The sad cost of the prolonged military deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan has been made painfully clear in a sobering new report on U.S. Army suicides. Last year, stress overwhelmed a distressing number of American troops, and suicides in the ranks hit a 26-year high.

The Army reported 99 confirmed suicides in 2006, up from 87 in 2005. Whatever efforts the Army has made to address the mental health problems of its active duty forces must be re-evaluated and perhaps redoubled in light of the latest suicide rates.

The new figures also show there were 948 attempted suicides last year. More than 25 percent of those who succeeded in taking their own lives did so while serving in Iraq or Afghanistan.

The suicide toll on a half-million-person Army translates to a rate of 17.3 per 100,000 -- the highest since the Army started counting in 1980. So far this year, 44 soldiers have committed suicide, 17 of them while deployed in Iraq or Afghanistan.

The Army listed failed relationships, legal and financial troubles and the stress of the job as factors behind the soldiers' suicides. The most common deployment location for suicides and attempts was Iraq.

The report also found that the number of days a soldier spent in a war zone contributed to a significantly higher risk of suicide. Certainly it's no secret that the Army has been stretched thin by fighting two wars and has had to extend normal tours of duty from 12 months to 15 this year.

The strain of fighting the longer-than-expected conflict in Iraq and the global war on terrorism is worse than imagined. Much worse.