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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Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Prozac Army

By Steve Hynd


A bit of news from Danger Room that should give you pause.



An untold number of active-duty troops and recent veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are coming home with mental health conditions inflicted during service � and their spouses and children are suffering too. Now, with solid data slowly emerging from the nearly decade-long wars, the severity of the crisis is starting to show.


The use of psychiatric medications among 18 to 34-year-olds (both troops and their spouses) soared by 42 percent between 2005 and 2009, Army Times is reporting. Antidepressants were the most commonly prescribed medication, but the use of anti-psychotic meds � like Seroquel, which is used off-label to treat nightmares and insomnia caused by PTSD � nearly doubled. And the use of anti-anxiety drugs, like Xanax, surged by 72 percent.


The numbers are startling, but it�s hardly surprising that prescription drugs have become the Pentagon�s solution of choice, when they�re essentially the only option. With both wars lagging on for years, and troops being redeployed despite psychiatric problems, the military�s fast-tracked efforts at more effective alternatives can�t keep up.


The article goes on to note that many of the drugs being prescribed can cause increase in suicidal thoughts as a side-effect, or have interactions that can kill. We already know suicides among the military are way up and "accidental deaths due to multi-drug use are on the rise � 68 among troops in 2009, compared to 24 in 2001."

This is your hollowed-out military after almost a decade of two dumb occupations. Over a million servicemen and women have rotated through those two occupations and as many as 60% of them may suffer from some kind of PTSD-related mental illness. It's no surprise that Veteran's Administration bills are one of the biggest (usually left unmentioned) fiscal costs of these misadventures in military careerism and political fig-leafing - - but the mental health repercussions to America haven't even begun to really bite yet.



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