A Predictable Suicide at Camp Lejeune

[tekisui]

Source: Salon

Marine Sgt. Tom Bagosy stepped out of his black GMC Sierra pickup and onto the gray, speckled pavement of McHugh Boulevard, a busy thoroughfare in the heart of Camp Lejeune, N.C. He held a pistol in his right hand.

The military police car that had pulled him over idled on the shoulder a safe distance behind him. The midday traffic stopped. Bagosy stood for a moment on the warm pavement under a cloudless May sky. Then he raised the pistol, pointed it to the right side of his throat just below his jaw, and pulled the trigger.

The bullet sliced through his jugular vein, traveled through his skull and exited near the top left side of his head. He crumpled down in the road. Even if the bullet had failed to rip through his brain, shooting through the jugular was solid insurance. He would have bled out in minutes anyway.

Bagosy, 25, who had served in Iraq and Afghanistan, had become another statistic in the war-fatigued military and its steadily escalating suicide rate. Last year, 52 Marines committed suicide. The suicide rate among Marines has doubled since 2005, and the Corps has the highest suicide rate in the military. The circumstances of Bagosy's death, however, provide a particularly poignant case study in what many critics say is the military's inadequate response to that suicide crisis.

Bagosy's story shows how the military's ineptitude in the face of crisis affected a single family -- in this case, a Marine in the last hours of his life, and his two young children and his wife, who waited in vain that day for him to come back to his home just outside Camp Lejeune.

more: http://www.salon.com/news/camp_lejeune/?story=/news/feature/2010/07/13/predictable_suicide_at_camp_lejeune

[Parche]

1. sad, very sad

And no one is helping these brave soldiers...:cry::cry::patriot:

[OhioChick]

2. Terrible.....

These men and women seem to be the "forgotten ones" in these wars.

[Bluebear]

3. 25 years old...there are no words.

[Name removed]

4. Deleted message

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Solly Mack]

5. K&R

[EFerrari]

6. K&R

[me b zola]

7. K&R

[saigon68]

8. PTSD UNTREATED will end your Life

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

9. Another corpse produced in our "necessary" and ongoing lost wars. K&R

[Blue Owl]

10. Cause of Death: Optional War Based On Lies

Thanks George, Dick, and everyone else who continues the charade. Time for this quote again:

"The most shocking fact about war is that its victims and its instruments are individual human beings, and that these individual beings are condemned by the monstrous conventions of politics to murder or be murdered in quarrels not their own"

Aldous Huxley
English novelist and critic, 1894-1963

[Stinky The Clown]

11. We need these unwinnable wars for NO GOOD FUCKING REASON

I'm sure Mrs. Sgt Bagosy and the little Bagosys are not real happy about it.

This is horrible. A father dead at 25 from a self inflicted gunshot wound.

"Thanks fer yer service" seems rather hollow, doesn't it?

[Heywood J]

12. It's Camp Lejeune...

Are we sure it wasn't because of the fuel and dry-cleaning wastes in the water they serve to Marines there?