"Hidden Epidemic" of Suicides in Iraq Revealed

Posted by GottaLaff , Brave New Films at 6:59 AM on November 14, 2007.

This post, written by GottaLaff, originally appeared on Cliff Schecter's Brave New Films Blog

Mental illness. Suicide. Just more side effects of the disaster in Iraq that Bush and Cheney own. It's theirs. And guess what, guys? It followed us home. So much for fighting them over there so we don't have to... blah blah blah.

Sometimes the enemy is the demon that torments you, the demon that doesn't show up for 6 months to a year.

[A] CBS News analysis reveals [some of the 25 million veterans] lose that battle, and take their own lives, at a clip described by various experts as "stunning" and "alarming," according to Chief Investigative Correspondent Armen Keteyian. One called it a "hidden epidemic."

Be proud, BushCo. When they come home, the bloody bits and pieces of human flesh stay with them. The nightmares stay with them. The horror and carnage and anguish all stay with them.

He says no one had ever counted just how many suicides there are nationwide among those who had served in the military -- until now.

The five-month CBS News probe, based upon a detailed analysis of data obtained from death records from 2004 and 2005, found that veterans were more than twice as likely to commit suicide in 2005 as non-vets.

A recent Veteran Affairs Department estimate says some 5,000 ex-servicemen and women will commit suicide this year, largely as a result of mental health issues, and Keteyian says, "Our numbers are much higher than that, overall."

5,000 dead. Not shot, not grenaded, not killed. 5,000 suicides. That's about 2,000 more than died on 9/11. Yeah, we're really winning this one.

Oh but who cares. They did what the administration wanted them to do, what none of the insensitive, fear-mongering, shock-and-awed chickenhawks would have the guts to do themselves.

After the weary, mentally destroyed, broken soldiers come back, it's pretty much, "Staff Sergeant who?"

"The war didn't end foe him when he came home," says [Staff Sgt. Justin Reyes's] mother, Jean Willis. "I think he was being tormented and tortured by his experiences."

Waterboarding isn't the only torture out there, now is it W? Try being part of an occupation in a country that never attacked us. Oh yeah, that's right, you won't. But you have no problem sending others to fulfill your sick fantasies.

Medical records show Reyes suffered severe psychological trauma after witnessing "multiple dead" and having to "sort through badly mutilated bodies," Keteyian reports. Earlier this year, a month after separating from the Army, Reyes hanged himself with a cord in his apartment. He was 26.

Sleep well, BushCo.

Tagged as: military, suicide, us troops, waroniraq, itraq war

GottaLaff is a regular blogger for Cliff Schecter's Blog