Vets

The epidemic of suicides among veterans of the Iraq war with PTSD has become so common that I sat down to write about two news ones today and end up writing about an even more recent, and shocking, one. It involves a decorated vet who wrote about his PTSD for...

It is being billed as the first full-scale testimony in Congress by anti-Iraq war veterans, and it's a shame it has taken this long. The statement by Matthis Chiroux, 24, who is now refusing to be deployed to Iraq -- after serving in Afghanistan and elsewhere -- will surely get...

A week of hearings in Washington on the alarming spike in suicides among veterans of the Iraq war, and an official cover-up of the numbers, has ended with both the Veterans Affairs chief and the V.A. mental health director whose advice on the matter was "Shh," still holding their jobs....

Even after covering the tragic final chapters in the lives of so many U.S. military personnel in Iraq or veterans back home, I found the brutally frank opening line in an obituary from four days ago particularly haunting: "Donald P. Christy, Lt. Col, USAF, passed away April 21, 2008 in...

Marking the milestone of 4,000 U.S. dead in Iraq, The New York Times on Tuesday published a gallery of tiny photos of the most recent 1,002 fatalities. But earlier in the front section, on page 4, to draw attention to its interactive exhibit on the Web, the paper published three...

Each one of the 4,000 U.S. military deaths in Iraq is significant and tragic but one that doesn't yet count -- let's call him #4001 -- offers more of a clue to the true dimensions of the war than most of the rest.

Sgt. James W. McDonald, 26, who had...

For almost five years, I have been chronicling the shocking number of suicides among U.S. troops in Iraq - and after they come home (it's a major component of my new book). They now number well over 1000, and a new one has come to light this past week. Or...

The mother of a U.S. soldier killed in Iraq this past January filed a lawsuit yesterday in a Pennsylvania state court against KBR, the defense contractor that was in charge of inspecting the wiring at the base where Sgt. Ryan Maseth died -- from electrocution. This has brought to attention...

Looking back at all of the sad, tragic and unnecessary deaths in Iraq that I have written about in the past five years, it is hard to identify one that stands out. But one death does still haunt me, above all others.

Alyssa Peterson was one of the first female...

For almost five years, I have been writing, at Editor & Publisher, about suicides among our troops in Iraq or when they return home. Several chapters on this subject are featured in my new book, So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits -- and the President --...