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MULTIPLE DEPLOYMENTS AND MILITARY SUICIDE --
Another soldier commits suicide after receiving
redeployment orders. Army refuses
to acknowledge link.
Your comments accepted at bottom of
page.
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-------------------------
by Larry Scott, VA Watchdog
dot Org
We have lost another Brother.
No to old age ... or the
ravages of some terrible disease brought on by chemical exposures on the
battlefield.
But ... to the rope.
Army Specialist Nokware Rosado
Munoz, 28, under psychiatric treatment after one deployment to Iraq,
hanged himself rather than do another tour.
To the Army, Munoz will just
be another statistic.
To his Brothers and Sisters
who served before him, he will stand as another grim reminder of the
terrible cost of fighting two wars where
multiple deployments are the rule and not the exception.
Suicide among veterans and active-duty military members stands at an
all-time high.
 But,
every time we get a new report on the latest suicide numbers, we get a tap
dance from military officials on what is causing the problem.
Last month (March 2009) the
Army
denied any association between multiple deployments and suicide.
The Army's top psychiatrist,
Col. Elspeth Ritchie, explained that legal, occupational, spousal and
substance-abuse problems are often involved in soldier suicide.
Well ... gee ... Dr. Col.
Ritchie, then what caused the legal, occupational, spousal and
substance-abuse problems in the first place? Multiple deployments
and the associated pressures, perhaps?
Remember, Ritchie has claimed,
on more than one occasion, that
PTSD can be "cured," so that tends to put a big black mark on her
credibility.
This comes from Paul Sullivan of
Veterans for Common Sense (VCS):
During our VCS v. VA lawsuit, the court ruled
that, "Dr. Gerald Cross, the Deputy Under Secretary for Health in the
VA, testified that the high rates of PTSD among Iraq veterans are the
result of various factors, including multiple deployments, the inability
to identify the enemy, the lack of real safe zones, and the inadvertent
killing of innocent civilians." The court ruling that high rates of
PTSD is related to multiple deployments is a "finding of fact" that can
be used in other lawsuits. The other phony causes given by the Army were
not listed in the Court's ruling. You can find the court's quote about
Dr. Cross on page 17.
So, we say goodbye to Brother
Munoz ... and send condolences to his pregnant wife.
And we wait for the Army to
finally acknowledge that multiple deployments cannot be considered
business as usual.
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http://www.wtop.com/?nid=105&sid=1648729
Police: Iraq a factor in PR
soldier's suicide
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - A soldier who had told his family he did not
want to return to Iraq apparently killed himself in a Puerto Rican
motel days before he was to join his unit and head back to the war
zone, police in the U.S. territory said Monday.
Army Spc. Nokware Rosado Munoz, 28, had been arguing with his
pregnant wife about his upcoming redeployment before hanging himself
Sunday, said Lt. Edilberto Rivera Santiago, director of the police
homicide division in the San Juan suburb of Bayamon.
"They were having problems because he had been activated again,"
Rivera said.
Rosado was scheduled to rejoin his unit at Fort Bliss, Texas, this
week, before moving on to Iraq.
The soldier's mother-in-law, Migdalia Estrada, was quoted by
newspaper El Nuevo Dia as saying that Rosado was receiving
psychiatric treatment stemming from a previous Iraq deployment.
"He had said to my daughter that he didn't want to go back to Iraq,"
Estrada said. "I don't understand how they can order him back if he
was having problems."
An Army official in San Juan, Felix Santiago, said the military was
cooperating with Puerto Rican authorities in an investigation.
Officials in Fort Bliss had no immediate comment.
Suicides in the Army have increased yearly since 2004 as soldiers
deal with longer and repeated tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. The
Army had its highest rate of suicide on record in 2008 with at least
129 confirmed cases. |
-------------------------
posted by Larry Scott
Founder and Editor
VA Watchdog dot Org
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