Is there an epidemic of suicides in veteran's from Iraq? The government doesn't keep records

The question is what is happening to veterans who have returned from Afghanistan and Iraq. Don't ask the Bush administration, because they don't want us to know. Rick Perlstein reports on suicides among veterans. He learned that CBS had done what the Veteran's administration refused to do.

CBS asked the states for records of suicides among returning veterans, and the data for 45 states was quickly and easily available.

In 2005, for example, in just those 45 states, there were at least 6,256 suicides among those who served in the armed forces. That’s 120 each and every week, in just one year.

Dr. Steve Rathbun is the acting head of the Epidemiology and Biostatistics Department at the University of Georgia. CBS News asked him to run a detailed analysis of the raw numbers that we obtained from state authorities for 2004 and 2005.

It found that veterans were more than twice as likely to commit suicide in 2005 than non-vets. (Veterans committed suicide at the rate of between 18.7 to 20.8 per 100,000, compared to other Americans, who did so at the rate of 8.9 per 100,000.)

One age group stood out. Veterans aged 20 through 24, those who have served during the war on terror. They had the highest suicide rate among all veterans, estimated between two and four times higher than civilians the same age. (The suicide rate for non-veterans is 8.3 per 100,000, while the rate for veterans was found to be between 22.9 and 31.9 per 100,000.)

If the veterans are committing suicides at twice the rate as non veterans, then the military is responsible for at least half the deaths. That's 3,128 suicides in 2005 alone, roughly three times the reported casualty rate in Iraq and Afghanistan during the same period.

Rick has it right. Conservatives hate to count. Because when they count, it shows America how badly they failed. They can't count, but they sure can weasel.

Whatever the reason, the VA should be keeping records and trying to find out what the problem is. But it can't. That would politically embarrass the Bush administration, the Republicans who support the war, and Sen. Joe Lieberman.

Who knows? It might even embarrass anyone who thinks the U.S. should stay in Iraq indefinitely.