Say Anything Blog

You alluded to it in your first paragraph following the quote, but the fact that 32 deaths “are suspected suicides and still under investigation,” means that if none of those are ruled suicides, it would actually mean a drop of over 10% in suicides this year.  Even if half are ruled to be other than suicide, you’re talking a jump of less than 5%, which would probably be within a standard deviation or two of “normal” rates.

I didn’t see the quoted article, but this is pretty clearly agenda journalism.  Obviously, the mental health of our vets should be a priority, and every suicide (every death, for that matter) is a tragedy.  No question.  But using hypotheticals and junk data analysis to further an agenda is sadly what most of us expect from the MSM nowadays.  Thanks for pointing this one out.

Yes, suicides went up.  Yes, a 20% increase sounds bad.  But the overall suicide number is still so low, even with this increase, as to be inconsequential.

No big deal. Suicide, Schmuicide. Who cares? Pass the doobie and shut up.

"Mittens McHuckniani” - you’re a lot looser when you’re not commenting under the “Socialist” moniker.

Just an observation.

Full disclosure—I’m a liberal Dem.  I’m asking a question, which I hope comes across as sincere and legitimate, and respectfully ask for your opinions. At times, I see what y’all mean about misleading headlines, slanted reporting, etc.  For this story, how should AP or anyone else report it?  What is the responsible way?  Honestly, I’m very curious—and again, I’m asking because I want to understand, not to argue.

Good question, Mark.  With the same care and respect that you showed in asking your question, I’d suggest that the media wait until the 32 deaths still under investigation have their investigations resolved - you know, when the facts are verified?  That’s a pretty elementary journalistic principle.

Or at least give a better disclaimer in the lead paragraph, perhaps something along the lines of “Pending the outcomes of 32 investigations into deaths of military members, suicides by our nations military have either gone down 10%, or up 20%, compared to the 2006.  But, of course, that’s not terribly interesting…

So, perhaps the article in question should not have been published at all.  Until the facts are determined, this is simply not newsworthy; either the “numerous efforts to improve the mental health” of our military are effective, or they’re failing.  But, it’s too soon, and, as the new media mantra goes, it’s “too close to call”.  By reporting it now, they’re sporting all the credibility of Dan Rather declaring Florida for Gore…

Mark, I thought of a good analogy to further address your fair question.

I’m a career data analyst, and I currently work for a university.  One of my jobs is to evaluate our marketing campaigns in terms of the income return we get on our marketing investment (ROI).  One metric we use to determine that is by expressing the “conversion rate” of our applications, in terms of how many students matriculated compared to the number of applicants we had. 

Now, if our start date (presumably the day we’d know whether or not the students matriculated) was September 1st, and on August 31st I wandered through the dorms and counted the new freshman, but there were 25% that still hadn’t shown up, but I still reported that we were looking at a 20% increase in enrollment, would my reporting be accurate?  What if my performance review was based on the outcome of that marketing effort - would you view my presumptive 20% increase as biased?

True, you can add sophisticated forecasting models that use statistics to figure out how many people showed up on the last day (or even a day or more late), but then, you’d caveat the heck out of any declarations you make.  Or at a minimum, use the words “I project” when bringing up a 20% lift.  And then someone would ask you how you came to the 20% number anyway, and the jig would be up.

But here, we’re talking about something as unpredictable as human behavior as it relates to suicide, so applying a forecasting model to 32 deaths is pretty much out of the question, given the statistically small number we’re talking about.  The article simply assumes that all 32 will be ruled suicides, without making proper disclaimers.  That’s just terrible trend analysis, and it’s plain old wrong.

If I remember correctly, suicides are about 12/100k in the general population, but the rate is quite a bit higher, say 20/100k, among men.  So the suicide rate among soldiers (reported by the article as about the same) is not abnormally high.  Kudos to the article for presenting the incidence rates; shame on them for failing to compare it with the male population at large.

Now certainly there are war-related causes to suicide, starting with the fact that it’s **** hard for a man to be away from his family for over a year, and it’s even harder for a man to lose his family due to that stress.  It happens.  We should bust our rear ends to reduce this toll.

But can we put the toll in perspective here?  Please?

To put it in more perspective, even if all the suspected suicides turn out to be suicide, it is not statistically significant with a one sided two proportion test vs. the results from last year, or versus the overall suicide rate among men.  Assuming about 600,000 soldiers, the p value is about 0.079.  Standard requirement for statistical significance is .05 or less.

I am sure that there are some very real issues to be addressed.  However, this article doesn’t do that.

shame on them for failing to compare it with the male population at large.

The point of the article is not to compare military suicides with civilian suicides.  The point is whether military suicides are increasing and whether this is due to the stress of deployments.  The civilian suicide rate is irrelevant.

“Mittens McHuckniani” - you’re a lot looser when you’re not commenting under the “Socialist” moniker.

Why thank you. And congratulations on your genius in figuring out that Socialist and I are from the same commune.

Actually, Lestat, it makes a huge difference.  The incidence rate of behavior X with influences Y and Z is put into perspective only by its contrast with either a moral ideal ("we shouldn’t commit suicide") or a statistical comparison with the prevalence of behavior X without influences Y or Z.

Translated, that means that the armed forces do need to compare themselves with the civilian world to see how they’re treating their men and women. 

And again, statistically speaking, this 20% rise is NOT statistically significant.  It’s obviously personally significant to 20 grieving families, but in itself this statistic does not prove anything.  One needs to dig deeper in the data to prove anything from this.

I could never quite figure out suicides in a combat zone.  If you really wanted to off yourself why not do it in a constructive fashion:

-- run with satchel charge into enemy CP (a la Platoon);

-- hand grenades at point blank with your captors (a wounded and soon-to-be captive Don Rickles in an old Jarhead movie);

- your Zero fighter into the aircraft elevators of the Yorktown or Lexington;

- leading a suicidal charge into an enemy machine gun emplacement.

But why give the enemy a freebie? 

Except for Serbia, I don’t know of a single enemy we’ve gone against who wasn’t asking for it. 

Raise the cost of tyranny.  Make them pay dearly.

Just like Patton said, you only win wars by making the other poor, dumb bastard die for his country.

If it’s an issue of lack of moral fiber, old Georgie would’a just slapped the tar out of them can called them yella.

...for great justice

Move_Zig, when a soldier does what you suggest, it’s generally a breach of good tactics, and officers tend to record those as suicides.  Remember the opening scene of “Dances with Wolves”?

This,"Increasing suicides raise “real questions about whether you can have an Army this size with multiple deployments,” said David Rudd, a former Army psychologist and chairman of the psychology department at Texas Tech University.” stood out.

An Army psychologist, very concerned with the massive problem of suicide in the military, ducked out to take a sweet administrative post at a college. And to heckle from the sidelines. Exactly why did he cut and run from what he keeps getting quoted as saying is a major problem?

BB, if your death will be listed as suicide anyway why not kill the enemy in the process.

Una Salus Victus Nullam Sperare Salutem

Move_Zig, when a soldier does what you suggest, it’s generally a breach of good tactics

Not sure if I agree BB. 

And yes, while I agree with you to a certain extent: the military will generally teach its leaders to use a flanking maneuver in preference to a frontal assault, or to use stand-off weapons rather than putting men in harms’ way, there are often times in combat where there is no alternative to ’hey diddle-diddle, straight up the middle. ‘

Indeed, the stories coming out of WWII are replete with engagements that required all-but-suicidal tactics to even confront the enemy. 

For instance, in the early days, anyone assigned to F2A Brewster Buffalo faced almost certain death when encountering a Japanese Zero or Zeke fighter, or the story of the USS Samuel B. Roberts, “the destroyer escort that fought like a battleship ” during the Battle of Samar.

But after defense cuts (such as the treasonous Clintons’ gutting of the US military and intelligence services) leave you under-weaponed, under-supplied and under-manned, you find yourself in combat, very often—you have no choice but to engage, for to your back are the troops who are relying on you for support, or worse yet, the civilians you are protecting.  It’s the realization that even though you are facing an invasion force with one grenade, a .45 and a K-Bar, you are the only thing between that 5 year old girl in California and another Rape of Nanking.

It can be very lonely at times like these.

A lot of survivors from combat suffer feelings of guilt.  They ask why call me a hero?  The true heros are dead.  The ones who shielded the rest of a squad by jumping on a grenade, or did a one-man assault against a machine gun nest, or dove into the midst of numerous enemy aircraft, knowing they would not survive, to help buy time for the recon aircraft to get away.

A lot of combat seems suicidal.  It’s sane people running to the sound of guns.

For that reason it floors me to think that when bullets are flying any decent troop would put a gun to his own head, when—if offing yourself is the objective—you have so many opportunities to do so and make it count for good.

...for great justice

BB, if your death will be listed as suicide anyway why not kill the enemy in the process.

Darned good question, 2H9, and I think the answer is that for someone to “off himself,” something ain’t right in his thinking.  You’re more or less attributing logic to an act of desperation.

And move_zig, point well taken that war is the insane behavior of otherwise sane people.  Although I still think that you can figure out which “heroic” actions were suicides (say charging the machine gun nest without taking advantage of cover & distraction), there are other factors.

Look at the data; 2/3 of suicides are not in the war zone.  This soldier has no opportunity to be a hero; he’s in his apartment in Fort Carson looking at the empty spot on the bed where his wife used to be.

And of the third in war zones, consider that our soldiers are pretty good at making sure that men get back from the craziest missions, aren’t they?  There isn’t a lot of chance for a man to be sure he’ll succeed.

He is actually more likely to be a living hero, and that’s exactly what he fears the most.

Mittens McHuckniani - And congratulations on your genius in figuring out that Socialist and I are from the same commune.

It wasn’t genius. It was pretty easy to see the stuck on stupid similarities between the two nicknames. Knowing that you’re not above lying, I checked it out and confirmed that you were, in fact, lying again.