The legacy of a decade of misadventure is still in the process of coming home, despite repeated Pentagon assurances that the military isn’t broken.
Suicide among US troops has sharply increased this year, hitting a rate of almost one death per day, figures show.
As of 3 June, the army’s 2012 active-duty suicides reached 154, compared with 130 in the same period last year, the Pentagon confirmed to the BBC.
The number far exceeds US combat deaths for the same period.
45 percent of the 1.6 million veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are now seeking compensation for injuries they say are service-related. Those wars and their ancillary operations will cost the country nearly $4 trillion in deficit spending, all told. Between 224,000 and 258,000 people have died, although the vast bulk get ignored by virtue of not being American.
Yet we’re looking at the probability of a new AUMF after November, which will give the go-ahead for ongoing small wars that can yet grow out of control in Yemen, Somalia, Mali, The Phillipines and, on the horizon with growing inevitability, a new Iraq-style quagmire in Syria as well as a potentially regional conflagration beginning with Iran.
This is surely a form of national insanity.
From the AP wire report linked above: