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Ellyn
Joined: 16 Jul 2000
Posts: 4458
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Toll on U.S. troops in Iraq grows as wounded rolls approach
 Mon Dec 01, 2003 8:17 am
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http://www.centredaily.com/mld/centredaily/news/7368173.htm
Posted on Fri, Nov. 28, 2003
Toll on U.S. troops in Iraq grows as wounded rolls approach 10,000
BY ROGER ROY
The Orlando Sentinel
ORLANDO, Fla. - (KRT) - Nearly 10,000 U.S. troops have been killed, wounded, injured or become ill enough to require evacuation from Iraq since the war began, the equivalent of almost one Army division, according to the Pentagon.
Unlike the more than 2,800 American fighting men and women logged by the Defense Department as killed and wounded by weapons in Iraq, the numbers of injured and sick have been more difficult to track, leading critics to accuse the military of under-reporting casualty numbers.
Military officials deny they are fudging the numbers. But the latest figures show that 9,675 U.S. troops have been killed, wounded, injured such as in accidents, or become sick enough to require airlifting out of Iraq.
"I don't think even that is the whole story," said Nancy Lessin of Boston, the mother of an Iraq war veteran and co-founder of Military Families Speak Out, a group opposed to the war in Iraq.
"We really think there's an effort to hide the true cost in life, limb and the mental health of our soldiers," Lessin said. "There's a larger picture here of really trying to hide and obfuscate what's going on, and the wounded and injured are part of it."
The number of sick and injured is almost certainly substantially higher, because the figures provided by the military last week include totals only through Oct. 30.
Virginia Stephanakis, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Army surgeon general, said there has been no effort to manipulate the casualty statistics.
"I can reassure you that these are the best figures we have," Stephanakis said. "We're certainly not playing with the numbers or trying to downplay them."
As of Friday, 2,401 U.S. troops were listed as wounded in Iraq since the war began in March. At least 424 have died in combat or in accidents.
Another 2,464 suffered nonbattle injuries, which would include everything from accidental gunshots to broken bones and vehicle accidents, Stephanakis said.
And another 4,397 troops have been evacuated from Iraq to U.S. military hospitals - usually in Germany - for treatment of medical problems not related to wounds or injuries.
They include 290 treated for urological problems such as kidney stones - thought by many soldiers to be caused by drinking large quantities of high-mineral bottled water during the blistering summer in Iraq. Another 299 were treated for heart problems and 249 for gastrointestinal illnesses.
Another 504 troops were evacuated for treatment of psychiatric problems.
Stephanakis could not say how many of the psychiatric cases have been diagnosed as post-traumatic stress disorder, a debilitating mental condition that can strike troops who have been in combat or a war zone.
"I have no breakdown," she said. "Most are related to what people call combat stress, depression, anxiety."
The Pentagon is not expected to release any updated figures on noncombat wounded, sick and injured until early next month.
Some critics accuse the military of low-balling its figures to curb criticism of the war.
"I think it's a general reluctance to be forthcoming," said Wilson "Woody" Powell, a Korean War veteran and executive director of Veterans for Peace, a St. Louis antiwar organization.
"There are ways of shaping numbers," Powell said. "You can do a lot just by omitting a few things now and then."
For example, critics said, the figures released by the Army do not include men and women whose injuries or illnesses were treated in Iraq, but only those who required transfer to medical facilities outside Iraq.
Some troops who have been wounded in bomb or mortar attacks have been awarded the Purple Heart, but their wounds were not serious enough to require them to be evacuated.
And Lessin said the reported number of troops treated for psychiatric problems does not include those who didn't seek treatment until they returned home.
Since April, the military says, at least 17 U.S. troops have committed suicide in Iraq, and the cause of at least two dozen other noncombat deaths had not been determined.
Stephanakis acknowledged the figures don't include every troop injury and illness from the war in Iraq. But because the military medical system was designed to give only enough treatment in Iraq to stabilize patients, then transfer them to facilities in Europe or the United States, virtually every serious injury or illness is included in the numbers, she said.
And some troops were taken to medical facilities in Europe for minor procedures not available in Iraq, Stephanakis said.
For example, 319 troops were evacuated for gynecological treatments, some of which may have been minor procedures, she said.
"It's easier for us to evacuate them to Germany than to keep a gynecologist in Baghdad," Stephanakis said.
And although accidents have killed and seriously injured hundreds of troops in war-time Iraq, even in peace time, military accidents claim many lives.
In 1999, the latest year for which statistics were available, 761 U.S. troops died around the world out of a military population of about 1.4 million, according to the Defense Department. Most of those deaths - 411 - were caused by accidents, with illness claiming another 126 lives and self-inflicted wounds, 110.
Even so, according to the Defense Department statistics, the death rate among troops that year was less than half the death rate in 1980.
---
© 2003, The Orlando Sentinel (Fla.).
[Edited 1 times, lastly by Ellyn on 12-01-2003] |
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the professor
Joined: 10 Jan 2003
Posts: 1164
Location: heartland USA |
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Tue Dec 02, 2003 3:42 am
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QUOTE
Nearly 10,000 U.S. troops have been killed, wounded, injured or become ill enough to require evacuation from Iraq since the war began, the equivalent of almost one Army division, according to the Pentagon.
So which is it? 10.000 killed or wounded? this story is full on BS! obviously an anti war rag probaly another Bush hating rag as well. |
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the professor
Joined: 10 Jan 2003
Posts: 1164
Location: heartland USA |
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Tue Dec 02, 2003 3:57 am
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This little news blurb just came out on Drudge but as yet with no story, developing....
U.S. Report of Iraqi Casualties Is Challenged... Developing... |
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shatoga
Joined: 23 Nov 2002
Posts: 1291
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Tue Dec 02, 2003 4:52 am
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Your words are inspirational professor!
>George Orwell"s 1984
Chapter 1 Part Two
At the start there had been a few boos and hisses, but it came only from the Party members among the crowd,<
If there is any truth is this world,
it must come from reliable Conservative sources. (only "the Party" can be trusted)
Our government is not oughtright lying when they list casualties, not when they are killed,
but only later, when the body has been embalmed and shipped home for burial.
and then only a few names at a time, for it might cause unnecessary unrest if people heard of a large number of casualties all on the day they died.
The same holds true for listing of other non fatal casualties.
I understand this more clearly than most because of my past on large construction projects.
One nuclear plant had no deaths during construction.
Seven people were lifeflighted off site in helicopters or ambulances and pronounced dead en route or at hospitals.
Thus: nobody died "on site" during construction of the nuke plant!
==========================
As to any partisan content of news sources:
> the issue still struck her as unimportant. 'Who cares?' she said impatiently. 'It's always one bloody war after another, and one knows the news is all lies anyway.' < 1984 Chapter 5
===========================
Ellyn,
You are guilty of thoughtcrime and need to change your unpatriotic thinking.
Nothing is 'fact unless it comes from within 'the Party'.
> if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed -if all records told the same tale -- then the lie passed into history and became truth.<
You, We all, must learn:
(the Conservative Vision)
>To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy,< Newspeak defined/ 1984 chapter 3
(the Conservative Vision)
>Language: A Key Mechanism of Control
As you know, one of the key points in the GOPAC tapes is that "language matters." In the video "We are a Majority," Language is listed as a key mechanism of control used by a majority party, along with Agenda, Rules, Attitude and Learning. As the tapes have been used in training sessions across the country and mailed to candidates we have heard a plaintive plea: "I wish I could speak like Newt."
That takes years of practice. But, we believe that you could have a significant impact on your campaign and the way you communicate if we help a little.
< "Newtspeak" memo on language 1990 Newt Gingrich
-------------
None of us should ever doubt
>the wisdom and majesty of Big Brother<
1984 Chapter 4
> You must love Big Brother. It is not enough to obey him: you must love him.' <
Hail to the Chief!
George Bush will lead us to victory.
I have been wrong to criticize the Party of our leader President Bush;
He and his party only do what they must do.
>That the Party did not seek power for its own ends, but only for the good of the majority.
That it sought power because men in the mass were frail cowardly creatures who could not endure liberty or face the truth,
and must be ruled over and systematically deceived by others who were stronger than themselves.
That the choice for mankind lay between freedom and happiness, and that,
for the great bulk of mankind, happiness was better.
That the party was the eternal guardian of the weak,
a dedicated sect doing evil that good might come,
sacrificing its own happiness to that of others.<
the three slogans of the Party stood out in bold capitals:
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
Casualty numbers are whatever big brother tells us they are,
Our enemy, is whoever big brother tells us is our enemy!
(who cares about whether there were WMD or how many die to achieve "the conservative Vision".
> You must love Big Brother. It is not enough to obey him: you must love him.' <
Hail to the Chief!
George Bush will lead us to victory.
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the professor
Joined: 10 Jan 2003
Posts: 1164
Location: heartland USA |
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Tue Dec 02, 2003 6:19 am
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Here are some more numbers in this article.
Samarra, Iraq -- U.S. commanders said Monday they had killed up to 54 insurgents in the fiercest battle since Saddam Hussein's government fell nearly eight months ago, but townspeople disputed that claim, saying only about nine Iraqis were killed in the battle Sunday, most of them noncombatants.
Military officials said the simultaneous attacks against two convoys of Bradley fighting vehicles in this city about 70 miles north of Baghdad were a highly synchronized operation involving heavy munitions and requiring precise knowledge of the American convoys' schedules.
"This was a coordinated effort,'' said Col. Frederick Rudesheim, commander of the 4th Infantry Division's 3rd Brigade, whose tanks drove into two ambushes as they escorted trucks carrying large amounts of the new Iraqi currency to branches of the Radifan Bank on opposite ends of town. He said 30 to 40 insurgents attacked each convoy. "There was a concerted effort by the enemy to deal a significant blow to coalition forces," Rudesheim added.
But with Samarra's hospital still filled with casualties, residents told a starkly different story. In a mix of rage and grief, residents lashed out at the brigade's soldiers for firing randomly into crowded market areas in the center of the city, killing civilians, including two Iranians believed to be pilgrims visiting a Shiite mosque in town.
"All the people in town today are asking for revenge," said Majid Fadel al-Samarai, 50, an emergency-room worker at the Samarra General Hospital who said he counted nine dead people at the hospital on Sunday. "They want to kill the Americans like they killed our civilians. Give me a gun, and I will also fight."
Rudesheim told reporters Americans shot only at those who had fired on soldiers. He said the military had calculated deaths "as best as we could," using reports from field commanders immediately after the firefights. Each death was cross-checked with a second soldier, said Capt. Andrew Deponai of the 3rd Brigade's Combat Team.
Residents said American soldiers showed little regard for the safety of civilians during the gunbattle.
"I saw a man running across the street to get his small son, who was stuck in the middle," said Abdul Satar, 47, who owns a bakery a block from one of the two banks to which the convoys had driven. "So the Americans shot the man," he said.
In a house on the outskirts of Samarra, Abir Mohammed Al-Khayat, 28, said a rocket hit the minibus in which she and several others had commuted from their jobs at a local pharmaceuticals factory. "There were about 20 of us, men and women," she said, cradling her arm, injured by shrapnel, in a sling.
At the hospital, several patients said they were injured when a shell, apparently fired from an attack helicopter, struck a mosque at about 5 p.m., when residents were converging for evening prayers.
In the corner bed of one ward lay Ali al-Tashi, a 9-year-old boy who had gone to the mosque Sunday night to pray with his father. Heavily bandaged, the boy sobbed in pain and confusion. His older brother, Grimian, 17, clutched his hand and tried to comfort him.
"He still does not know that our father has been killed," Grimian said. "All our brothers and sisters and our mother have gone up north, to Irbil, to bury him."
In the hospital's morgue, two people killed by bullets lay on metal shelves: a rail-thin man who seemed to be in his 60s, and a middle-aged woman dressed in a black religious robe. Hospital staffers said they found Iranian passports on the two bodies. Many Iranian pilgrims visit the shrine of Mahdi, an imam revered by Shiite Muslims, in the city.
But Samarra is now dominated by Sunni Muslims and is a longtime stronghold of Hussein supporters.
U.S. military officers said Sunday that all those killed were members of Fedayeen Saddam, the most ruthless fighting force Hussein possessed before the war. By Monday, however, they said that was no longer clear.
"We have not established a definitive link between these enemy and a specific organization," Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt told reporters in Baghdad. He said some were wearing black uniforms, suggesting Fedayeen membership.
Still, anti-American feeling runs strong in Samarra. Near the site of Sunday's battle, Salem al-Rathmani, sported an olive-green Iraqi army uniform and officer's winter jacket - garb not seen since the U.S. victory in April -- and denounced the U.S. presence in terms that evoked prewar rhetoric.
"Why are people attacking the Americans? Because of the Palestinian issue, the Americans' policy of supporting Israel, the sanctions," he said, referring to the U.N. economic sanctions imposed after the first gulf war.
The crowd around al-Rathmani, who said he was a businessman in "construction and tourism,'' listened quietly until he mentioned dragnets conducted by U.S. soldiers in Samarra. The Americans took 80 prisoners last week, members of the crowd shouted, and even captured local leaders of the Islamic Labor Party, which is represented on the Iraqi Governing Council. "Why are they capturing a lot of people without real charges?" they demanded.
On Monday, American forces leveled trees on the median of the highway in an attempt to clear hiding places from which insurgents could attack convoys. Rudesheim said two previous currency deliveries had been attacked, so the soldiers were prepared for the ambush. He gave no further information on the earlier attacks.
Soldiers from the ambushed convoys said the fighters lay in wait as the tanks entered the city and moved through the narrow streets toward the banks. With checkered headscarves covering their faces, they waited on rooftops and in alleyways, armed with rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and Kalashnikov rifles. As the convoys reached their destinations at the same moment, two separate battles erupted.
"There were people on the roofs, sneaking around corners with RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades), mortars, firing in all directions," said Sgt. 1st Class Alvin Ware, 34, of Harker Heights, Texas. "They were coming in from the alleyways, firing AK-47s. I haven't seen anything like this since I served in the gulf war in 1991."
Deponai, of the brigade's Combat Team, described the fight as "touch-and-go for a while." In the end, however, he said, "We had overwhelming firepower on our tanks."
Sunday's battle was a bloody end to the deadliest month since U.S. forces invaded Iraq on March 20. At least 104 soldiers were killed in November, including 79 Americans.
Insurgents struck again Monday, killing a U.S. soldier in an attack on a convoy near Habbaniya, 50 miles west of Baghdad.
The violence last month also took a toll on other members of the U.S.-led coalition, both military and civilian, and Iraqi allies. At least 16 Italians, seven Spaniards, two Japanese and two South Koreans were killed in the past few weeks, and about 32 Iraqi police, judges and local council members were killed.
Chronicle staff writer Robert Collier contributed to this report.
©2003 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback
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the professor
Joined: 10 Jan 2003
Posts: 1164
Location: heartland USA |
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Tue Dec 02, 2003 6:20 am
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If we really lost 10.00 soldiers you would have heard by now in such a loud public outcry but this isn't the case. |
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shatoga
Joined: 23 Nov 2002
Posts: 1291
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Tue Dec 02, 2003 7:15 am
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I wonder if it was Wackenhut that attacked those convoys carrying currency?
Who knows how many have died?
The truth about past wars is still being withheld, with MIA's listed that died within sight of witnesses.
the private mercenary forces are not even listed.
Add in Wackenhut's mercenary losses and you might double casualty figures instantly.
High casualty numbers damage the morale of civilians.
This is exactly like Vietnam, with the press trying to present negative stories and the Administration saying 'we are winning and your negativity is unpatriotic.'
In context of how I see this:
The first American soldier to die in Vietnam died on June 8, 1956.
Yet today "everyone knows" it was JFK who first sent Americans to Vietnam to die in "McNamara's War"
Those heretics, like myself,
who still hold onto old outdated concepts of fact and truth,
remember that it was VP Nixon (DCI) who sent the first Americans to Vietnam, and Nixon, as President, who sent Kissinger to 'surrender' at the Paris peace talks.
The 'official' history is all that matters.
>But where did that knowledge exist? Only in his own consciousness, which in any case must soon be annihilated. And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed -if all records told the same tale -- then the lie passed into history and became truth. 'Who controls the past,' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.' And yet the past, though of its nature alterable, never had been altered. Whatever was true now was true from everlasting to everlasting. It was quite simple. All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory. 'Reality control', they called it: in Newspeak,... Orwell 1984 Chapter 3 <
Professor,
what trick is this in posting truths?
Beware, an intelligent person like youself is dangerous to "the Party" if you have noticed 'what's behind that curtain' and lost faith.
>"Pay no attention to the man behind that curtain!" wizard of OZ<
http://www.online-literature.com/orwell/1984/
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the professor
Joined: 10 Jan 2003
Posts: 1164
Location: heartland USA |
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Wed Dec 03, 2003 1:36 am
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The so called thousands of American military deaths is a myth, so far. Speaking of Vietnam, you think the stories will ever get the light in public about how some of our pilots who were shot down, got shipped to Russia along with whatever recoverable wreckage was left? or even yet some of our troops getting sent to gulags in Russia or even the Chinese element. There is a bitter taste about Nam, all the way from the antiwar idiots who spat and insulted returning troops who for the most part had no control of the situation that they were put in and the political nature at how some in power will do anything without regard for anybody caught in between. If we don't follow through with what we have started in Iraq than the world will truly know how screwed up our nation is. As we head into an election year all the issues that really matter will be swept away so they can parade a dog and pony show to gain power. I will vote for Bush marely on the consequence that he is for remaining to get a grip on Iraq because if we don't follow throuygh than we are defeated. Didn't mean to take this off topic Shat.
[Edited 1 times, lastly by the professor on 12-02-2003] |
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Ellyn
Joined: 16 Jul 2000
Posts: 4458
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Wed Dec 03, 2003 8:22 am
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The article does not state that 10,000 U.S. troops have been killed, it states the following:
"ORLANDO, Fla. - (KRT) - Nearly 10,000 U.S. troops have been killed, wounded, injured or become ill enough to require evacuation from Iraq since the war began, the equivalent of almost one Army division, according to the Pentagon."
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shatoga
Joined: 23 Nov 2002
Posts: 1291
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Wed Dec 03, 2003 9:38 am
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quote:
Originally posted by the professor:
...some in power will do anything without regard for anybody caught in between.
If we don't follow through with what we have started in Iraq than the world will truly know how screwed up our nation is.
As we head into an election year all the issues that really matter will be swept away so they can parade a dog and pony show to gain power.
[Edited 1 times, lastly by the professor on 12-02-2003]
The dog and pony show that has cost so many lives on both sides bothers me a bit more.
We have started in Iraq, an attempt to impose our own puppet government on a sovereign nation.
The right of self-determination was what America supported when America was a beacon of light and freedom to the world.
You go ahead and vote for the most hated man in the world.
The man who took a supportive world on 9/12 and turned it into an aghast disapproving world.
That 10,000 number does not count mercenaries, nor does our lap dog media dare to present the truth.
ABC News presented a report on "Do iraqi's
see Americans as liberators or oppressors"
the program was interrupted by a pentagon briefing.
next day ABC News covered a Circus parade in NY NY
"Thanks to our producer"
Truth is an insult to this regime that denies freedom to both Iraqis and Americans.
Vote for Bush, if you wish, but do it with an open informed mind.
Not just because he has an (R) beside his name.
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