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Vets for Peace
| Soldier Suicide Rate Hits Record High | | Boston Globe | | | Army
soldiers committed suicide in 2007 at the highest rate on record, and the toll is climbing ever higher this year as long war
deployments stretch on. At least 115 soldiers killed themselves last year, up from 102 the previous year, the Army said yesterday.
"We see a lot of things that are going on in the war which do contribute - mainly the longtime and multiple deployments
away from home, exposure to really terrifying and horrifying things, the easy availability of loaded weapons, and a force
that's very, very busy right now," said Colonel Elspeth Ritchie, psychiatric consultant to the Army surgeon general |
Editor's Coment
There is only one way to overcome the mental & emotional stress due to the Iraq
War
That is to counsel such soldiers to join the pro-peace movement
In
this way the wrongs that they did are taken up in the transcendent cause of peace.
Unconscionable Acts & unforgetable & unforgivable experiences
that haunt such soldiers become the leven for a new purpose for living & giving
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On my knees I beg you to turn away from the paths of
violence. . . .I say to you, with all the love I have for you, with all the trust I have in young people: do not listen to
voices which speak the language of hatred, revenge, retaliation. Do not follow any leaders who train you in the way of inflicting
death. . . .Give yourself to the service of life, not the work of death. Violence is the enemy of justice. Only peace can
lead the way to true justice.” - Pope John Paul II, September 29, 1979
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