Obama urged to reverse policy on no condolence letters for suicides

[Viva_La_Revolution]

Source: cnn

A bipartisan group of senators is asking President Barack Obama to change the current "insensitive" policy of not sending condolence letters to families of service members who commit suicide.

A letter signed by 11 senators -- 10 Democrats and one Republican -- and sent Wednesday urges the president to "take immediate steps to reverse the long-standing policy of withholding presidential letters of condolence" to families of troops who killed themselves.

The policy, which goes back several presidents, has been the subject of protest by military families. CNN first reported in 2009 about the family of Spc. Chancellor Keesling, who killed himself while serving in Iraq.

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2011/POLITICS/05/26/president.suicides.letters/index.html?iref=allsearch

[mdmc]

1. lots more letters to write sadly

[virgogal]

2. I wan't aware of this dreadful policy. How very sad.

[Stinky The Clown]

3. What a horrible, insensitive policy.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

5. Delete

[struggle4progress]

4. "... every 36 hours a service member kills himself or herself ..."

That adds up to a lot of letters. If the Oval Office is gonna do more than just send out signed form letters, then (adding in the research time for personalizing the letters) there gonna be at least a couple of hours of White House staff time per letter -- another ten hours a week dumped on some low-level staff member

An anti-suicide initiative might make more sense

[EFerrari]

7. If the White House has to put out those ten hours

it is more likely to look into an anti-suicide initiative.

[struggle4progress]

8. Yes, I think that's probably accurate

[haele]

11. I use a DoD network at my work - on the home page, there is now a suicide hotline banner

Since about two days ago.
This home page is the "welcome aboard" site that basically has the "what new upgrades and pushes in the Network are now screwing up your computer" some quickie online training and portals to various DoD information systems sites, how to contact the trouble desk when IE or any of the resident programs on your workstation don't work, your credentials on your CAC went kerbluie and nuked your profile, or you can't access your e-mail.
This was a very odd banner to put on that particular site, most people don't use it as the home page after they get settled in on their network workstation, and only go there as a last ditch effort to try to figure out what the contractors running the network just did that now prevent you from accessing, oh, your timecard site or the repository where all your project data is being kept.
My experience and rather wry sense of humor leads me to feel that dealing with that particular privatized Network is almost enough to push anyone under stress and a deadline over the edge, so this was their attempt to suggest they're being responsive to their customers needs.

Haele

[struggle4progress]

12. Thanks. That's interesting. And

"dealing with that particular privatized Network is almost enough to push anyone under stress and a deadline over the edge, so this was their attempt to suggest they're being responsive to their customers needs"

:rofl:

[boppers]

13. They're using IE?

Yeah. That's enough to warrant a banner.

[Bucky]

6. I'm just waiting to see which Fox News commentator first says this will encourage suicides.

[defendandprotect]

9. Yikes!! Of course this should be reversed !!

[unblock]

10. wtf kind of policy is that??!

[Control-Z]

14. "which goes back several presidents"

Really? They couldn't figure out or say which president started this?