Is OSP handling casualty figures too?
British Channel 4 News reports suspicions about the Pentagon's casualty figures:
In a dark corner of Andrews Air Force base on the outskirts of Washington DC, America's war-wounded come home.
The human cost of humbling tyrants.
No ceremony, no big welcome.
More than 11,000 medical evacuees have come through Andrews in the past nine months, the Air Force says.
Most, we suspect, from Iraq. But that's 8,000 more than the Pentagon says have been wounded there.
[snip]
Another patient, Staff Sergeant Roy Mitchell, lost his leg in Afghanistan three months ago:
"The ones that are covered are the KIAs. The "Killed in Action". I'm not taking anything away from those soldiers. They deserve that coverage. But there is also us. To say we're forgotten, that would be going just a little bit too far to say we're forgotten but I'd say we are the missed soldiers of the army."
Says Sgt Craft, "A lot of people are getting hit. What they are showing are the deaths. They are not showing this here. They have a death toll but they're not showing the number of people being hit and being amputated because of their injuries.
Channel 4 News: "And in you're opinion, the number of wounded in action, the number wounded generally, is quite high?"
"Yes."
[snip]
But when it comes to the wounded, an astonishing situation has arisen: the Pentagon's figures clash wildly with those of the US Army.
The Pentagon lists 2,604 wounded in action and just 408 "non-hostile wounded".
But the Army says many thousands more have been medically evacuated from the conflict zone.
Why the discrepancy? Well, the Pentagon doesn't count as victims soldiers who come back with brain injuries or psychiatric disorders, those hit by friendly fire or those who've crashed in their military vehicles.
You could call them "the missing wounded" of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Some suspect the government's been deliberately massaging the figures.
According to Steve Robinson, from the National Gulf War Resource Center:
"Information warfare is a tenet of war. It's part of the strategy in war and it's something we employ in Iraq to win to gain the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people. And in some cases it looks as if the Department of Defense is employing information warfare back doing this at home by not releasing accurate information or making it difficult to obtain information. That prevents the story from being told or it makes it take longer for the story to be told or it frustrates people to where they don't even try to tell the story."
Steve Robinson is no anti-war liberal. A former Special Forces soldier with 20 years' service, he now briefs Presidents. He believes we're not being told the full story.
"People don't want bad news stories coming out from this war and at every level where I need information, every time I need information from the Department of Defense or the Department of Veterans' Affairs, about the injuries of this war, I run unto obstacles. None of this is national security. None of this will cause the collapse of the coalition. It's just information that we need to understand what's happening."
[Via Drudge]
Postscript: I know someone whose brother was a tank commander in the first Gulf War. After he came home from Iraq, he told him that casualty figures were five times the number reported in the media.
11:59:48 PM 
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