This made me cry.

The AP is reporting that the Army has its highest suicide rate in 26 years.

I've had a variety of experiences of late that make this particularly powerful. First, I was admonished by a board member of the organization I'm working for, the Oregon Bus Project, to go to a religious service over the past weekend, which brought me to the Foursquare evangelical church, an experience that could take pages to describe. While there, they recoginized one of their members who just got out of Marine basecamp, and he was there in his dress uniform. He was a nice guy, and it felt good to know that he had this supportive community behind him. Not all that powerful in and of itself, but the story goes on.

Second, I attended the Multnomah County (which basically is Portland) town hall meeting held by Senator Ron Wyden. There, he was having 2 minute long comments from people in the audience. One of the speakers who got up to speak was the same Board member who spoke to my program about the importance of understanding communities of faith. He spoke of having 6 soldiers that while not blood relation to him, he considered them his kids, in that he cared for them and they grew up playing in his living room, etc. He spoke of one of them received specialized training and medals in Chinese and Korean. Now he's knocking on doors in Baghdad. The man broke down crying as he was sharing this story, because he knew that his "kid" was putting himself in danger in a situation that he was not well prepared for.

This brings me back to the story of suicides in the Army. 17.3 suicides per 100,000 soldiers, or 99 confirmed suicides, with two more suspected. These deaths represent failures on our part to protect our troops, to keep them healthy in a holistic sense. The UC spent how long working on mental health of Harvard student? A 26 page report, with 40 footnotes and 4 appendicies? Granted, many more US soldiers die while at war, 3,699 to date, but these issues of depression, post traumatic stress disorder, bipolar disorder, the list can go on forever, are things that we have a choice in. Help can be provided. We can't stop all the IEDs on the side of the road. We can have officers notice that some of their subordinates are having a difficult time. Only 28 of the 99 suicides were of soldiers at war, which proportionally is about on par with previous years. That means that 71 suicides happened with soldiers that were not in Iraq or Afghanistan. We need to take better care of our troops. This is only of soldiers in active service, let alone veterans and reservists.

We can do better. Next time someone says, support our troops, I will think of this story.

Maybe Pat Tillman actually was killed by enemy fire.

Except maybe the enemies were other US soldiers.

It makes sense, doesn't it? Why else would the Administration go to such lengths to cover it up? The speculation previously was that it was because a Pat Tillman, NFL star, dying with valor in the Great Cause, was a valuable propaganda object, but this makes just as much sense-- really more sense.

_ In his last words moments before he was killed, Tillman snapped at a panicky comrade under fire to shut up and stop "sniveling."

_ Army attorneys sent each other congratulatory e-mails for keeping criminal investigators at bay as the Army conducted an internal friendly-fire investigation that resulted in administrative, or non-criminal, punishments.

_ The three-star general who kept the truth about Tillman's death from his family and the public told investigators some 70 times that he had a bad memory and couldn't recall details of his actions.

_ No evidence at all of enemy fire was found at the scene - no one was hit by enemy fire, nor was any government equipment struck.

C & L and FDL have more commentary. I wish I was more shocked by this.