Why do twice as many U.S.Iraq vets as civilians commit suicide?

EACH WEEK in 2005, 120 persons who had served in the US military
killed themselves according to a recent CBS news report. 
That is 6,256 suicides in 2005--a rate twice as high as the
general population.

What is the meaning in these statistics? How do we explain this
collapse of faith?  How does that place within where hope lives
disappear into a vacuum bereft of love, compassion, and belief
in life?  Is the participation in war too painful to bear?
  The thought of these soldier victims takes me back to the
soup kitchens where I served occasionally since coming back from
Viet Nam in 1967. In those lines, I met homeless soldiers who
did not take their own lives, but may have contemplated doing so
and, in any case, were psychologically devastated.
 Some watchers estimate that more than three times as many
veterans from the war in Viet Nam have committed suicide as
the 58,000 who lost their lives in direct combat.

Whether it takes the form of soldiers killing themselves because
of internal breakdowns or militants blowing themselves up because
they believe in their cause, suicide is also the abandonment of
hope in civil society to provide meaning and justice.  It is a
reminder that a hollowness remains in the most advanced society
and the most devout of religious faiths.  It reminds us that a
patriotism promoting warfare as its supreme test of loyalty has
deep, decaying cavities.
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This is a small part of a longer piece by Gene Stoltzfutz, a
long-term member and former director of the Christian Peacemaker
Teams [CPT], described in some of our earlier pieces.
Look at his Sept. 20th piece on Myanmar/Burma in Blog Archives.

To read Gene's full text, go to his blog: 
http://www.gstoltzfus.blogspot.com/