The national press missed this blockbuster on June 18: the Pentagon confirms more than 16,000 U.S. service members have been wounded or injured in the Iraq War. DoD failed to report 11,000 soldiers who were wounded or injured. The TV networks and newspapers failed to follow-up on this major scoop. As Steve Robinson of the National Gulf War Resource Center said, "They [the military] believe that by putting this information out, it's somehow going to affect public opion." Donald Rumsfeld must believe that good public relations is far more important than medical care for our wartime wounded.

The Pentagon keeps a close watch on the grim tally in Iraq and Afghanistan. The latest figures: 922 killed. 5,457 wounded in action. And the press reports those numbers.

But there's another figure neither the Pentagon nor the press are talking about — the more than 11,000 soldiers coming home disabled, injured, sick who aren't on the Pentagon's casualty list because the military says they weren't injured in combat.

ROBINSON: When you're in a combat zone, and you're delivering information, goods, services, there's a risk that you will lose your life every moment you go out to do your job. How can that not be a combat related accident?

MITCHELL: So what is the true cost of the war? The Pentagon makes it hard to find out because unless a wound is classified as 'combat related,' it isn't publicly reported.

Just look at the Pentagon Web site that tracks the casualty count. The number of wounded-in-action is listed, but the line for 'non-hostile' casualties is blank.

BENJAMIN: The Pentagon has made the numbers, and when I say the numbers, I mean the casualty numbers, into such a morass of figures, that they have made it virtually impossible for reporters and the American public to figure out what's going on.

MITCHELL: The Pentagon denies that. And in fact, Dr. Winkenwerder claims we're the first to ask about the number of non-combat injuries.


http://www.veteransforcommonsense.org/newsArticle.asp?id=1782