Real Oath Keepers

Military Divorce Rates Rise

If you knew the history of the enemy infiltrators who are wrecking our nation, while our troops die in vain, you would quickly see many angles to this story. First, these enemy usurpers are usually the draft dodgers that spit on returning Veterans, much like the criminal infiltrator Abbie Hoffman. Second, they have a long history of exploiting our women through Hollywood and their porn industry, but the untold story is how many of them take the opportunity to exploit the women left behind by our troops. These aren’t exactly the kinds of benefits most troops were hoping for when joining Uncle Sayanim, but this is what you get when the foxes rule the hen house.

While our troops are away, their women are propagandized with Hollywood and the media (both controlled by the infiltrators) to feel empty, alone, and even betrayed. They are taught to feel unwanted and discarded, when the truth is, our enemy infiltrators are directly responsible for the absence of these troops. At the same time, our infiltrators prey on the weak emotional state of these women, and disrupt a number of marriages. War itself is stressful enough on the family unit, and our usurpers have long sought to weaken this family unit through feminism and other propaganda. Of course, the divide works both ways, because women personnel have even higher divorce rates. The only reason you can’t see how this all works is because you do NOT know who the real enemy is. You have no idea what their plans are, and you’ll never be able to truly defend your people from this threat until you do. This is exactly why you need our Basic Training, because we make no mistake identifying the root of the problem, and even lay out their plans for you to discover for yourself. So, what are you waiting for Soldier? Are you going to take the initiative and earn your title as a homeland defender, or will you let them squander everything our nation stood for, while you continue taking out their enemies in the Middle East? We have done our part. The rest is up to you.

Source: LA Times
Date: 28NOV09

Washington – The toll for a nation long at war is evident in military homes: The divorce rate in the armed forces edged up again in the past year despite programs to help struggling couples, and the rate now is a full percentage point higher than around the time of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to a report released Friday.

There were an estimated 27,312 divorces among roughly 765,000 married members of the active-duty Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps in the budget year that ended Sept. 30, the Pentagon said.

That’s a divorce rate of about 3.6% for fiscal year 2009, compared with 3.4% a year earlier, according to figures from the Defense Manpower Data Center. Marriages among reservists failed at a rate of 2.8% compared to 2.7% the previous year.

Air Force Maj. April Cunningham, a Defense Department spokeswoman, said the changes from 2008 to 2009 were relatively small because of the many programs offered by the services.

“All military services have a variety of programs focused on strengthening and/or enriching family bonds among couples,” she said. “We believe these programs are instrumental in mitigating the stresses deployment places on marriages.”

Still, the figures show an upward trend in recent years as American forces have fought the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The 3.6% rate is a full percentage point above the 2.6% reported in late 2001, when the U.S. began sending troops to Afghanistan in response to the terrorist attacks.

As in previous years, women in uniform suffered much higher divorce rates than their male counterparts — 7.7% in 2009, compared with 3% for men.

There’s no comparable annual system for tracking the national or civilian divorce rate, though the Centers for Disease Control said in 2005 that 43% of all first marriages end in divorce within 10 years.

Critics complain annually that the divorce rate reported by the Pentagon comes nowhere close to depicting the damage done to marriages and families by the two ongoing wars.

“Those numbers seem extremely conservative, and they are not at all representative from what we’re hearing from the community,” said Paul Rieckhoff, an Army National Guardsman who served in Iraq and founded the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.

“Every time my unit got deployed, we saw a whole new round of divorces,” he said, estimating that the marital fallout is closer to double digits than to the Pentagon rate.

The Pentagon has said the data does not count actual divorces, but rather takes the numbers of married troops in each service at the beginning of the year and the number at the end and calculates the difference. Because people come and go during the year — recruits join, retirees and others leave — those counted at the beginning of the year are not all the same as those counted at the end.

Officials couldn’t immediately say whether the same method was used for Friday’s report but have said this calculation method is valid to get a year-to-year idea of the trend.

The Pentagon number also doesn’t count veterans — those who divorce after leaving the services or reflect other possible wartime consequences on families, such as increases in alcoholism or the toll on orphaned or emotionally stressed children of troops.

The numbers also do not speak to troubled but intact marriages. In an Army battlefield survey taken in Iraq in the spring, nearly 22% of young combat soldiers questioned said they planned to get a divorce or separation, compared with 12.4% in 2003. The mental health survey only measures intent and not the number who actually follow through when they get home.

“Every marriage has controllable and uncontrollable factors,” said Joe Davis, spokesman for the Veterans of Foreign Wars. “But when you interject eight years of war, preparing for war, being at war, coming home and having to think about going back to war again — and when you have children — it just has a tremendous impact on the family unit.”

In programs run by chaplains, mental health officials and family services agencies, service members have access to retreats, couples’ counseling, workshops and other programs aimed at easing the strain of separation during long and repeated tours of duty.

They are taught how their absence and return may affect their family relationships; troops and spouses get training in how to adjust to problems that arise after homecomings.

The Army has a broad family initiative to improve the quality of life for military families nationwide and overseas, including improving healthcare, schools, housing and child care to relieve stress on spouses.

“The military prides itself on taking care of military families — and it is true that they do that,” Davis said. “Still, at the end of the day, it’s that one mother or father who has to go home and close the door and be home alone with their children.

“There’s nothing you can do that will end the stress of having a loved one at war . . . until the war ends,” Davis said.