Devastating statistics
The Department of the Army just released statistics for 2012 showing that there have been more deaths due to suicide over combat-related deaths. This year alone there has been 212 deaths because of combat, a number too high, but 303 deaths have been from suicide. The Department of the Army included the 303 suicides are from soldiers in active duty, Reserve, and the National Guard.
Land of the free
Four soldiers from the 4th Brigade combat team of the Army’s Third Infantry Division have been tried for the murders of Michael Roark and his girl friend Tiffany York. The two were murdered execution style by Anthony Peden, Christopher Salmon, and Michael Burnett right outside Fort Stewart in Georgia by the orders of Private Isaac Aguigui. The four soliders including Roark had formed an anarchist militia group, Forever Enduring Always Ready (F.E.A.R.), recruiting troubled and distressed soldiers. The militia group’s plans had been to overthrow the government and assassinate the president. Private Aguigui had invested $500,000 of his dead wife’s insurance money to start the militia group. They had used $87,000 of the insurance money to buy semiautomatic weapons and materials for bombs. Aguigui had even purchased land in Washington State so he could carry out his plan to blow up a dam and poison the state’s apple crop.