Army Suicides

Floor Speech

Army Suicides -- (Senate - January 31, 2008)

Mr. President, I rise this afternoon to talk about a subject that is very important to all of us. I listened to the Senator from Texas lamenting the fact that the war in Iraq has not been on the front pages of the paper recently.

Well, I am here today to say: Actually, it has been. In fact, on the front page of the Washington Post today, an article, ``Soldier Suicides at Record Levels. Increase Linked to Long Wars, Lack of Army Resources.''

We are hearing several news outlets today reporting on the front pages of papers and in headlines that suicides among our Active-Duty soldiers are at the highest rates since the Army began keeping records back in 1980.

According to those reports, 121 soldiers took their own lives last year. That is nearly 20 percent more than in 2006. The number of attempted suicides and self-inflicted injuries has dramatically increased since the start of this Iraq war. Those findings are tragic.

I know all our hearts go out to those families, their friends, and to the fellow soldiers of each one of those service men and women. Our great service members who face deployment after deployment without the rest, recovery, and treatment they need are at the breaking point.

Many of them have seen their best friends killed, they have seen other untold horrors. Yet we still are expecting them to head back to the battlefield to perform unaffected by what they have seen or gone through.

While military suicide is back in the press today, those of us who travel across our States, who go home and talk to service members and veterans who are struggling with mental health care, we know this is an issue, we know it all too well. We know that for family members who live through this tragedy, the pain stays long after those headlines fade.

We owe it to our service members and their families to be outraged when these numbers are going up and up and up and not down. We owe it to them to demand action. On Monday, in his State of the Union Address, the President called on us, Congress, to improve the system of care for our wounded warriors and help them build lives of hope and promise and dignity.

Well, Congress has given the military hundreds of millions of dollars to improve its mental health care system. We have worked hard and pushed through legislation to require the military and the VA to destigmatize mental health treatment, to help increase the awareness of the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder and do further reach on traumatic brain injury.

But it takes more than money being thrown at the problem, it takes leadership and it takes a change in the culture of war. The President can make all the platitudes he wants, but as Commander in Chief, he needs to lead by example and show he understands what these never-ending deployments are doing to our troops and to our veterans.

While the Department of Defense has taken some action, today's report makes me deeply concerned that progress has not been made and that these programs have not been implemented throughout the system. Some of our soldiers are telling us all they get is a 1-800 number to call if they need help.

Well, many soldiers need a real person to talk to. They need psychiatrists and they need psychologists who understand the horrors of war and the stresses these troops feel after serving their third or their fourth or even their fifth tour of duty in an urban theater.

Too many of our troops today say they cannot even get the military to understand when they are crying out for help. As I said, the Washington Post reported this morning on the military suicides, with an update on Lieutenant Whiteside. The Post wrote about this case the first time in December. She is the 25-year-old medic, an Army medic who attempted suicide in theater. Then she was charged by her superiors with endangering another soldier.

Now, I met with her father before the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee when we were hearing the nomination of General Peake. Lieutenant Whiteside had experienced a mental breakdown from stress serving in Iraq and she suffered from ``demonstrably severe depression,'' according to her doctors.

But the story revealed that medical opinion was brushed aside in her case and her superiors in the field said: ``Mental illness is an excuse.''

Well, this past Monday, she was awaiting the Army's decision whether she was going to be court-martialed or not, and she swallowed dozens of pills in another suicide attempt. The Post reported today she left a note that explained: ``I am very disappointed in the Army.''

According to this article, Lieutenant Whiteside is now in stable physical condition and the charges have finally been dismissed.

But, unfortunately, she is not the only soldier who has struggled to get the Defense Department to understand the real trauma of military service. Her story and the statistics that are being reported today are a reflection of something many of my colleagues and I have said over and over: A prolonged war has stretched our military thin and is taking a tragic toll on the brave men and women who serve in our all-volunteer Army and military. They deserve more.

Some members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have raised concerns that prolonged and repeated deployments are placing the overall health of our service members at risk. David Rudd, who is the chairman of the Department of Psychology at Texas Tech University and a former Army psychologist, was quoted in this article this morning as saying the Army suicide rates pose:

Real questions about whether you can have an Army this size with multiple deployments.

Over the past weeks, both the President and White House officials have hinted that a reduction of troops in Iraq is likely only temporary. As a result, I continue to be very concerned about the readiness of our military and our ability to sustain these wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I think we need to ask the question: With the reality of today's reports and the knowledge that extended troop deployments are stretching our military readiness, I want to know, what is the Pentagon's plan to address and decrease the number of Army suicides and suicide attempts?

This afternoon, I wrote a letter to Secretary Gates, and I asked him that question. I want to hear his response. We need to know that the change in culture is more than a talking point; we need to know and be assured our senior leaders in the military are ensuring that their words and programs are being executed out in the field.

Our troops are heroes who are sacrificing for this Nation. It is time for this Government to wake up and provide them with the care they need.

I yield the floor.

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