I understand the consideration for taking ones life comes from an overwhelming sense of hopelessness. Generally, no one factor precipitates the killing of ones self, to say otherwise would probably be foolish. To discount a soldiers or veterans taking of their own life because the last thing to happen to them was the death of their dog, would be to dishonor their service and sacrifice. Just as no one event can be attributed to a suicide, neither can one crisis be excluded in as much.

When we see no other way out of a bad situation, we have exceeded our capacity to cope and manage our personal pain. I understand this from a personal perspective and a deep realization to “know” the thought of “if I just pulled the trigger, the relief I would feel” to ease my emotional pain.

I would like to see the information on percentages of suicides verses deployments. If our research grant gets approval we will be investigating the causes of military and veteran suicides soon. If this evidence can be validated, I would be inclined to add this to the overall report.

However, those things you mentioned (lower standards, lower standards in basic training) are all things that occurred after the war began, in an attempt to get more bodies for a war that required a lot of them. This is the “military breakdown” piece of IVAW’s platform (and the panel I chaired at Winter Soldier). A large piece of our grievance with the war is that it has lowered standards and made our Army less prepared to accomplish its true mission-defense of the nation.