Count down

Washington Monthly, Dec, 2003 by Patricia M. Koster

The "Know Not, Ask Not" item from Charles Peters's column "Tilting At Windmills" (October) mentions a story by Vernon Loeb of The Washington Post concerning Americans wounded in Iraq. He states that as of Sept. 2, the number was 1,124. Back in August, I wrote to my representative and senators requesting these numbers.

One senator sent me a printout of a Web page prepared by Washington Headquarters Services, Directorate for Information Operations and Reports which gave the number 1,148 as of Sept. 12. Seems that Loeb is using this same source, but I sure wouldn't depend on those numbers.

Bill Berkowitz had an article (originally appeared at workingforchange.com) in the Oct. 15 issue of The Progressive Populist which covered this same thing. He quoted Lt. Col. Allen DeLane, the man in charge of airlifting the wounded into Andrews Air Force Base, as saying during an NPR interview, "Since the war started, I can't give you an exact number because that's classified information, but I can say to you over 4,000 have stayed here at Andrews. And that number doubles when you count the people that come here to Andrews, and then we send them to other places like Walter Reed and Bethesda ... " That's more than 8,000 without considering those still in hospitals at our overseas bases, such as Germany, and at a time when the government-published figures were 827. That tells me that this administration is reporting only about one-tenth of actual wounded.

Have you noticed that the total number of those killed in action is decreasing? A little more than a month ago, the number killed was well over 160 since May 1. An Oct. 20 AP news item reporting on two Americans killed in ambushes in Iraq stated, "The deaths in Kirkuk brought to 103 the number of Americans killed by hostile tire since President Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1. A total of 338 Americans have died since the March 20 invasion of Iraq, 217 of them in combat" If you do the math, 217 minus 103 means that 114 were killed between March 19 and May 1, and we know the number was greater than that. Also, we've been losing troops at an average rate at least one a day since May 1, and it's been more than 170 days since May 1--how could the total possibly be 103? If the administration is saying total killed in combat is 217, perhaps we should multiply by 10 (the wounded) to get a closer approximation of the total number of deaths. The lies seem to continue.

Patricia M. Koster

Williston, Fla.