would you save vladimir putin? i realized it s a joke they took time to ask our president about that today no one bothered to ask him about dead veterans on american soil at the va in phoenix. there have been very little accountabilities and oversight. almost no response from the president we ve been talking about the backlog for years. 350,000 vets waiting for disability. this is affirmative, nefarious behavior, knowing you may be costing lives. yes. yes. this is why we need the american public to respond get involved in our veteran s care. you re going to see folks running for office this year. they re not go owing to talk much about veterans care. there are over 20 million veterans in america and also a suicide problem a new bill, the safe act gooding to tackle suicide
colonel tony shaffer joins us with more. thank you for joining us this morning. share with us yourç thoughts. why does this continue to happen? i know also you say you re not surprised. no. there s two separate pieces we have to look at. we have to look at the mental health issues of soldier right now. we ve had a suicide problem. this is related to that. let s talk about what allen was talking about, the military weapons issue. the lessons from the fort hood shooting were never actually interpblzed by the internalized by the military. i live in northern virginia and have a concealed carry permit. when i go to fort belvoir i can t go armed. the military has an unrealistic expectation of people in the military to be saints. this is why people who are crazy, who have problems mentally, terrorists who byç the way, the f.b.i. seeking
home. but this is not some big push. at least according to this army major i spoke with over breakfast, that people really want as far as any kind of change here on post around the country. let s talk about that some more. the reason that soldiers aren t allowed to carry weapons on base is because there s a big suicide problem at ft. hood. and they don t want these soldiers who may have depression problems, who may have suicidal thoughts to carry around guns. that s the biggest reason why guns are not allowed to be carried in most parts of the base, right? right. it s not just ft. hood. sadly, suicides are an issue within members of the military nationwide. so that is one issue. then yes, it s a huge problem. and then you had, i think we both were covering the navy yard shooting in washington, d.c. congressmen here from texas, republican steve stockman had proposed this legislation because he was saying basically a lot of these bases of vulnerable to terrorism as was the issue he
of suicides are committed by troops who never deploy. and trying to figure out and the truth is, i think as a former university president, there is a suicide problem with that generation and that age group of 18 to 25. every university president has had to deal with suicides on his or her campus. it s clearly more widespread now in the military. actually it wasn t when i became secretary. the military members were below the civilians suicide rates. i think it s the repeated deployment is a constant stress but most of the time we found it has to do with problems with a marriage, financial problems, but they have to all be aggravated by the cost of military service. and so figuring out i think this is one of those problems the military leadership has jumped all over it and doing
believe the 15-month tours had to have had aggravated the post traut mattic stress problem and probably the suicide problem. what gates says throughout the book, his affection and respect for the troops was so deep it came perhaps to cloud his vision when it came to making cold hearted national security decisions, that s one of the reasons he decided to retire when he did. in the very final chapter, he notes he wants to be buried at section 60 in arlington which is reserved for iraq and afghan war dead because he wants to rest forever among the people he calls his heroes. beyond that solidarity with the troops, it s clear his legacy, besides his service to this country in so many administrations will be that special relationship that he feels to those troops whose service has been so strained over the wars. if you read the book, that comes out and the real bad guy in the book is not the white house or the pentagon bureaucracy, it s congress. the soldiers are the heroes and