Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Steve Hynd, August 16, 2012

After four years on the Typepad site, eight years total blogging, Newshoggers is closing it's doors today. We've been coasting the last year or so, with many of us moving on to bigger projects (Hey, Eric!) or simply running out of blogging enthusiasm, and it's time to give the old flying pig a rest.

We've done okay over those eight years, although never being quite PC enough to gain wider acceptance from the partisan "party right or wrong" crowds. We like to think we moved political conversations a little, on the ever-present wish to rush to war with Iran, on the need for a real Left that isn't licking corporatist Dem boots every cycle, on America's foreign misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. We like to think we made a small difference while writing under that flying pig banner. We did pretty good for a bunch with no ties to big-party apparatuses or think tanks.

Those eight years of blogging will still exist. Because we're ending this typepad account, we've been archiving the typepad blog here. And the original blogger archive is still here. There will still be new content from the old 'hoggers crew too. Ron writes for The Moderate Voice, I post at The Agonist and Eric Martin's lucid foreign policy thoughts can be read at Democracy Arsenal.

I'd like to thank all our regular commenters, readers and the other bloggers who regularly linked to our posts over the years to agree or disagree. You all made writing for 'hoggers an amazingly fun and stimulating experience.

Thank you very much.

Note: This is an archive copy of Newshoggers. Most of the pictures are gone but the words are all here. There may be some occasional new content, John may do some posts and Ron will cross post some of his contributions to The Moderate Voice so check back.


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Friday, July 30, 2010

From the "No-One Could've Anticipated" files

By Steve Hynd


Who would ever have guessed?



At a time of record-high military suicides, commanders are ignoring the mental health problems of American soldiers and not winnowing out enough of those with records of substance abuse and crime, a United States Army report has concluded.


...The report said that if the Army added in accidental deaths, which it said are often the result of high-risk behavior involving drinking and drugs, �less young men and women die in combat than die by their own actions.� It concluded: �We are often more dangerous to ourselves than the enemy.�


According to the Army, roughly 20 out of 100,000 soldiers have killed themselves, compared with a rate of roughly 19 out of 100,000 for the civilian population.


The report put a large part of the blame on commanders who either failed to recognize or disregarded high-risk behavior among their troops. �There are instances where a leader�s lack of soldier accountability resulted in suicide victims not being found until they had been dead for three or four weeks,� the report said.


In addition, the report said that the pace of constant deployments in two wars had forced a lowering of recruiting and retention standards. Many new recruits were granted waivers, it said, for behavior that would have kept them out of the service in earlier years. Of 80,403 waivers granted since 2004, the report found that 47,478 were granted to people with a history of drug or alcohol abuse, misdemeanor crime or �serious misconduct,� which it defined as felony.


At the same time, the report found that there was a decrease in soldiers forced to leave the Army for misconduct. �This has likely resulted in the retention of over 25,283 soldiers who would have otherwise been separated in previous years,� the report said.


So, if we ignore massive problems with post-traumatic stress, ignore criminality and ignore addiction - all to keep the military up to strength while the powers-that-be keep two massively dumb occupations going in order to save political and career face - we end up with a lot of young kids killing themselves. Who'dathunkit?


It's not that "We are often more dangerous to ourselves than the enemy"....


It's that our leaders are more dangerous to us than any enemy.


(And now they're looking for another war.)



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