Is The US Gov't Lying About # of Soldiers Killed-TBR News Reported...

[chlamor]

The figures were held down during Viet Nam. Is it happening again? Here are a few snips and the link from Axis of Logic.

"Today's mass killing added to the number of Iraqi deaths which total well over 100,000 since the U.S. invaded the country 2 years ago. As U.S. citizens we must lay responsibility for this hellish nightmare where it belongs - at the feet of George Walker Bush, Dick Cheney, the rest of the regime and the U.S. legislators and senators who have supported the war and occupation from the beginning. These mass killers must be brought to justice before the world spins further out of control. There is no end in sight to the savagery and not a single reason to believe that their appetite for blood will be sated. They must be stopped because they will not stop on their own."
<snip>
"But these killers are not only responsible for the deaths of so many Iraqi men, women and children.  They are also responsibile for the growing number U.S. military men and women who have been killed in this war.  Many if not most of these recruits also ended up in Iraq to avoid unemployment and economic hardship. Now there is reason to believe that the U.S. government and the Pentagon have been lying about the numbers of their own soldiers who have been killed and wounded."
<snip>
"Brian Harring, writing for TBR News reported that 30 more U.S. soldiers died in Iraq in the first 13 days this month alone.  By February 13, the official government count of U.S. military dead was 1532 and rising.  TBR News reports that as of January 1, 2005, about 6,210 U.S. Military Personnel who died in German hospitals or en route to German hospitals ARE NOT COUNTED IN THIS TOTAL."

"Is the U.S. Government lying to U.S. citizens about the number of U.S. soldiers who have been killed and are being killed in Iraq?"
http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_15982.shtml

[jmatthan]

1. My God, why cannot Americans be like

the Ukraininians, the Lebaneese, ... and people in democratic other countries who get rid of unfit Governments???

Do we have to suffer this Bush malAdministration for another four years?

Jacob Matthan
http://koti.netplaza.fi/~findians/AntiWar/USEducated/educated.html
Oulu, Finland

[mwb970]

3. Maybe longer. (n/t)

[Just Me]

2. Yes.

[Radical Activist]

4. Of Course they are

I assumed they were fudging the numbers all along. Could we really expect anything else from this administration? They are being very selective about what they call combat deaths.

[jbnow]

5. I was reading about past wars

And it seems the "killed in action" are just that, dead on the battlefield. If wounded in action and dying later that is DOW, died of wounds (or DOI, died of injuries) Killed in action was always the lower number.

This was about historical wars and I wondered if the numbers we got now were just the "killed in action". Sadly, this must be the case. (So do the soldiers or families feel better that they lived a few more hours or days)

[OneBlueSky]

6. beware . . . TBRNews not the most reliable of sources . . .

it's run by a Nazi sympathizer and holocaust denier who has about a half dozen online pseudonyms . . . take anything you read there with a huge grain of salt . . . that being said, I believe it highly likely that the US deaths in Iraq are grossly underreported in the "official" numbers . . .

[hatred69]

7. speaking of past wars...

Ya know when I visited the capital some 16 years ago, the one thing that i took away from the Vietnam memorial was that, unlike every other monument in the city, this one was literally dug into the ground, and could not even be seen a block away, unlike all of the others. At the time I saw the memorial there were some 57,000 plus names and now that number has grown to 58,000 + thus leading up to my question. Does any body know the number of soldiers that were reported as killed in action in Vietnam on the evening news on the day we flew our last helicopter out of Vietnam?

I just recall telling my mother at the time that there were over fifty thousand names on that wall, and here staring at me in dis-belief because she never heard any numbers of that kind being reported in the news.

[Disturbed]

8. This Govt. lies so often that people don't even get upset ..

anymore. They just shrug and go about their business as usual.

[hatred69]

9. thats my point...

and I totally agree with you. My point for asking this question is to show a correlation with todays killed in action numbers being just as baseless in reality as those that were reported during Vietnam.

Most people that I have encountered can and Will at least stop to think for a moment if they are shown where in pasts times the government has lied about the same thing. Further more, the person who I wanted to offer this statistic to happens to be a * supporter, but even MORE so he is a Vietnam vet.

I simply want to say to him, yeah well on the day the last helicopter left Vietnam, there were x,xxx troops reported as killed in action in Vietnam. Now how come years later there is over 50,000 names on the Vietnam memorial when we were only told about several thousand at the time?

If anybody knows this information please share and or point me in the right direction as to where to look beyond that great information sea called Goggle.

[newyawker99]

13. Hi hatred69!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[mainer]

10. Follow this site instead for running casualty tallies;

It lists names, causes of death, and includes accidents and suicides. The "official" military reports are always way behind.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/iraq_casualties.htm

[mainer]

11. The problems inherent in "counting casualties": an explanation:

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/iraq_casualties_notes.htm

"While we make every diligent effort to reconcile the casualties' name with the original incident notice, it is nonetheless possible for a few casualties to have been doublecounted. This is in contrast to the official DoD count, which appears to undercount US casualties and account for them only once the next-of-kin have been notified and the names publicly released. Casualties whose next-of-kin are not notified or cannot be contacted/located do not therefore appear to be counted in the official tally.

Additionally, an April 27, 2004, story titled "The Lasting Wounds Of War: Roadside Bombs Have Devastated Troops and Doctors Who Treat Them" by Karl Vick and published in the Washington Post, page 1, mentioned instances where US casualties, having suffered extensive brain-damage and with no prospect of regaining consciousness, are sent home for families to decide whether or not to terminate life support. According to the article, "The practice, subject to review after gathering feedback from families, assumes that loved ones will find value in holding the soldier's hand before confronting the decision to remove life support." It is not immediately apparent the extent to which these casualties are accounted for in the official DoD casualties count.

The Army releases monthly summaries of the number of soldiers who are evacuated from Iraq for treatment outside the theater for various medical reasons, broadly defined as Wounded In Action, Non-Battle Injury, and Disease. As of 31 July 2004 this total number had risen to over 13,000. The Marine Corps makes no such number public, but based on a guesstimate of the number of Marines who have served in theater their numbers would probably be over 1,000 but not as many as 2,000."

[elehhhhna]

12. This is chilling: (from the article)

"There is excellent reason to believe that the Department of Defense is deliberately not reporting a significant number of the dead in Iraq. We have received copies of manifests from the MATS that show far more bodies shipped into Dover AFP than are reported officially. The educated rumor is that the actual death toll is in excess of 7,000. Given the officially acknowledged number of over 15,000 seriously wounded, this elevated death toll is far more realistic than the current 1,400+ now being officially published. When our research is complete, and watertight, we will publish the results along with the sources. Ed"