The Real Human Cost Of The Iraq War -- The American Side

Dec 30th, 2011

By now you've surely seen the official Pentagon figures for those killed (4,487) and wounded (32,226) in the disastrous Iraq War. Dan Froomkin explains what's wrong with the picture they paint:

"The death count is accurate. But the wounded figure wildly understates the number of American servicemembers who have come back from Iraq less than whole."

He has done his homework:

"The Pentagon's Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center reports having diagnosed 229,106 cases of mild to severe traumatic brain injury from 2000 to the third quarter of 2011, including both Iraq and Afghan vets.

A 2008 study of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans by researchers at the RAND Corporation found that 14 percent screened positive for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and 14 percent for major depression, with 19 percent reporting a probable traumatic brain injury during deployment. (The researchers found that major depression is "highly associated with combat exposure and should be considered as being along the spectrum of post-deployment mental health consequences.") Applying those proportions to the 1.5 million veterans of Iraq, an estimated 200,000 of them would be expected to suffer from PTSD or major depression, with 285,000 of them having experienced a probable traumatic brain injury.