Quietly, with little notice, May 2004 becomes 3rd deadliest month in Iraq

[markses]

For US service personnel.

The toll for the last week alone (18 total):

25-May 5
2- 86th Field Artillery, killed in mortar rocket attack, Iskandiriyah;
1 - 81st Separate Battalion, killed in mortar attack, Iskandiriyah;
2 - 10th Mountian Division, killed in hostile fire, al-Anbar Province.

26-May 3
3 - I MEF, killed in action, al-Anbar Province

27-May

28-May 1
1 - Stryker Brigade, killed in non-hostile incident, Mosul

29-May 3
3 - I MEF, killed in action, al-Anbar Province

30-May 4
1 - 1AD killed in small-arms fire, Kufa;
1 - 1AD killed when RPG hits tank, Kufa;
1 - 1AD, killed in IED attack, south of Baghdad;
1 - Task Force Olympia (Stryker Brigade) died of wounds received May 29, location unspecified (Mosul?).

31-May 2
2 - unit unnamed, killed in IED attack, Baghdad

If the 2 unconfirmed deaths from May 31 hold up, 80 US service personnel will have died in the Iraq theater since May 1, 2004.

[wolfgirl]

1. Marines

According to my better half, the Marines will no longer report casualties (began this practice last month). Have you heard this?

If true, how do we find out the truth?

[markses]

3. Not true at all - Marines still report casualties

They simply don't report the precise location or details of the casualties. So, for example, before the new policy went into effect, the Marines would reports something like

One Marine was killed by an improvised explosive device in ar-Ramadi.

Apparently, this was too much information, and gives the insurgents too much feedback on the success of their tactics. So, under the new Marine policy, the report would look like this:

One Marine was killed in action in al-Anbar province.

Notice the difference. Where the first says how the Marine was killed, and gives a specific location, the second makes no mention of the "how" and gives only a very general location (al-Anbar province stretches from just west of Baghdad to the Syrian border). That's the new policy that your friend was clearly misquoting.

[Zynx]

2. May has been a horrible month, but the media wouldn't tell you that.

Between just April and May there are over 200 dead.