When the U.S. military death toll in Iraq dropped to 13 last month it received wide attention.  But now, midway through August, the toll this month has already topped the July rate.  Meanwhile, two more Iraq vets have killed themselves here at home.  

A U.S. marine killed by gunmen in Fallujah west of Baghdad on Thursday became the 15th American to die in August.  A troubling seven had died in noncombat incidents.   The 15 tally tops July by two.

And the war at home?

Despite the overall drop in U.S. deaths in Iraq there has been a spate of "noncombat" fatalities there in the past week -- including a female soldier who apparently was accidentally shot by a colleague who was cleaning a weapon.  Also, Iraq vets (some who may be set to return there) continue to kill themselves at home at an alarming rate.

The latest example in that latter group was reported this morning.

The 21-year-old Army National Guardsman from Iowa, Jake Clements, had served a tour in Iraq and was likely heading backing there.  He was on the phone with his former girlfriend when he fatally shot himself in the basement of her  home in Holmen, Wisc., late Friday -- while she was upstairs -- officials said.

"My shot made Joseph Dwyer famous. Did it also help lead to his death?"  So begins a new article in The Washington Post by Warren Zinn.

He is referring to a tragedy I wrote about here a couple of weeks ago:  A former Army medic made famous by a photograph that showed him carrying an injured Iraqi boy during the first week of the war had died of an apparent overdose.  Joseph Patrick Dwyer died at a hospital in Pinehurst, N.C., after battling PTSD.  He was 31.

The photograph, taken by Zinn in March 2003, showed Dwyer running to a makeshift military hospital while cradling the boy. The photo appeared in newspapers, magazines and television broadcasts worldwide, making Dwyer a symbol of heroism.  But he tried to deflect praise back to his entire unit.

A former Army medic made famous by a photograph that showed him carrying an injured Iraqi boy during the first week of the war has died of an apparent overdose, police say.  Joseph Patrick Dwyer died last week at a hospital in Pinehurst, N.C., after battling PTSD.  He was 31.

A diary here mentioned him a couple of days ago but more details have emerged since then, and here they are.

The photograph, taken in March 2003, showed Dwyer running to a makeshift military hospital while cradling the boy. The photo appeared in newspapers, magazines and television broadcasts worldwide, making Dwyer a symbol of heroism.  But he tried to deflect praise back to his entire unit.

Sean Webster was helping other severely wounded Iraq vets cope with their injuries but, in the end, could not save himself.  

For the past  year, Sgt. Sean Webster, 23,  had worked in  Wounded Warrior Battalion at Camp Pendleton, aiding sailors and Marines wounded in Iraq or Afghanistan get much-needed medical and psychological care.  

Just two weeks ago he was featured in a front-page story on this effort in the local North County Times newspaper.   "I'm a wounded Marine and I know what these guys are going through," he said.

"I'm not going back to Iraq," Army Sgt. Benjamin Miller, 24,  told friends back home in Minnesota. And, indeed, he is not. Three days ago, he was buried, having committed suicide while home on leave. He had been scheduled to get out of the service in January but was "stop-lossed."

For several years,  I have covered the suicides of U.S. military personnel in Iraq or when they returned home.  Now it has become an epidemic.

In most cases, the news only emerges because a local reporter gets on the case. It happened again this week, with the reporter this time Elizabeth Mohr of the St. Paul Pioneer Press.

The "soldier suicide" epidemic in Iraq continues.  Another young American soldier, this one age 19, has apparently killed himself in Iraq, and at least two other reports  of "noncombat" deaths in the past week or so may fall in the same category.  

As usual, the latest case emerged from a local newspaper, while the Pentagon continues an investigation that usually leads to no public announcement.  I had followed this incident from the beginning, so the report of a likely suicide does not surprise me.  

He was Pvt. Eugene D.M. Kanakaole, who hailed from  Hawaii, and was assigned to the 87th Engineer Company.  According to the report this weekend in the Anderson Daily Herald in Indiana (where his mother once lived),  he was found in Balad, Iraq, on June 11 with a single bullet wound in his head.

For five years now, I have been chronicling the disturbing number of "noncombat" deaths in Iraq, often suicides, which usually come to light only due to the diligence of local newspapers.  As part of that effort, last August I briefly described  yet another case, involving a 20-year-old Texas woman named Kamisha Block, who apparently was much loved in her Vidor hometown.  It was said to be death by "friendly fire," which officially is fairly rare in Iraq, so I kept an eye on it for days, in case of an update.

Many more nonhostile deaths arrived, and so I forgot about Kamisha.  Last night, a reader sent me a link to a diary here by "greenies,"  which in turn led me to a news article in yesterday’s Beaumont Enterprise.    I'm updating and expanding that diary now.

Forget friendly fire.  It turns out that Spc. Block was actually murdered, and the killer, another soldier, Staff Sgt. Brandon Norris, then turned the gun on himself.

As if the "soldier suicide" problem wasn't bad enough already,  word has just emerged from ABC News and (the unlikely) Washington Times that our government is testing drugs with severe side effects, including promoting suicidal behavior,  on hundreds of  vets.  

In one case, the V.A. took three months to alert the veterans to the severe mental effects caused by one of the drugs, the controversial Chantix, used to halt smoking.

They are even using cash payments to attract patients into medical experiments "that often target distressed soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan," the newspaper puts it today.

Last December, a remarkable article appeared in  Army Times, titled: "Not us. We're not going: Soldiers in 2nd Platoon, Charlie 1-26 stage a 'mutiny' that pulls the unit apart."  It was written by Kelly Kennedy, who had been embedded with a platoon in Iraq, and was just one part of her far-reaching series on that unit.  Kennedy has continued to write about the plight of soldiers and veterans as a top Military Times reporter.

Kennedy back then described several incidents that caused many soldiers in the unit to take a stand -- and "stand down" in Iraq due largely to the unbearable stress they had been under, particularly after witnessing many colleagues brutally killed.  Among other things, they were afraid they would take their anger and frustration out on innocent Iraqis.  After the mutiny, many were transfered elsewhere.

One of the triggers for the mutiny, Kennedy explained, was a quite shocking and, as far as we knew, a first in this war:  Last July, a much respected first sergeant  had taken out his weapon while out on a mission and, after shouting, "F--- this!",  killed himself right in front of his men.  

As some here may know,  I have devoted a good deal of my writing in past months, and even years, to the plight of PTSD-afflicted troops in Iraq, and vets here at home.  But rather than relate even more bad news about recent  suicides and the like, let me point to the positive results of all of the belated publicity of recent weeks -- and personal pleas from people here, private therapists and counselors,  and activists working with vets groups.

Due to the concerns and pressures,  a lot of individuals and groups have offered their services to help vets, going outside the V.A. which few, for good reason, trust right now, particularly after the infamous "Shhh..." email and the like.

Here is just one example, which followed publicity of a suicide.

An issue I have been writing about for years has finally hit center stage in the media in the past week with a TIME cover and numerous TV and newspaper reports.  I even mentioned it in my appearance on Bill Moyers' show last Friday.   I am referring, of course, to the disturbing rate of PTSD among Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, the surging suicide epidemic and new revelations about the high number of soldiers on meds, principally anti-depressants, fully 12% according to an oft-cited new survey.

Of course, all of this is tied to multiple deployments in Iraq -- and the whole war there itself, naturally.

Rather than go over this all again (see past diaries), let me instead just report on what my friend Paul Rieckhoff said on CBS News this morning.  

There's a reason I use the breakin line to Greg Mitchells book So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits--and the President--Failed on Iraq.

Part of that reason is an article printed in the Asian Times, I just finished reading.

In recent months, the issue of suicides among troops in Iraq, and returnees at home, has -- after long being ignored -- earned wide attention in the U.S. press.  Many newspapers have documented tragic examples in their own backyards, the only way they can really get recognized at all, and I have been documenting this in my writings here and elsewhere, and in my new book, for almost five years.

One of the latest cases emerged yesterday,  from Dennis Yusko at the Albany (N.Y.) Times-Union, and is all too typical.   Haunted by his experiences in the war,   the Iraq vet hanged himself next to a Bible, his Army uniform and a  statue of an angel, said his mother, who discovered the body herself  after he failed to show up to work for two days.

On Memorial Day this year, many press reports focus on the fallout from the current war, not past conflicts, as was long typical.  Much in evidence, after years of being virtually ignored, is the frightful surge in suicide among Iraq vets both here and in Iraq.

Many newspapers this weekend ran overall assessments of the problem, published editorials calling for the military and the V.A. to take stronger measures to fight post- traumatic stress disorder, or recalled recent suicides in their circulation area.  

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram today profiles the family of another suicide victim, this one in Iraq.  He shot himself in front of his own men after   weeks of witnessing the deaths of his comrades.  
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On Memorial Day weekend,  yet another American family is mourning the death of son who survived the war in Iraq -- only to fall victim at home from post traumatic shock disorder.  

The family lives in Corpus Christi, Texas, and the Marine was Chad Oligschlaeger, age 21, who committed suicide this week at the Twenty Nine Palms base in California.

While the cause of his death is still being investigated, family members say he  was taking eight different types of medications to deal with post traumatic stress disorder after serving two tours in Iraq.

For nearly five years -- long before I started doing it recently at DailyKos -- Editor & Publisher has tracked the growing number of suicides among U.S. military personnel in Iraq and after they return home. The deaths are usually branded as simply from "nonhostile" causes by the Pentagon, and the real news often emerges only from local newspapers (yesterday's account concerning a murder/suicide was an exception)

Now it has happened again, via an opinion piece in the Anchorage Daily News.

http://www.adn.com/...

There, Soren Wuerth tells the story of a friend named Merlin, who had graduated from the village school where Wuerth teaches. Merlin had returned to the school, where he had run cross country, to proudly talk about joining the Army and surviving basic training.

The epidemic of suicides among veterans of the Iraq war with PTSD has become so common that I sat down to write about two news ones today and end up writing about an even more recent, and shocking, one.  It involves a decorated vet who wrote about his PTSD for the Marine Corps Gazette-- and this week killed himself and his brother after a long police chase in Arizona.

Police have discovered no motive for the killings, nor why the brothers earlier in the week may have planned to commit suicide by driving into the Grand Canyon -- Thelma and Louise style.

Staff Sgt. Travis Twiggs, 36, who enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1993 and held the combat action ribbon -- and  met President Bush a few weeks ago --  wrote a lengthy article in the January issue of the Marine Corps Gazette detailing his efforts to deal with post-traumatic stress disorder.   He loved his country so much he named his son America, The Arizona Republic reports today.