FORT HOOD – The Subcommittee on Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies is all about families and soldiers, U.S. Rep. John Carter said Wednesday.

He and fellow Texas congressman, U.S. Rep. Chet Edwards, belong to the committee, Edwards serving as chair. The politicians toured Fort Hood to the areas most affected by their decisions on the committee.

The goal is for quality of life at the “Great Place” to be just that: great, Carter said.

Carter and Edwards attended a luncheon focused on the post’s new Spiritual Fitness Center and listened to Maj. Gen. Doug Carver, U.S. Army chief of chaplains, talk about the center’s importance in tending to soldiers.

Lt. Gen. Rick Lynch, III Corps and Fort Hood commander, said that soldiers have to be physically, mentally and spiritually resilient.

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The U.S. military requires chaplain candidates to earn graduate degrees that include at least 36 hours of course work in religious study.

In the past, such a rule posed an uneasy challenge for Church members in uniform hoping to become an Army, Navy or Air Force chaplain. Without a traditional “divinity” school of their own to attend, LDS candidates often enrolled in a graduate school operated by another religion to satisfy “religious study” requirements.

Now LDS candidates have another option. Since last summer, seven LDS chaplain candidates have been enrolled in Brigham Young University’s masters of religious education program. They are participating in graduate courses generally populated by seminary and institute teachers.

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After some two decades in uniform, U.S. Army Chaplain Keith Shurtleff plans to retire in the next year or so.

There’s much this lifelong Church member will miss when he leaves the military. As a patriot and soldier, Brother Shurtleff will remember his daily service to his country. As a chaplain, he will miss the “one-on-one” interactions with soldiers and their families seeking spiritual support, perhaps a prayer, a listening ear or a trusted confidant.

One of 65 Church members serving as an American military chaplain, Brother Shurtleff enjoys the sacred duty of shepherding soldiers from a wide variety of religious backgrounds. His job has taken him to military posts throughout the world and a combat zone in Afghanistan. His own gospel testimony has grown while teaching sermons from the scriptures and worshiping with fellow soldiers eager for blessings.

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The man who could become the first Muslim chaplain in National Guard history is the son of a Baptist mother and a Catholic father who will face east toward Mecca today and pray alone inside his Omaha, Neb., office.

2nd Lt. Rafael Lantigua — half African-American, half Dominican-American, entirely Muslim-American — has an easy way to describe his long strange trip from Army brat to Air Force veteran to the brink of Guard history.

He first points to his Guard-issued camouflage jacket, then to his matching green Muslim prayer cap. He smiles.

Lantigua’s journey began at age 11, when he went to an Army post library in Oklahoma and checked out a book he’d never heard of: the Koran

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Following four suicides at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, officials said Wednesday they are emphasizing to cadets that seeking help for mental health problems won’t jeopardize their military careers.

In the last seven months, two cadets, a faculty member and a staff member at the academy have taken their own lives. The suicides were the first at the school in upstate New York since 1999.

They are part of a larger trend as the strained military wages war in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Army had its highest rate of suicide on record in 2008 and is investigating a spike in the number in January.

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By Elaine Donnelly

Reports describe President Barack Obama as aloof from the drive for gays in the military – a cause he championed during the campaign. Cool posturing will not hide real problems if Obama signs legislation forcing the gay agenda on the military.

Within minutes of Obama’s inauguration, the White House website pledged to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” The catch-phrase inaccurately describes a constitutional statute, Section 654, Title 10, which states that homosexuals are not eligible to serve in the military. In 1993, Congress rejected President Bill Clinton’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” proposal to accommodate discreet homosexuals. Instead, it approved language almost identical to longstanding Defense Department regulations.

But Clinton imposed his convoluted “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” concept on the military anyway, issuing administrative regulations that the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit recognized in 1996 as inconsistent with the law. Restoring “the question” about homosexuality on induction forms (no new legislation required) would reduce the comparatively small number of discharges for homosexuality to near zero.

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In January, 24 U.S. soldiers are believed to have committed suicide — seven confirmed cases and 17 more awaiting confirmation.

By comparison, last January there were only five suicides in the Army.

Last month’s total is not just the highest monthly total since the Army started counting in 1980; it is more deaths than were sustained in combat last month by all branches of the armed forces combined.

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BAUMHOLDER, Germany — Prayer is not often thought of as a weapon, but Col. John F. Haley said it should be in the arsenal of every soldier, just like their M-16.

Haley, the featured speaker at the National Prayer Breakfast in Baumholder, illustrated his point with a quote from Mohandas Gandhi.

“Prayer is not an old woman’s idle amusement,” Gandhi said. “Properly understood and applied, it is the most potent instrument of action.”

On Friday, it brought together more than 150 soldiers, spouses and children. Everyone, including the guest speaker, was surprised by the large crowd, since most of the Baumholder garrison is deployed.

“You could feel it in the room. These people are together,” said Haley, of the 405th Army Field Support Brigade and stationed in Seckenheim.

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With rising suicides and the stress of constant, lengthy deployments, the Army must put the same emphasis on mental fitness as on physical fitness, the Army’s top general said Friday at Fort Bragg.

“When people ask me what keeps me up at night, what I tell them is the thing that I worry most about is the long-term impacts on the mental health of our troops under the repeated combat deployments,” Gen. George W. Casey Jr. said.

Casey, who has been the Army chief of staff for almost two years, made his comments at a press conference at U.S. Army Special Operations Command headquarters.

He responded to questions about statistics released this week on the rising rate of soldier suicides.

“The figures for January 2009 reflect seven suicides and 17 other deaths, cause still to be determined,” said an Army statement released Wednesday.

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