Veteran suicide rates up, and other war news
Published 10:34 pm Monday, January 11, 2010
WASHINGTON — The suicide rate among 18- to 29-year-old men who’ve left the military has gone up significantly, the government said Monday.
The rate for these veterans went up 26 percent from 2005 to 2007, according to preliminary data from the Veterans Affairs Department. VA officials said they assume that most of the veterans in this age group served in Iraq or Afghanistan.
The VA calculated the numbers using Centers for Disease Control and Prevention numbers from 16 states. In 2005, the rate per 100,000 veterans among men ages 18-29 was 44.99, compared with 56.77 in 2007, the VA said. It did not release data for other population groups.
3 die in Afghanistan
Three American service members were killed in Afghanistan on Monday in a firefight with militants during a patrol in an undisclosed area of southern Afghanistan, the NATO command announced. That raised to at least 10 the number of U.S. service members killed in Afghanistan so far this year, according to an Associated Press tally.
NATO said another service member was killed in the clash but did not release the nationality. It said a sixth service member was killed by a roadside bomb in the south.
Judge: SEALs should be tried in Iraq
Two Navy SEALs accused in the mistreatment of an Iraqi detainee should be tried at the U.S. base in Iraq where the alleged victim is being held, a military judge ruled Monday.
Cmdr. Tierney Carlos moved the trials after government prosecutors said they would make the detainee available for deposition at Camp Victory in Baghdad but would not bring him to Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia to testify. The judge ruled that Petty Officer 2nd Class Jonathan Keefe of Yorktown, Va., and Petty Officer 1st Class Julio Huertas of Blue Island, Ill., have a right to face their accuser in open court.
A hearing for a third defendant, Petty Officer 2nd Class Matthew McCabe of Perrysburg, Ohio, is tentatively set for Wednesday.
McCabe is accused of punching Ahmed Hashim Abed, the suspected mastermind of a 2004 ambush that killed four U.S. security contractors in Fallujah. McCabe and the other two SEALs also are charged with dereliction of duty for failing to protect the detainee, and with lying to investigators. Huertas also is charged with impeding the investigation.
Rapping soldier in jail
Angry that the military planned to send him back to Iraq past his date to leave the military, a Fort Stewart soldier recorded a hip-hop song, “Stop Loss,” that blasts the Army and describes going on a shooting spree, an act that led his commanders to decide that the soldier posed a threat to his unit.
The infantry soldier, Spc. Marc A. Hall, has been jailed on criminal charges in Liberty County, Ga., for the past month for a song and other statements that one of his lawyers insists were simply a form of protest.
Charges filed against Hall of Coward, S.C., on Dec. 17 say he also told soldiers he would “go on a rampage” and that he “was planning on shooting the brigade and battalion commanders.”
Hall’s military attorney said Hall was using music to vent his anger after learning last year that, instead of leaving the Army after four years this February as he’d planned, he would be kept in the ranks for a yearlong tour in Iraq starting in December 2009 under the unpopular “stop loss” policy.
