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US troops committing suicides at an alarming rate

The Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery in Elwood in in Illinois, the United States. (File photo by AP)

Endless war has taken a toll on the mental health of US troops. An alarming surge in suicide deaths among US troops has happened in recent years, according to new figures from the Pentagon.

USA Today reported on Thursday that 580 American troops died by suicide in 2020. The newspaper confirmed the Pentagon’s new statistics with congressional and Defense Department sources before they were made public.

Some 504 US troops committed suicide in 2019, according to USA Today. But in 2018, at least 543 US troops reportedly died by suicide.

The report noted that Alaska has been a site of several suicides, where six suicides happened in the first five months of the year. USA Today reported that the Army has spent more than $200 million in an attempt to improve the quality of life at its bases in the state.

A recent study has found that more than 30,000 active-duty personnel and veterans of wars that were launched following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks have died by suicide.

That number was almost thirty times more than the people who died in the 9/11 attacks and about three times as many US service members who were killed in post-9/11 war operations.

Following the 9/11 attacks, the United States under the presidency of Republican George W. Bush invaded and occupied Afghanistan, despite the fact that no Afghan was involved in the attacks. The occupation continued for 20 years. Hundreds of thousands of Afghans died in the US war on the country.

US officials assert that the 9/11 attacks were carried out by 19 al-Qaeda terrorists, but many experts and independent researchers have raised questions about the official account.

They believe that rogue elements within the US government, such as former Vice President Dick Cheney, orchestrated or at least encouraged the 9/11 attacks in order to accelerate the US war machine and advance the Zionist agenda.

Wesley Clark, the retired 4-star US Army general and Supreme Allied Commander of NATO during the 1999 War on Yugoslavia, said in the famous 2007 interview that the purpose of the 9/11 attack was to take out the governments of seven countries in five years. These seven countries were Iraq, Syria, Somalia, Libya, Sudan, Yemen, and Iran.

Clark’s interview serves as a reminder regarding the diabolical timeline of the American Empire’s hegemonic project. All of these countries have been directly or indirectly been the object of US aggression.

Iran has been a target of malicious US intentions but the United States failed to launch a war against it due to the Islamic Republic’s strong defense against the global hegemon. 


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