abcnews confirms what most of blogtopia (y!wctp!) has been speculating for the past 6 months: the rate of suicide among soldiers stationed there is higher than normal:
u.s. soldiers in iraq are killing themselves at an unusually high rate, despite the work of special teams sent to help troops deal with combat stress, the pentagon's top doctor said wednesday...
winkenwerder said the military has documented 21 suicides during 2003 among troops involved in the iraq war. eighteen of those were army soldiers, he said.
that's a suicide rate for soldiers in iraq of about 13.5 per 100,000, [assistant secretary of defense for health affairs dr. william] winkenwerder said. in 2002, the army reported an overall suicide rate of 11.1 per 100,000.
the overall suicide rate nationwide during 2001 was 10.7 per 100,000, according to the federal centers for disease control and prevention.
by contrast, only two u.s. military personnel killed themselves during the 1991 persian gulf war, although that conflict only lasted about a month. the army recorded 102 suicides during 1991 for a rate of about 13.5 per 100,000.
however, nothing was said in the article about the possibility that some of those suicides may have been self-inflicted wounds (for the purposes of going home on medical leave) gone horrible awry...
cross-posted at our own blog.