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November 22, 2004
DoD Under-Reports Iraq Casualties
According to a report by 60 Minutes, the Department of Defense has chronically undercounted the true number of casualties in the Iraq conflict by only including those soldiers injured in conflict. By the official count there have been 1228 killed and 8956 wounded; however, when pressed to give the number of casualties according to the military's own definition of anyone "lost to the organization," the DoD number balloons to "more than 15,000" evacuated due to wound or illness. Some military analysts estimate that the number is actually more than 20,000 and perhaps as high as 30,000.
60 Minutes asked the Department of Defense to grant us an interview. They declined. Instead, they sent a letter, which contains a figure not included in published casualty reports: "More than 15,000 troops with so-called 'non-battle' injuries and diseases have been evacuated from Iraq."
"It's difficult to estimate what the total number is," says John Pike, director of a research group called GlobalSecurity.org.
"You have to say that the total number of casualties due to wounds, injury, disease would have to be somewhere in the ballpark of over 20, maybe 30,000," says Pike.
Posted by bcoffee at November 22, 2004 08:29 PM
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