Pentagon Cover Up:
15,000 or more US casualties in Iraq
War
By Mike Whitney
11/17/07 "ICH"
-- -- 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 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
Bush’s war. 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
