OP/ED: Conspiracy? US Casualties Count is 17,000 Short

The last time the politicians ran an American war (Vietnam), two of the things that were instrumental in ending it were media coverage of flag draped coffins & the staggering casualties count. It forced justification for this war action onto the front burner of American dialogue. We already know that there has been a White House media blackout on filming the returning coffins. A corporate media, complicit to the core, is now, maybe, reporting on the misrepresentation of numbers by the Pentagon?



The complicity of the corporate media to keep this out of American living rooms & newspapers is as culpable as the White House for forcing it to be suppressed in an election year. The reports that are surfacing now about the lost Iraqi campaign can be "debated", meaning that counterpoints, however weak, can be hoisted onto the daily news cycle by the White House & it's network of pundits. Numbers, however, don't lie & can't be nearly as easily explained away.
When you add these numbers to another set that the White House does not want counted ( combatant & non combatant locals), we see, as of 9/8/2004:(ESTIMATE) TOTAL KILLED: 55,842
(ESTIMATE) TOTAL SERIOUSLY INJURED: 114,391

The methodology of the above count is also listed in the link provided.

Related News Links:
www.unknownnews.net

[edit on 17-9-2004 by Bout Time]

[edit on 17-9-2004 by Nerdling]

[edit on 9-17-2004 by Valhall]

pretty sickening, huh? None of that was done in my name I hope.

It's like we're all living in vitual reality.
The numbers you posted have to be accurate - why else would
5600 retired servicemembers be involuntarily called back to active duty?
The gap they've been required to fill must be far greater then 8000.
(Supposed number of casualties/fatalities).

Hate verbalizing this but I have a friend from Pakistan who remains
in contact with friends & family in the middle east. He told me the numbers
of dead US soldiers is much higher then being reported in our press.
He's not a bad person and has no reason to lie.
I hope europeans get a hold of this information and blow the lid off this coverup.

All that hear-say coming from a guy thats named "bushblows".... things that make you go hmmm.

That 55,000 number is very misleading.

That number is including Iraqi and Afghan (ally and enemy) troops, not just the US military. There is no way the number of US troop deaths is over 1100.

It is important to note the military definition of a casualty --"Any person who is lost to the organization by having been declared dead, duty status - whereabouts unknown, missing, ill, or injured." According to the article, the military has had to evacuate 16,765 individual service members from Iraq & Afghanistan for illnesses not directly related to combat, which would seem to still fit the definition of a casualty. I would suspect that a lot of these illnesses are related to mental health.

The Washington Times also picked up the story (see link below) and reported that over 32,000 veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan who are now back in the U.S. have received medical treatment from the Department of Veteran Affairs, although it is not specified what portion of these visits are because of war-related illness.

www.washtimes.com...

It is interesting, but not surprising, that the focus is only on injuries obtained during combat. I think that mental illness is a very real side-effect of being a soldier in a war zone. A recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine approximated that up to 17% of soldiers returning from Iraq will experience a mental disorder within 4 months after returning from Iraq (see content.nejm.org... ) This figure may even be higher considering that debilitating PTSD may not surface until years later.

With the election coming up, the Bush administration is going to do anything and everything to keep support for the war high, and a big part of that is minimize the impact on the soldiers. (This isn't endemic to Bush & Co.--any administration waging a war wants to keep public support high) This is why Bush doesn't go to any funerals, this is why we don't see coffins coming home, and this is why the administration was "outraged" when the names of those killed were read on TV. De-humanizing the soldiers in the public eye is a big part of their pro-war propaganda campaign. If the public is confronted with the fact that nearly 1 in 5 soldiers will return from Iraq with some kind of mental disorder, I think that would put a big dent in public support.

Think about the in-depth coverage of the Olympians--we are brought to tears by the stories of their struggles and their histories. We become attached to the young gymnasts and aging marathon runners when we see their grimaces of pain and learn that they overcame illness to get to the Olympics or that this could be their last chance for a medal.

Now imagine if we saw the same coverage of individual soldiers. How we would feel if night after night, we saw these heart-wrenching stories on the news as the soldiers returned home--the story of an 18 year old boy who joined the army because it was the only way that he could afford to go to college, he went to Iraq, but then became so affected by having to kill people--the enemy, but they are still people--and having to live in constant fear for months on end that upon returning home, he suffered from such severe post traumatic stress disorder and depression that he experienced suicidal thoughts and depression. Going to college wouldn't even be an option at that point. Shouldn't he be considered a casualty of war also?

I think that it is important to humanize the soldiers--it is important to accurately inform the public of the impact of going to war. Hiding the fact that many of the people fighting this war will suffer the consequences for the rest of their lives is propaganda. Unfortunately, reminding us that the casualties of war go way beyond lives or limbs lost will serve to lessen public support and goes against government sentiment, especially right before the election.

...against the American people: we recently had a situation in NY where 2 detectives were killed by someone they were arresting. The images of that were all over the daily's. Now compare that with no less of a tradegy as a young soldiers death....not imagery.
One of our elected official here in NY said "this is what the death penalty is for", signaling his postion on the penalty phase for this criminal.

So, when your support to drive change is needed (pushing the death penalty) - show flag draped coffins, play the bag pipes & show a sea of uniformed brothers in arms mourning one of theirs. When votes are to be had and a war to be kept sanitary in the publics mind, no more that a video game death count, show nothing. Tell me that is not a PsyOp?

be careful to not aid and confort the enemy by talking about the fact that more are injured than we are supposed to know about...
that is terrorist talk...

only somewhat sarcastic... actually more serious...

IMO... i think that, like the first gulf war, we will find that the actual casualties are at least double what they admitted to at the time.
Until the next administration feels safe enough to disclose the truth by their distance from it...

This just an example of the typical spin put on every piece of information released to us buy our government. Who knows what the real numbers are. I know it's not what the white house is telling us and I also think that "55,000" is misleading. The mainstream media outlets are just going to report the numbers given to them by the gov't without question in hopes of the next "exclusive". Ole boys club playing ball and scratching each others backs and washing hands.