How many injured and ill soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines ...are left off the Pentagon’s casualty count?
Would you believe 15,000? 60 Minutes asked the Department of Defense to grant us an interview. They declined. Instead, they sent a letter, which contains a figure not included in published casualty reports: "More than 15,000 troops with so-called 'non-battle' injuries and diseases have been evacuated from Iraq."
Meanwhile, some analysts say that if the Pentagon could keep quiet about those 15,000 for so long, then maybe there are more wounded they are still keeping quiet about. Could the true figure be as high as 30,000 extra wounded not on the official lists? '60 minutes' on CBS has done what few of the cowed mainstream media have had the guts to do and asked some tough questions. Read more here.
For a look at why the mainstream (offline) media are largely failing in their charge and why it's not the journalists at fault but editors and owners, try the latest Tomgram: Michael Massing on Iraq coverage and the election at TomDispatch.
3 comments:
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Regards, C
It is very obvious that the truth of the war in Iraq is not being made public.
There was a story here of an Iraqi refugee who had arrived in Oz 15 years ago and made a life for himself here.
He yearned to return and with the capture of Saddam he was able to.With great excitement he left Oz for the triumphal return to his home country.
Within 2 weeks he was begging someone to get him out of the coutry to return to Australia.
He said that the situation was far worse than it had been during his life there.Although he had been afraid of Saddam he was able to safely walk the streets and have a normal useful life.
So much for those who constantly tell me how lucky the Iraqis are that we saved them from Saddam.
shadows
Hi Shadows,
Thanks for the interest in the site, my friend, and for your comments. Do you happen to have a link handy to a net report on the poor ex-pat Iraqui you mentioned? I think you are right about the lack of transparency over the Iraq War - some of the lack of information is due to the lethargy of the mainstream media, much due to concealment of facts, figures and even pictures by governments. The situation seems to be a little better in the UK or Australia than it is in the US, but not by much. Whenever I find some tidbit of under-reported news, I will be sure to post it.
Regards, C
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