by James Glaser
December 28, 2005

This weekend we read a report of an American tank burning on a roadside in Iraq. We know this is not the first, but like the number of Iraqis killed and wounded, the Pentagon makes no numbers public.

All throughout the war we have heard about helicopters going down. Another one went down on Monday, killing both pilots. Last month it was a Super Cobra with two pilots killed when they were shot down, and in August it was reported that an Apache attack helicopter crashed, but that was all we were told. In both May and June American helicopters were reported downed too.

Some aircraft losses are reported and some are not. If a film crew or news reporter is near, we get at least part of the story, but if a crash happens out in the desert, chances are we will hear nothing.

Washington has to tell us the number of American troops killed, because the news media could just count up the number of funerals. Wounded soldiers are another matter. If you believe the Defense Department's numbers, then we have about 16 Americans wounded and over two killed on an average day. Wounded troops taken back to the States are returned in the middle of the night, and interviews of those badly wounded are few.

Not every day is average. Some days are slow, and some are deadly. George Bush might have declared major combat operations over back in May of '03, when he did his Mission Accomplished speech, but there have been some very bloody days since then. The first time the Marines tried to take Fallujha, they were repulsed. Numbers were not given, but you can be sure the Unites States Marine Corps shed a lot of blood before they decided to walk away from that battle.

To have an average of 18 casualties a day, some days the number must go over a hundred, while on others that number could be very close to zero. Washington would like to report the zero days, but then they would be asked about their bad days, and they don't want the American public to know about them. That is why the number of troops wounded on a particular day is never given.

Besides that, most Americans have this feeling that "wounded" does not sound so bad. Wounded sounds like, an ace bandage and back to work. Men and women who lose one, two, three, or even four limbs, are "just wounded" too. Those who lose their sight or have their brains blown out, fit that profile of wounded also.

War is a numbers game, and Bush's White House knows that if the numbers of killed and wounded American troops gets too high, the country will be out to stop this war. But if they can piecemeal these numbers out so that no one day sounds way worse than the days before, they can lull and spin the American people into believing that we are winning.

Part of that plan is to keep the number of destroyed tanks, trucks, planes, and helicopters quiet, report the ones that are obvious, but never give totals or talk about those that no one sees. It works. Few media reports even mention the over 16,000 Americans wounded, in the same story as the 2,172 American troops killed so far.

What about December,2005? With today's report of four more Americans killed, the running number of KIAs stands at 59. Again our media fails to inform us of the number of troops wounded this month, because those numbers are reported by the Pentagon in dribs and drabs. The number might go up on a Friday and not again until the middle of the next week, and our media seldom even talks about the total wounded in this war.

If something "good" happens in Iraq, like an election or the reported killing/capture of a terrorist leader, well that news covers the front page and is the lead on the nightly news, but other than American deaths, our losses go mostly unreported.

I understand why the Bush administration wants to keep our losses in Iraq in the dark. George Bush doesn't want to lose the backing for the war he still has, but that is wrong. American citizens have the right to know what this war is really costing us. We should be given the facts, so we can decide if we want to continue. We elect Presidents to lead us, and we expected honesty from them... we are not getting that.