VFA News Analysis: September 25, 2008

Perhaps the Department of Veterans Affairs’ one-year-old suicide prevention hotline isn’t doing enough? Credited with helping save some 1,600 lives, it may be able to help far more if so many non-veterans weren’t crowding the wires. The VA line piggybacks on the National Suicide Prevention Line and VA data shows that only 43 percent of those who had their calls routed to a VA counselor were actually veterans. Fort Drum highlights suicide prevention in a year set to break a sad record: the most Soldier suicides. The stress of combat also prompts too many of our Soldiers to self-medicate as well.

Iraq’s Parliament passed a long-delayed election law that could pave the way for provincial elections next year — but that avoided settling some of the most divisive political issues in the country. The thorny question of how to settle a violent dispute over control of the multi-ethnic and oil-rich northern city of Kirkuk was not dealt with. A provision granting some Iraqi provincial council seats to small religious and ethnic groups was eliminated, also prompting concerns.

Ethnic tensions in Iraq are still erupting with bloody frequency. On top of this fragile situation are claims of blatant political interference from the White House in a bid to sway U.S. elections. Iraq has a long way to go on its own still, including cleaning up its potable water infrastructure in the face of a rising number of cholera cases. Sadly for these cases and other victims of Iraq’s hard luck the Iraqi Red Crescent, the country’s top humanitarian organization, is too busy defending itself from charges of corruption and mismanagement these days to do much else.

The case of Indiana National Guardsmen potentially exposed to deadly chemicals while stationed in Iraq in 2003 is now, finally, under “senior review” by the Army.

They’re getting nostalgic for the Taliban in Afghanistan — not a good sign for US and NATO forces hoping to rout extremism.

Soldiers speak out about what the Iraq war is really like. Our National Guard Soldiers feel the strain. Flags will be lower in Colorado to honor a fallen National Guard Soldier.

Teachers learn to help kids of military families in Colorado.

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