Monday, February 16, 2004
American army suicides in Iraq reach 21
Indo-Asian News Service Washington, February 15
As it prepares to release a report on mental health issues affecting its troops, the American Army has determined that at least 21 soldiers have committed suicide in Iraq or Kuwait, reports UPI.
Army spokeswoman Martha Rudd said the suicides do not include an undisclosed number of soldiers who killed themselves after leaving Iraq or Kuwait. And several "non-hostile" deaths there are still being investigated.
The new figure suggests the suicide rate has risen substantially since mid-January when 18 suicides had been confirmed.
At that point, a Pentagon official put the army suicide rate at 13.5 per 100,000 -- calling that "a very small increase" over a past average of 10 to 11 suicides per 100,000 soldiers.
Asked how the three additional confirmed suicides affect the rate, Rudd said the army wouldn't comment before the mental health report was released. Some veterans groups said they are worried.
"I fear that the military is in denial and that they are rationalizing this," said Wayne Smith, an adviser to the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation.
"Why is the Army equivocating and why is it delaying? It echoes some of the problems we saw in Vietnam and hopefully learned lessons from." Spokeswoman Rudd said there was no deliberate delay in presenting the report, citing scheduling conflicts among the 12 members of the team that wrote it, and the need to prepare documents for release.
She also said there was no effort to manipulate suicide statistics.
But Smith pointed to the army's statement that it wasn't including suicides that occurred outside of Iraq or Kuwait as a reason for concern.
Smith called the suicides "the tip of an iceberg," noting reports of hundreds of medical evacuations from Iraq for mental problems. The army first voiced concern about soldier suicides in Iraq in July 2003 when it saw a spike in suicides that month.
Announcement of some deaths has lagged by several months.
A week ago, the Pentagon announced the names of seven additional service members who died from non-hostile causes "while in support of Operation Enduring Freedom or Operation Iraqi Freedom".
How thoroughly the military is reviewing deployment issues that might trigger mental problems or suicide is unclear.
Rudd said the team did not look at whether any soldiers who committed suicide had taken the anti-malaria drug Lariam, which has been associated with depression, suicidal thinking and rare reports of suicide. She said the military believes that drug cannot cause suicide and therefore cannot be a factor.
One Pentagon official recently suggested that military suicide rates were not alarming.
"This is where I so totally disagree with the military," said Smith. "It is absolutely a problem. These suicides are the tip of an iceberg and I am not willing to wait till the army decides the numbers are alarming to intervene. Something is going wrong."
© Hindustan Times Ltd. 2004.