The topic of suicide no one wants to talk about.

In general, unpleasant topics, people just want to either pretend it doesn’t exist or sweep it under a rug.

Veterans are trained for several months prior to a deployment to survive in war.

They are trained on how to shoot, kill, infiltrate urban areas and live to tell about it.

When coming back from a hostile environment, veterans are given a few brief days to out-process, and many are simply told ‘the VA will get in touch.’ What happens to those who fall through the cracks?

The number of veterans deployed to hostile environments increased drastically since the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts began. How does a system handle this sudden influx of veterans needing assistance?

The answer to this perplexing question is simple: quit talking about how to fix it and actually do it. Millions of veterans have earned the benefits that are either being denied to them or are not being received due to internal issues within the VA.

There was much discussion this week as to whether or not to use the photo on the bottom of page five.

The photo was not chosen or meant to offend people.

It was meant and chosen to get the readers attention and get a conversation started.

As we have seen through history from Rosa Parks and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., when we rally around a problem, we can reach a solution.