Wait, this smells bad. The universe of "US military veterans" is pretty big, around 24.5M in 2005 ...
http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/resourcesforveterans/a/vets2005.htm
>> At least 6256 US veterans took their own lives in 2005, at an
>> average of 17 a day, according to figures broadcast last night.
>> Former servicemen are more than twice as likely than the rest
>> of the population to commit suicide.
Out of about 32,000 suicides; so like 1/5 of them? There's about 300M people in the US, and 1/12'th of them are vets. Ok, twice as likely, sounds about right.
>> Such statistics compare to the total 3863 US military deaths
>> in Iraq since the invasion in 2003 ...
Uh, they "compare" in that there are two numbers. Other than that?
Bleah,
/jordan