Eric Ruder at Dissident Voice reports on massive numbers of casualties being downplayed by the military, including the almost 20 veterans who commit suicide every day:

As for PTSD, the Pentagon officially acknowledges that 38,000 veterans have been diagnosed with it since 2003–so if the Rand study of 300,000 soldiers with PTSD is accurate, that means some 260,000 have either not sought treatment, not been diagnosed or simply aren’t being counted by the military.

This isn’t surprising, given the culture of denial that pervades the military and veterans health care system. In April, for example, an e-mail surfaced from Ira Katz, deputy chief patient care services officer for mental health at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), acknowledging that 1,000 veterans under VA care attempt suicide every month. On average, 18 veterans commit suicide in the U.S. every day, and four of those are veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

To these numbers, we need to add the huge numbers of divorces, the children forced to grow up without parents (or without physically or mentally fit parents), and the fact that so many people in the world have no respect for what we are doing with our military.  Also consider the deaths and injuries our own military has inflicted on thousands of Iraqi adults and children and the millions of Iraqi citizens who have been displaced to Syria and elsewhere.

And, of course, don’t forget the number of American soldiers killed in combat.  That number is now 4113.   If you laid their bodies end to end, they would stretch almost five miles.

All for the price of . . . remind me, why is our military in Iraq?  What’s the official government position these days?