The casualties continue to mount after they come home ...

It is only recently that I have come to think of myself as a war widow. When my husband Daniel came home from Vietnam in 1970, the relationship between combat-related stress and suicide was officially unrecognized. When Daniel took his own life, it never occurred to me to blame the war. I thought that if only I had been kinder, more patient, more vigilant, I might have prevented his death. The shame and guilt on top of my grief were a terrible burden. It was decades before I could find some compassion and forgiveness for that young woman who had no idea what she was up against.

In the years since Daniel's death, there has been a steady stream of reports, many from mainstream sources, claiming shocking numbers of suicides among Vietnam veterans. Rather than tracking or investigating those claims, the government has first refused to investigate and then used the lack of evidence to argue that the claims were untrue.

That disingenuous stance mirrors the current official response. While a mental health advisory team was sent to Iraq in 2003 to investigate alarming reports of suicides among American troops, the team concluded that soldiers were killing themselves, not because of the horrors of combat, but for what was labeled "underdeveloped life coping skills". The Army's Surgeon General told "Stars and Stripes" in December that he had "no evidence linking suicides with multiple deployments or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder" "(W)e've had young soldiers," he elaborated, "who will get bad relationship news and walk right into a Porta-Potty and end their lives."

Since 2003, the suicide rate for active-duty soldiers has continued to rise. The Army camouflages the real numbers as non-combat-related accidents. Veterans' suicides are not included on official casualty lists because they are not considered service-related deaths.

This administration's policies regarding PTSD and combat-related suicide are consistent with their claims to support the troops while making budgetary decisions that endanger them. In the past six years, more than 22,500 soldiers, most diagnosed with PTSD or traumatic brain injury, have been dismissed from service with a diagnosis of "personality disorder," which, considered a pre-existing condition, absolves the VA of all responsibility for their future care. Despite cries of foul from psychiatrists, veterans' rights groups, injured soldiers and their families, and even the military officials required to process these dismissals, the practice continues and successful appeals are almost non-existent. "The Army Times" reports a backlog of some 600,000 veterans' benefits claims on appeal. On average, it takes the VA 177 days to process an original claim and 657 days to process an appeal. If psychically injured veterans die with their case under appeal, the case dies with them. continued →