STING2 and verte76,
I read this last month in a couple of UK dailies, but can only find the article in the Mirror. The site won't let me post the URL until I've made 15 posts, so here's the whole thing!
US TROOPS SUICIDE TOLL HITS RECORD
Oct 14 2003
By Mark Ellis
American soldiers are committing suicide in record numbers as their deployment in Iraq takes its toll, it was revealed yesterday.
Eleven soldiers and three Marines have killed themselves in seven months, double the average for the military.
And the Army has sent home 478 soldiers for mental health problems.
Army chiefs sent a mental health team to Iraq last month to investigate.
Lt Col Elspeth Cameron Ritchie, a US army psychiatrist, said: "The team are looking at the stresses on the troops, how well they are coping and how well the basic principles of battlefield psychiatry are working."
Health experts say harsh and dangerous living conditions and long deployments can worsen depression.
Meanwhile two US soldiers were killed in attacks, bringing to 96 the number killed since May.
One died in Baiji, 110 miles north of Baghdad, when his armoured car hit a landmine. The other was killed by a rocket grenade in Tikrit.
The only thing I can add is that my daughter's fiance came back from Iraq last week and he's not at all surprised by this. He was in Basra ( the "coalition friendly" part of the country) and says he was shot at on a regular basis and there are explosions occuring there all the time, which are just not being reported in our media. It's much worse in the North where the US troops are based.