Agreed.
18 a day, 120 a week?.........Hyperbole to the extreme?..........maybe not:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/11/13/earlyshow/main3494261.shtml
“...veterans are committing suicide at the rate of 18 a day - a number acknowledged by a VA official...”
Who is lying? The reporter or the VA official?
The VA’s number of 18/day = 6,570. The reporter’s is 6240
It’s a class action lawsuit by a tort lawyer on behalf of two “advocacy groups,” later named in the article as “Veterans for Common Sense in Washington, D.C., which claims 11,500 members, and Veterans United for Truth, a Santa Barbara group with 500 members.”
I don’t know anything about these groups other than what I read on their websites. It seems interesting that the first listed member of the board of Veterans United for Truth is Mike Dukakis.
Yeah: This smells real bad. No way it’s even close to this, or the national MSM would have been over this day after day after day. . .
The numbers are too high. From the VA:
http://www.va.gov/oig/54/reports/VAOIG-06-03706-126.pdf
“There are approximately 25 million veterans in the United States and 5 million veterans who receive care within VHA. Based on Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data indicating suicide rates in men between the ages of 20 and 65 approximating 20 per 100,000 persons per year, VHA mental health officials estimate 1,000 suicides per year among veterans receiving care within VHA and as many as 5,000 per year among all living veterans.”
A VA official?
Unnamed VA office and location?
Piss poor journalism, or propoganda from the left? You decide.
The VA sucks and always has - that much is not news. But the figures of the suicide rate are pure BS.