Is it closer to 4000 dead soldiers in Iraq?

[Soopercali]

http://suburbanguerrilla.blogspot.com/2005/02/in-memoriamtoday-im-going-to-do.html

Please keep kicked...

Today's Suburban Guerrilla has a collection of links indicating there are a lot more troops dead in Iraq than anyone's admitting. Check it out!

[bowens43]

1. What I would like to know is

how many died after being evacuated from the battlefield and whether or not these people are included in the causality reports.

[pnutchuck]

2. Not surprising, yet shocking all the same... n/t

[Soopercali]

3. I'm surprised there's so much out there already...

And yet the media seems disinterested in connecting the dots.

[CrispyQ]

4. The Voice of the White House says same.

http://www.tbrnews.org/Archives/a1314.htm

from January 12

snip...

"...and neither will they talk about the ACTUAL DEATH TOLLS IN IRAQ! You have been posting only the official figures which are not accurate. These OFFICIAL figures indicate about 1,400 are dead and perhaps 4,000 wounded. Actually, and I have seen the figures from the Pentagon, over 8,000 are dead and over 15,000 are wounded, some maimed for life…blind, missing legs and arms or with the prospect of spending the rest of their young lives confined to a wheelchair in a Vets hospital with a permanent piss bag tied to a leg. This is the greatest secret and holds the greatest fear for the Bush people. If the public ever finds out the truth, they will lynch him and his fascist co-workers in about ten minutes. Already, parents are wondering why their son’s name is not on official lists and this number is growing every day. This is the real reason why Bush forbade any pictures being taken of arriving caskets at Dover. All even an idiot would have to do would be to count the daily supermarket checkout and the rat would be out of the bag. This nasty business has real legs and even the dullard Bush is terrified. Rigid censorship has been clamped down by the Pentagon on any information and especially the following truly horrible news: The Arabs have captured a number of GIs and have tortured them terribly before chopping of their heads which they defile by dumping into a well-used latrine. Their statements are that since the US under Bush has ignored the Geneva Treaty and tortured prisoners of war and executed a number of them plus God knows how many unarmed civilians, they will kill every GI they capture. Beheaded and terribly mutilated bodies are quickly grabbed by special teams of GI undertakers, hidden away and sent home in sealed caskets or cremated in a large oven in downtown Baghdad. (Shade of Auschwitz!) This is one of the reasons why there are so many suicides and so many desertions among the terrified troops. This really awful business is a top priority secret but I will make the shits happy by letting it out and if I can get the actual figures, I will give them to you, names and all, to post alongside the official lies. Why don’t you ask survivors to send you the names of their lost sons and husbands and then check them against the Pentagon Lie List? Better, publish the entire roster of Official Dead and ask anyone whose relatives, sons or husbands are not on it to contact you. You are in the position of doing all of us a great favor if you do."

[Soopercali]

5. I read this, too.

But his most recent comments put the death toll back at 4,000.

[MostlyLurks]

6. A Tangential Note From A Debate With A Freeper

Soopercali,

That's an interesting link. There have been threads on DU for some time, by people knowledgable about the military, that hinted, insinuated and implied as much.

On a related note, I got into a flame war with a lesser light from the right a few weeks back and one of the things she did was to marginalize the casualties that WERE being reported. This was right after that big helicopter crash and she said something to the effect of those deaths not counting since they happened in a non-combat role and since that sort of thing (helicopter crashes, etc) happen all the time in the States (her point being that evil liberals will use those casualties to artifically "inflate" the death toll). This is why we're hearing absolutely zero outcry re: this poor kid who drowned during Marine training in South Carolina. They view this sort of thing as acceptable and expectable collateral damage. The price of having a large and strong military force: helicopters will crash and recruits will drown occassionally.

These people are way far gone, way beyond off the map in terms of basic human decency.

Mostly

[Soopercali]

7. This is also of interest.

Someone over on Daily Kos said this was "dubious" because you need a green card to enlist. Well, not anymore:

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/002299.html

There are 37,000 non-citizen, green card holders in the military. A major incentive for them to join is that they receive a shortcut to citizenship.

<i>Citing the war on terrorism, Bush in July issued an order permitting green card holders who are on active duty to immediately apply for citizenship, waiving the usual three-year waiting time. The government also created a team to quickly process citizenship applications from the military. Such requests have since quadrupled, from about 300 a month to more than 1,300 a month.</i>

[Soopercali]

8. Here's some more on our "green card" Army...

http://suburbanguerrilla.blogspot.com/2005/02/morefor-those-of-you-who-wrote-to-tell.html

[clem_c_rock]

9. I'm sure it's at least that. They lie because nothing scares them more

than public opinion.

If the soldiers were told the real reasons they were over there, there would be a mass revolt.

[Soopercali]

10. From today's Stars and Stripes:

http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=24783&archive=true

But the VA faces a massive task in trying to quickly funnel health benefits to troops recently wounded or disabled in Iraq and Afghanistan. In a letter to The Washington Post last month, Principi said his office <b>receives more than 60,000 new benefits claims each month, and at any given time has more than 250,000 claims being processed.</b>

The government’s second-largest agency also has come under fire for the amount of time it takes to process claims.

Working through the complicated separation and claims process can take months for separating troops, prompting the VA to expand its services in 2001 and begin its “seamless transition” initiative last year to streamline the VA processing procedure.

That initiative included efforts to improve communication between the VA and the Department of Defense, the addition of extra benefits counselors and internal VA moves to ensure that troops wounded in Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom receive priority care.

“They’ve earned those benefits, and I want to ensure they get them,” Principi said.

The VA’s 2001 expansion of services has made a big difference to troops passing through the Landstuhl hospital, according to Jerl York, officer in charge for the seven-member VA staff at Landstuhl.

<b>As of Tuesday, 20,802 troops have been treated at Landstuhl from injuries received in Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom.</b>