by James Glaser
January 17, 2006

Four American helicopters have been shot down in Iraq in the last three weeks, the last one on Monday. Every so often through out the year we have heard of one being shot down or crashing in an accident. What seems not to jive, are reports in media about these losses. There was one by the Associated Press on this last Sunday that said, "The crash of an OH-58 Kiowa Warrior reconnaissance helicopter near Mosul on Friday, killing two pilots, was the third in the past three weeks. That's half the average number lost each year of the war, which started in March, 2003."

The Associated Press is saying we lose on average six helicopters a year because of combat in the war, and then an unreported number have crashed from being hit by unmanned drones, accidents, and other weather related problems.

On Friday there was a report by UPI's Pamela Hess, stating, "The U.S. Army is asking the Pentagon for $1.2 billion to replace more than 100 helicopters it lost to hostile fire, accidents, and training incidents in 2005. That's just the Army, the Marines, the Navy, and the Air Force all have their own choppers too.

General Edward Sinclair, the commander of the U.S. Army Aviation Center at Fort Rucker explained, "The enemy has cost us some, we've lost some to terrain."

The $1,200,000,000.00 the Army wants to replace last year's helicopter losses in Iraq is a supplemental request. Yes we already spend more than the rest of the world combined on defense, but that money is not enough to buy replacement equipment for our troops. We do give the Pentagon hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars, which said in another way, is hundreds and hundreds of thousands, of millions of dollars. They do make it hard to keep count!

Speaking of counting, if the Army is losing over a hundred choppers a year, the law of averages tells us that the Marines, the Navy, and the Air force must be losing some too, if not in combat, then in training or accidents, but we never hear of any of those.

Just the Army's losses add up to at least two downed helicopters a week, add the rest, and chopper losses should be in the paper two or three times each and every week. Still the loss of a helicopter is reported as something special, when in truth these aircraft are going down every couple of days. What gives? Why is the media underreporting these losses?

We do hear once in awhile about a tank being destroyed by a roadside bomb and trucks and humvees are being hit almost every day, but why aren't these losses reported either? And why aren't the hundreds of billions appropriated for defense every year enough to buy replacement equipment?

We are given a running total of the number of troops killed, (2215) because Washington can't hide that number. Every week or so the number of wounded is added to, (16,420 as of 1/06/06) but seldom is that total ever given out in a media report.

The number of American helicopters, tanks, trucks, humvees, and fixed wing aircraft destroyed is never given out in running numbers or in total. Those numbers would be too graphic for our media or Washington to let the American people see. Those are numbers every American could relate to, so they are kept secret, or at least very hard to find out. That lets George Bush and any politician that wants to, say things are going good in Iraq.

If however they reported the numbers of Americans killed and wounded, along with the number of tanks destroyed, and choppers, trucks and humvees lost each week, well the American people would know the real score. Washington will tell you that we would be giving information to the enemy if we reported those numbers, but you know what? They already know those numbers. They are the guys firing the RPGs and setting off the road side bombs. They can see the damage they are doing up close.

What we really would be doing would be giving information to the American people, not the enemy. Washington does not want the American people to really know what our losses are, because if we did know the truth, support for Bush's War would vanish faster than it is now. Washington's only hope is to keep the American people in the dark when it comes to what this war is costing us in troops and equipment.

How many in-depth reports have you seen or read about what our returning troops are going through with wounds and psychological problems? Keep Americans in the dark!

The reason the insurgency keeps going in Iraq, is because they are having success in attacking our troops. They know it, the Iraqi people know it, and the Pentagon knows it. Like so many things going on in this world, only the American people are kept in the dark.

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