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Monday, November 26, 2007

Phony Soldiers are Committing Suicide at an Alarming Rate. 
Alternet has the "details."

Earlier this year, using the clout that only major broadcast networks seem capable of mustering, CBS News contacted the governments of all 50 states requesting their official records of death by suicide going back 12 years. They heard back from 45 of the 50. From the mountains of gathered information, they sifted out the suicides of those Americans who had served in the armed forces. What they discovered is that in 2005 alone -- and remember, this is just in 45 states -- there were at least 6,256 veteran suicides, 120 every week for a year and an average of 17 every day.


I'm getting all emo and shit. I think this is up there with Gloria Steinem's idiotic claim that 150,000 women were dying of anorexia every year.

JustOneMinute has perspective.

These people will do anything ... ANYTHING ... to infantilize veterans or turn them into victims.

Splash, out

Jason

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Comments:
I don't know if 6256 veteran suicides from 45 states in 2005 is meaningful - in a statistical sense, not individual, where each is meaningful - or not. It would have to be broken down into sub-groups and compared to similar groups in the general population. It would also probably be significant to compare the ATTEMPTS by each sub-group - if there is no statistical variation in attempts between veteran and non-veteran, but veteran suicides of that group are higher, it could just be indicating that veterans are better at succeeding at what they attempt.
In other words (?Mark Twain?), there are three kinds of lies "lies, Damned lies, and statistics."
 
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