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Incalculable pain
The Pentagon is underreporting the number of American soldier
casualties in Iraq, say House Democrats.
By Mark Benjamin
12/10/05 "Salon.com"
-- -- A group of seven House Democrats
wrote President Bush this week, accusing the Pentagon of
underreporting casualties in Iraq.
It's a shocking charge. The letter writers argue that Pentagon
casualty reports show only a sliver of the injuries, mostly physical
ones from bombs or bullets. But war doesn't work like that, the
Democrats declare, adding that the reports skip a horrible panoply
of accidents, illness, disease and mental trauma.
"We are concerned that that the figures that were released to the
public by your administration do not accurately represent the true
toll that this war has taken on the American people," the group
wrote Bush on Dec. 7. The Dems are right.
Pentagon casualty
reports show 2,390 service members dead from Iraq and
Afghanistan and over 16,000 wounded. By far the vast majority of the
wounded and dead are from Iraq.
But by Dec. 8, 2005, the military had evacuated another 25,289
service members from Iraq and Afghanistan for injuries or illnesses
not caused directly by enemy bullets or bombs, according to the U.S.
Transportation Command. That statistic includes everything from
serious injuries in Humvee wrecks or other accidents to more routine
illnesses that could be unrelated to field battles.
Yet those service members are not included in the Pentagon's
casualty reports. That's odd. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines
a casualty as "a military person lost through death, wounds, injury,
sickness, internment or capture or through being missing in action."
Continued here
"Salon.com"
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