Deflating Casualties

Re: Deflating Casualties


I can see it both ways:
On one hand, one soldier dies in combat and the other emerges from combat alive, but later succumbs to his injuries.
On the other hand, if in the future we pay our respects to those who died during the Arab/Iraqi-American war, we make no such distinction.
They died during the conflict.
Period.

This is just statistical manipulation to massage the American public's opinion of the war.
I'm interested to hear what the "real" numbers are--and then to hear the opposition decry the information as fabricated/inflated/innacurate a la Newsweek.

Sorry Cy, I gotta disagree. According to the latest DoD reports, total US killed is 1623. Total wounded who did not return to duty within 72 hours is 6264. It could only be from this group that additional deaths have come.

I do not doubt that some of those from this group have succumbed to their wounds, but for the number of deaths to be closer to 8000 than to 1700 you would have to see a mortality rate of better than 50% of those wounded. I don't think so. So your only recourse is to claim that the figures of those wounded have been under-reported. I'm sure this is what you will latch onto whether you have proof or not.

Hmm, I don't think the DoD reports are reliable, based upon a wealth of historical evidence of massaging of numbers for political reasons, but that's not the issue.

As I said I am still researching; but according to TBR news, the number of troops who died either in Germany or on the way is about 6,210 as of 1 January, 2005.

That plus the KIA is pretty close to 8k....

Cycloptichorn

Here is another Source

Of course you disagree Cy. You have to in order to continue to harp about this dishonest, murdering Bush regime. The numbers you want to believe make them that much more wicked in your view. I understand your viewpoint totally. TBR news can report anything they want. Ever wonder why other news agencies (ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, etc) have not reported this vast under-reporting of deaths? Don't you think at least CBS would jump all over something like this? Shouldn't that in and of itself give you pause in believing this story?

Calm down, lol.

No, I don't believe the major news wires jump all over important stories anymore. They are all corporate owned; ya can't trust them any farther than you can throw them. Sometimes they get it right but far more often they ignore the important stuff, such as the Downing Street Memo and the complete lack of play it's been getting here. They would rather spend their time talking about Micheal Jackson and Runaway brides. You see, it's the lowest common denominator factor; the news that appeals to the largest crowd, gets the highest ratings; and that's all that matters to the corporations who decide what is and isn't going to be reported on.

That, and the chilling effect of the Republican insistance on shouting down any news critical of the Administration or the war effort. These very same corporations are scared of losing viewers who aren't really interested in the truth, but in what they want to hear.

I don't believe everyone in the Bush Regime is a dishonest murderer; just everyone at the top making the decisions. This is quite evident by their continual lies and warmongering ways.

Cycloptichorn

I'm calm....really, I am. I just checked my blood pressure Cy and if I believe the readout I get then I am A-Ok. At least for the time being.

I fully understand your lack of faith in our news media in reporting things accurately or sometimes at all. You're right that they spend too much time on "news" that used to be relegated to the back pages of newspapers and limited to just a couple of lines at that. Oh well.

Still, both my info source and Intrepid's (his seems to be from an anti-war site) report roughly the same numbers (the difference in my post and his numbers is that I did not mention the DoD's count of roughly 6000 wounded who returned to duty within 72 hours. If I count them, then my source and Intrepid's give roughly the same figures).

So I will tend to give a bit more credence to my numbers than I will to the TBR numbers.

And thanks for being concerned about my health and wanting me to calm down. I appreciate it.

Oh, just so you have it, here is the source I was using for my numbers.

http://icasualties.org/oif/

This is taken from the About Us page of CoastalRats source:

Where the Death Numbers Come From?

There is no magic to coming up with the number of coalition dead from our war on Iraq . Our sources are not secret. In fact, our primary source is the U.S. government. Any private individual or news organization who wishes to keep track of war dead gets their information from this same source.

Whenever a death occurs, CENTCOM (the United States Central Command in Tampa , FL ) issues a brief news release that gives the bare facts about the incident: when it happened, how it happened, and the soldier's regiment, if known. The only information not provided at this point is the soldier's name. These releases are published regularly on the Internet at:

http://www.centcom.mil/

After the soldier's relatives are notified of the death, the U.S. Department of Defense then issues its own news release that gives the soldier's name, age, unit and hometown. Again, these can be found on the Internet here:

http://www.defenselink.mil/releases/

The trouble with this system of notification, however, is that the government provides no tally of those releases. Occasionally, the Department of Defense will release a total number of deaths to date. But it certainly doesn't go out of its way to divulge those numbers. If you want to know the number of deaths at any given point, you have two choices: count up the news releases yourself … or find a non-governmental entity that is tracking the numbers and posting them somewhere.

This has not always been the case. We are told that during the Korean and Vietnam wars, the names and numbers of dead AND injured were readily available from the government. No longer.

Incidentally, it should be mentioned that the British do a much better job with their dead. All of their deaths are listed in one place at the British Ministry of Defense's website at http://www.operations.mod.uk/telic/casualties.htm .

Now, several private groups have indeed been counting up the death notices and providing lists of names and total numbers. But how accurate are their lists? And how easy are they to follow? Our research has determined that they are not always accurate, not always up to date, and often difficult to use.

One of the most popular lists on the Internet is at CNN:

http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2003/iraq/forces/casualties/index.html

It is an attractive site, with pictures of most of the soldiers who have died in the Iraq War. And a total number of deaths is given. But, that total number includes both British and American deaths. No attempt is made to provide a breakdown. Worse, the listing is done alphabetically. That's fine if you are interested in one particular soldier, but makes it extremely difficult to follow recent deaths or determine what the current death rate is really like. And consider this. The site gives no backup for its data. How do you know that all deaths have been included? Only a thorough cross-check against DOD and British Ministry of Defense news releases will prove that they have indeed caught most of the deaths. Missing are two British casualties that appear on the British MOD website. However, has anyone counted the number of entries on the CNN list? We have … and we've consistently come up short of what they say their total number is. So where does their total number come from? We certainly can't say.

Another popular site is the listing at the Army Times, here:

http://www.armytimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-warkilled.php

Once again, it is a nicely presented site. Best of all, the deaths are listed by date which makes it easy to follow the latest deaths. But this site covers only U.S. deaths and not British ones. And they do not give a total number to date. Worse, a thorough cross-check of the data list against DOD news releases reveals the list to be short four U.S. soldiers who died in a helicopter crash on the first day of the invasion of Iraq . Moreover, they are very slow to update their list with the latest deaths.

Since May, we have scrutinized several other lists as well, and have turned up similar problems with all of them.

That is why this web site was developed … to provide information that has been scrupulously culled from government sources and cross-checked against other existing lists to ensure the most accurate and complete accounting of deaths that we can possibly assemble.

And then we take things a step further. We present the data in a way that will allow other researchers and interested individuals to easily analyze it for trends and benchmarks.

The raw death numbers are given on a daily basis in the Summary chart on the main page and are tabulated for three periods: (1) March 20, 2003 through May 1, 2003 (the end of major combat)., (2) May 2, 2003 through June 28, 2004 (the day of the official turnover of sovereignty to Iraq)., and (3) June 29, 2004 (the day after the official turnover of sovereignty to Iraq) through today's date.

Clicking on "View Details" will bring up the actual data table with each soldier's name and basic information … a table that can at present be filtered by date, by a soldier's age, by a soldier's rank, or by whether the soldier was with US or UK forces. In other words, with the use of the filters provided, it becomes easy to determine how many soldiers were 18 years of age, how many were sergeants, how many died on March 23rd (one of the heaviest days of fighting), how many were British, or how many died before June 1st.

Please be aware that this site is a work in progress. Improvements are always being made and many more are currently in the works. Needless to say, your comments and suggestions for improvements are always welcome.

Pat K.
12 July 2003

Which, if you think about it, would mean that any site (including the one you referenced) would have trouble getting accurate figures. Funny though how both your site and mine came up with roughly the same numbers. The site I referenced just broke the wounded numbers down in more detail.

The only real difference between the numbers on the two sites is that the site you reference (a decidedly anto-war site) claims an estimated wounded of between 15,000 and 32,000. Whose estimate is this? Just some anti-war guy wanting to strengthen his case that we should not have been in Iraq? There is nothing that I saw that backs up those numbers. But it works to help push the agenda of the site.

Either way, take your pick. Both sites show killed and total wounded to be roughly the same. So you are still left with having to claim that the DoD is just plain fabricating numbers in order to state that close to 8,000 have died as opposed to the official number of 1,623.

Re: Deflating Casualties


What about the dead in the afghanistan war, does anyone ever mention them ?