Pentagon Admits Underreporting US Casualties; "We Don't Do Webster's" But Aim for "Average Newspaper Reader"

Michael Munk reports:

US military occupation forces in Iraq suffered at least 23 combat casualties in the week ending August 12, 2008, as the official casualty total climbed to at least 67,804. It includes 33,875 dead and wounded by what the Pentagon classifies as "hostile" causes and more than 33,929 dead and medically evacuated (as of July 5, 2008) because of "non-hostile" causes. The number of wounded is updated weekly (usually Tuesdays) by the Pentagon.

The actual total is over 87,000 because the Pentagon chooses not to count as "Iraq casualties" the approximately 20,000 casualties reported only after they returned from Iraq - mainly brain trauma from explosions, according to a USA Today, Nov. 23, 2007 article.

In a US Veteran Brain Injury News report by Mark Benjamin titled "Pentagon is underreporting the number of American soldier casualties in Iraq":

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....

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."

"We don't do Webster's," Jim Turner, a Pentagon spokesman told me in 2004 as I was reporting on counting casualties. In a written statement, the Department of Defense told me that the casualty reports describe casualties to fit the "understanding of the average newspaper reader."

US media divert attention from the actual cost in American life and limb by routinely reporting only the total killed (4,142 as of August 12) and rarely mentioning the 30,509 wounded in combat. To further minimize public perception of the cost, they cover for the Pentagon by ignoring the 33,153 (as of July 5) military victims of accidents and illness serious enough to require medical air evacuation, although the 4,142 reported deaths include 776 (up five last week) who died from those same causes, including at least 13 from faulty electrical work by KBR and 145 suicides (suicides last updated March 1, 2008).

NOTE: The Pentagon reports that five US soldiers have died in Cuba as part of "Operation Enduring Freedom," its PR name for the invasion of Afghanistan. The five were all "non-hostile" deaths at the US base at Guantanamo, including at least one suspected suicide. (www.icasualties.org )

For a chilling look at the price the US has paid for Bush's occupation of Iraq, see the fallen here. Mouse over the field of squares, and use the searchable database.