http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-0312260174dec26,1,6709671.story......Suell's death comes at a time when the military is investigating the growing number of suicides by U.S. troops in the Persian Gulf region. Since the U.S.-led coalition invaded Iraq in the spring, 18 soldiers and two Marines have committed suicide, most of them after major combat was declared over May 1, the military said.
The Army is concerned about the deaths. Outside experts have said the rate is alarmingly high compared with the military's average suicide rate. A report by a 12-member team of military and civilian mental-health professionals dispatched to Iraq in October to evaluate troops is expected to be released after the holidays, officials said.
Independent experts said they hope the team's report offers some insight into the suicides. Did they result from personal issues, such as the loss of close relationship, or from legal or financial matters? Or did they involve larger, more sensitive issues about the U.S. mission?
Those broader questions relate to the morale of troops in Iraq, many of whom have complained of their long deployments. And they bear upon whether the Bush administration is overstraining the military with such practices as deploying soldiers, such as Suell, on consecutive tours with insufficient family time, experts said. Army officials have declined to comment on the potential contents of the report.will this be a one-shot deal, or will it continue to be discussed in venues other than this one......amazing what the time lag is on stories like this.....stories that loll around in the dark dungeons of the DU internet, then blink on and off in the "real" media after quite some time, only to be flushed down the memory hole.
here's another:
Twenty-eight years old and looking for work, Uday Mohammed would seem the perfect candidate for the new Iraqi police and military forces. The only problem is that he is too afraid to sign up. "It's no good because I could be attacked," he said Saturday at one of Baghdad's busy markets for day laborers. "It is very dangerous right now."
The U.S.-led coalition is eager to shift security responsibilities to Iraqi hands, but many men of the age most likely to answer that call say they are deterred by unrelenting insurgent attacks on Iraq's new police and civil defense forces. At least 116 Iraqi security personnel have been killed since May, and three suicide bombings at police stations in the past week killed 26 people and wounded 46 others.
Adding to the death toll among Iraq's police and military ranks, U.S. troops near the northern city of Kirkuk killed three police officers early Saturday after mistaking them for guerrillas, according to Reuters.
Hoping to stem waves of attrition from the new Iraqi army, the coalition has sharply raised salaries for members of the new force, in some cases as much as doubling their pay, a U.S. military official said Saturday. Every member of the Iraqi army now receives $60 more each month, which doubles the salary for new recruits and lifts top officers to $240 a month, said Marine Col. Allen Weh, chief of staff of the Coalition Military Assistance Transition Team.http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0312210353dec21,1,2908798.storyanother story that's been around for awhile, just surfacing in the mainstream....but what about all the "good news" in Iraq
they just did another very good story about how sucky things are there, morale-wise, at Xmas time.
will see if I can figure out how to pull that one up.
Bad as the Tribune's oped page is, mostly (a few exceptions, but 70% WSJ Editorial page quality), there's a pretty decent amount of actual reporting going on
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