The US Navy is in Crisis and Pete Hegseth Does Not Give Damn

The Guardian published an article on Wednesday reporting that multiple sailors aboard the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln have attempted to jump overboard as the ship’s deployment stretches into its ninth month and over 260 consecutive days at sea . According to the article:

Military families and Congress members are sounding the alarm about an intensifying mental health crisis onboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, as its 5,000 sailors and marines endure a record-breaking deployment at sea tied to the war with Iran.

Two leading specialist military papers, the Navy Times and Stars and Stripes , are reporting that there have been multiple attempts by sailors to jump overboard as poor conditions and mental stresses on the Lincoln reach the breaking point. The crew is in its ninth month at sea, and has spent 250 days consecutively without making land – a record for an aircraft carrier in modern times.

Pete Hegseth, the clown serving as Secretary of War, dismissed the complaints of the Navy families as “fake news.” The only liar here is Hegseth.

The Guardian article elicited a response from a good friend who recently retired from the Army. Here is what he sent me:

And finally the truth. This is making the rounds. If the Lincoln has 5,000 people on it and it hasn’t seen land in 38 weeks… they are starving, no packages, rationing coffee, waiting to die from a fucking Iranian hypersonic. They say the number is 6 attempts. Nearly a year at sea no land, etc. the real number of attempts is likely 5-fold or 10-fold.

You have more attempts at suicide on a NORMAL carrier operation. It’s just normal, a factor of statistics. That’s BEFORE being sent to your death on a purely political mission from someone who openly hates military members and thinks they are pussies for getting hurt or dying.

Six attempts sounds like a lot, but that number is WAY WAY too small. As an officer, like them, I have had to do a number of Army Regulation 15-6 Command Investigations on Soldiers committing suicide. All officers have, it’s a normal function. Suicide is a very real and stable number, too. And that’s while you are still in. They have no clue what’s waiting for them the first night they return home (or wherever) and they have time to spend alone thinking about it ALONE WITH NOTHING TO DISTRACT YOU EXCEPT YOUR ONLY FRIENDS JIM AND JACK (i.e., Jim Beam and Jack Daniels whiskey), Did you know they do roving patrols on all Navy ships called “fire-guard”? That term has become blanket use for all services. It means a rotating schedule to monitor the perimeter to make sure there are no…”fires”. Wrong…the guard is to prevent people from trying to kill themselves on the spot. “Fire guard” still happens today, in Army basic training, when you go to the field, when you go on exercise or deployment etc. it has nothing to do with a fire. Suicide is a part of daily life in the military.

Here’s another example: in the big units, such as 82nd Airborne, 101st Airborne…if the unit makes it 82 or 101 days without a DUI everyone gets a 4 day weekend. Well, they never got over 3 weeks without one, regularly. So they had to increase the denominator to…suicides. Everyone gets a long weekend if we make it to 82 days without a suicide in OUR OWN UNIT. Guess how many days off there were? None. Had to change the denominator again…honestly. I think the new denominator was actually drugs. We may have made it to 82 days without someone CAUGHT AND CHARGED with using drugs in the barracks or whatever. Couldn’t make it to 82 days without a DUI or a suicide though.

I participated in initial invasion of Iraq on 26 March 2003. I just turned 44 and left active duty over a year ago. 44-20=24.

44 years old minus 20 equals 24 years of PTSD (from actually killing people…Wild West in those days) of divorces, a few loose suicide attempts, mostly big wave surfing in Hawaii where you don’t really expect to come back in. Granted I was an enlisted soldier in the invasion of Iraq, but then attended West Point and started an entire successful officer career AFTER THAT, including more combat deployments.

As I have mentioned before I am the class president of my West Point class and have been for 20 years or whatever, and so I have the numbers of dead from day 1 of West Point until now. Committing suicide at West Point is very regular. The preferred method since everyone is in pretty good shape and runs a lot is a run to Bear Mountain Bridge and then jumping. We had at least 5 commit suicide I think while I was there. And keep in mind they could have just quit and gone home for the most part. And then we lost some in combat particularly from 2009-2012 when everything heated up again post surge etc. but we have lost many more due to suicide, as officers. With families.

You know what one of the more “fun” decisions I get to make as class president? Where their names go and how they are placed on the class list. We have 3 demographics of dead classmates. Combat, suicide or non combat injuries (helo crash in training, etc).

I get to listen to and deal with everyone single one of my dead classmates’ families argue about should their name be on the list of “fallen in combat” if the majority either killed themselves while deployed in combat, killed themselves shortly after coming home from combat or many years later. You can imagine how emotional those conversations are.

Only 6 suicide attempts of 5,000 on an aircraft carrier that is a tinderbox of rage, frustration, and waiting on death? Multiple by 5, minimum. Eventually they end up just telling direct line supervisors if your sailor or soldier kills themself, it’s on YOU.

I also heard from the mother of a sailor who served on the USS Tripoli. She wrote:

I believe I told you I’ve been worried about the mental health of these sailors & marines aboard the navy ships at war. Why? Because they removed all chaplains off my sons ship, the USS TRIPOLI. They kicked them off in Diego Garcia, right before their last leg of trip to entering CENTCOM. This pisses me off. I called so many politicians and raised those alarm bells about their removals. I asked how many other chaplains were removed on other ships??? Again nobody would call me back or email me these answers. And here we are, sailors trying to commit suicide at war. Good GOD, Hegseth NEEDS TO BE FIRED! I guarantee you many military families aren’t aware that their loved ones chaplains were removed before going to war. This is a critical asset to have a chaplain while at war!!! They see so many gruesome things (casualties, kids and friends blown up) that is hard for any human to deal with. This infuriates me!!! Who the hell can get this message to blast on all news, Hegseth had NO business in removing those chaplains. Politicians need to demand his firing and immediately place chaplains back on every navy ship, especially at war.

This crisis is real and Donald Trump and his lame Secretary of War are doing nothing to address the problem.

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Here’s my chat from Tuesday with Stanislav Krapivnik:

Pepe and I discuss the status of alleged negotiations between the US and Iran with Pakistan as the mediator:

I discussed the USS Lincoln suicide story with Danny Haiphong:

I explained to Nima why Trump’s plan to bankrupt Iran won’t work:

I challenged the story that Iran planned to shoot Trump’s plane with a SAM:

Reviewed the day’s news with Sulaiman:

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