generations.

The New York Times' ran the headline for the story out of the Associated Press today: 'D.C. Madam' Is Found Dead, Apparently in a Suicide

The tragedy occurred Thursday, May 2, at her mother's home in Tarpon Springs, FL -- about 20 miles northwest of Tampa.

I suppose there will be no more revelations about her client lists now.

Two of the powerful Republican officials who were stung by the release of Deborah Jeane Palfrey's telephone records were freshman senator David Vitter -- still serving -- and a senior State Department official named Randall L. Tobias, who resigned.

Related, some indirectly:

There are at least 60,000 of them, but they're not on the DoD's list of soldiers missing in action.

Sgt. Kristofer Shawn Goldsmith was one of the many soldiers and Marines, veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, who gave testimony at last weekend's Winter Soldier investigation. They spoke from personal experience about what the American military is doing in those countries. They gave examples of what they had done, what they had been ordered to do, what they had witnessed, how their experiences had wounded them, both physically and psychically, and what kind of care and support they have, or most often have not gotten since coming home. The panel Goldsmith was on was called "The Breakdown of the U.S. Military," so he surprised the audience when he said that he was going to talk about prisoners of war.

-- Penny's play is being produced this Wednesday (March 19th) at the Ensemble theater in NYC. See the poster for details -cho.

If America listens to what they say, the war would be over tomorrow.

I missed the Winter Soldier Investigation in 1971. At the time I was married to a vet who desperately wanted to put his war behind him -- and he wanted me to help him do it. We were supposed to pretend it had never happened. It didn't work.

Daniel refused to talk about Vietnam. "Talk to your old lady? No fucking way," his friend Bobby Lanz shot back when I said I thought that maybe Daniel wouldn't have killed himself if I had been able to get him to talk about whatever it was that was causing him such pain. "With other vets, you can say, 'shit man, I did all this horrible stuff. You're not going to believe the stuff I did', and someone who has been there will say, 'Yeah, so did I, so did we all.' But with your woman? You start to talk about having fucked some folks up bad, doing awful things, killing people, maybe, and she starts to cry and you don't go there again. You think, Fuck me, man, I don't need to hurt her. This is psychological abuse, so I am going to shut up."