Newspaper Carries Word of Another Mysterious U.S. Soldier Death in Iraq

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Newspaper Carries Word of Another Mysterious U.S. Soldier Death in Iraq
Bloomberg News, meanwhile, reports today that a government study has found that current or former U.S. military personnel make up fully 20% of suicides in this country.

By Greg Mitchell

NEW YORK (April 14, 2008) -- For the past five years, since shortly after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, I have chronicled -- often a lonely pursuit -- the deaths of nearly one thousand U.S. military personnel who have died in that war from "non-hostile" causes.

These include deaths from illness, accident, friendly fire and suicide. The suicide rate has surged in the past few years, as multiple tours increased, and this has always seemed especially haunting for me. Bloomberg News reports this week that a government study has found that current or former U.S. military personnel make up fully 20% of suicides in this country.

Word emerged over the weekend of another mysterious, non-hostile fatality (not necessarily a suicide) in Iraq. His name is Jeremiah Hughes. The army is investigating and may never release its findings.

But the final "mood" icon on his MySpace page, I discovered today, was a frown -- with the word: "Crushed."

Army Spc. Jeremiah Hughes, 26, left for Iraq in December with the Stryker brigade from Hawaii -- three years after a previous tour. An article in the Honolulu Advertiser on Saturday quotes an entry from his MySpace page just before he was deployed: "I'm gonna hate being away from my wife for over a year. And I'm gonna hate not being able to spend time with her, or my friends, or my dogs. I'm really gonna dislike not being able to drink every once in a while when I get irritated by the things around me. And then of course, I can't say that I'm gonna be too fond of people shooting at me again, or trying to blow me up again, or any of that stupid stuff."

The Pentagon announced that he died Wednesday in Balad, Iraq, "from injuries sustained in a noncombat incident in Abu Ghraib." His wife survives him.

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