Iraq War Veteran’s Suicide Letter Describes Trauma of War, Abandonment by Gov’t

- The website Gawker has published the suicide note of an Iraq War veteran who says he took his own life because the trauma of war left him in constant mental and physical agony. Daniel Somers had been diagnosed with traumatic brain injury, post-traumatic stress disorder, and other conditions related to the war. He ran hundreds of combat missions as a machine gunner and carried out interrogations as part of an intelligence team in Baghdad. Later, he worked with Joint Special Operations Command as a senior analyst in Mosul. In a letter first quoted by the Phoenix New Times and written to his family before he killed himself just two weeks ago, Daniel Somers wrote: “During my first deployment, I was made to participate in things, the enormity of which is hard to describe. War crimes, crimes against humanity. Though I did not participate willingly, and made what I thought was my best effort to stop these events, there are some things that a person simply can not come back from. I