President-elect Obama has announced that he wants former Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki to serve as Secretary of Veterans Affairs. The Vietnam War veteran took an unpopular stance in the Donald Rumsfeld Pentagon when he warned that the Bush Administration had badly underestimated the number of US forces needed for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In his remarks, Obama said: “There is no one more distinguished, more determined, or more qualified to build [a 21st century] VA than the leader I am announcing as our next Secretary of Veterans Affairs—Gen. Eric Shinseki. No one will ever doubt that this former Army Chief of Staff has the courage to stand up for our troops and our veterans.”
A provision in the fiscal 2025 defense policy bill will require the Defense Department to include the military occupational specialty of service members who die by suicide in its annual report on suicide deaths, though it remains to be seen how much data the department will actually disclose.