[Peace-discuss] Veteran suicides

[C. G. Estabrook]

	Pentagon Cover Up
	15,000 or More US Deaths in Iraq War?
	By MIKE WHITNEY

The Pentagon has been concealing the true number of American casualties 
in the Iraq War. The real number exceeds 15,000 and CBS News can prove it.

CBS's Investigative Unit wanted to do a report on the number of suicides 
in the military and "submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to 
the Department of Defense". After 4 months they received a document 
which showed--that between 1995 and 2007-- there were 2,200 suicides 
among "active duty" soldiers.

Baloney.

The Pentagon was covering up the real magnitude of the "suicide 
epidemic". Following an exhaustive investigation of veterans' suicide 
data collected from 45 states; CBS discovered that in 2005 alone "there 
were at least 6,256 among those who served in the armed forces. That's 
120 each and every week in just one year."

That is not a typo. Active and retired military personnel, mostly young 
veterans between the ages of 20 to 24, are returning from combat and 
killing themselves in record numbers. We can assume that "multiple-tours 
of duty" in a war-zone have precipitated a mental health crisis of which 
the public is entirely unaware and which the Pentagon is in total denial.

If we add the 6,256 suicide victims from 2005 to the "official" 3,865 
reported combat casualties; we get a sum of 10,121. Even a low-ball 
estimate of similar 2004 and 2006 suicide figures, would mean that the 
total number of US casualties from the Iraq war now exceed 15,000.

That's right; 15,000 dead US servicemen and women in a war that--as 
yet--has no legal or moral justification.

CBS interviewed Dr. Ira Katz, the head of mental health at the 
Department of Veteran Affairs. Katz attempted to minimize the surge in 
veteran suicides saying, "There is no epidemic of suicide in the VA, but 
suicide is a major problem."

Maybe Katz is right. Maybe there is no epidemic. Maybe it's perfectly 
normal for young men and women to return from combat, sink into 
inconsolable depression, and kill themselves at greater rates than they 
were dying on the battlefield. Maybe it's normal for the Pentagon to 
abandon them as soon as soon they return from their mission so they can 
blow their brains out or hang themselves with a garden hose in their 
basement. Maybe it's normal for politicians to keep funding wholesale 
slaughter while they brush aside the casualties they have produced by 
their callousness and lack of courage. Maybe it is normal for the 
president to persist with the same, bland lies that perpetuate the 
occupation and continue to kill scores of young soldiers who put 
themselves in harm's-way for their country.

It's not normal; it's is a pandemic---an outbreak of despair which is 
the natural corollary of living in constant fear; of seeing one's 
friends being dismembered by roadside bombs or children being blasted to 
bits at military checkpoints or finding battered bodies dumped on the 
side of a riverbed like a bag of garbage.

The rash of suicides is the logical upshot of the U.S. war on Iraq. 
Returning soldiers are traumatized by their experience and now they are 
killing themselves in droves. Maybe we should have thought about that 
before we invaded.

Check it out the video at: CBS News "Suicide Epidemic among Veterans"

Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He can be reached at: 
fergiewhitney at msn.com

http://counterpunch.org/whitney11172007.html