[R-G] Pentagon Cover Up: 15,000 or More US Deaths in Iraq War?

[Anthony Fenton]

Weekend Edition
November 17 / 18, 2007
Pentagon Cover Up
15,000 or More US Deaths in Iraq War?
http://counterpunch.org/whitney11172007.html

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":
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/11/13/cbsnews_investigates/ 
main3496471.shtml

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