It is more than 30 years since the war in Vietnam ended, and still no one has any idea how many Vietnam veterans have taken their own lives because no one has ever tried count them.

The 1990 National Vietnam Veterans Readjustment Study, mandated by Congress and government funded, the study that proved the syndrome now called PTSD, but never even mentioned suicide, in spite of the fact that suicide was central to every study that preceded it, including those on which it was based. No data, no proof.

No proof, no problem.

The United States invaded Iraq in March of 2003 and by August, so many American soldiers had killed themselves that the Army sent a mental health advisory team to investigate. Their report confirmed a suicide rate three times greater than the statistical norm for the armed forces.

It also acknowledged that one third of the psychiatric casualties being evacuated had suicide-related behaviors as part of their clinical presentation. Nonetheless, the team's conclusion was that soldiers were killing themselves for the same reasons that soldiers "typically" kill themselves: personal problems.

A supplement to the report listed things that soldiers most often identified as "stressors:" seeing dead bodies or human remains, being attacked, or losing a friend, but the report itself only mentions marital problems, legal problems, financial problems, what they called "underdeveloped life coping skills.” Translation: soldiers are dying because they are managing their lives and their affairs badly.

Every year since 2003, the suicide rate has increased and another team of military psychiatrists has been dispatched. Their conclusions are always the same: insufficient life coping skills. As recently as August, Elspeth Ritchie of the Army Surgeon General’s office insisted that, in spite of a suicide rate that had reached a 26-year record high, Pentagon studies still haven't found a connection between soldier suicides and war.