Although several news outlets spent the day barking about the Afghanistan death toll crossing the 1,000 mark, the truth is that casualty counting is a little more complicated. Icasualties.org is where the media are grabbing that 1,000 figure. The Web site does report that that the death toll in “Operation Enduring Freedom” has crossed that many deaths, but with one caveat: “U.S. fatalities In and Around Afghanistan remain under this benchmark.”
Clicking one more link will take you to their actual toll for Afghanistan (including neighboring Pakistan and Uzbekistan), which is still 70 shy of the millennium mark. The rest of the servicemembers died in such far away countries as Cuba (Guantánamo Bay), Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Jordan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Philippines, Seychelles, Sudan, Tajikistan, Turkey, and Yemen.
Some have asked me why I care where they died, as it’s still one war. True, but that’s 15 other countries where our relatives, friends and neighbors are dying in this worldwide war. It may not bring them back to notice the details, but it underscores how absurdly spread out the war machine has gotten. And for what purpose?
If one recalls accurately the death to wounded ratio for US troops in Vietnam was roughly one in five, and in these present wars it is now somewhere between one in ten to one in fourteen.
Though accurate figures are hard to come by, that very clearly means the number of severely mutilated but still formally "living" has increased considerably.
Multiplying it out one gets some idea of what these wars are costing American soldiers in death and mutilation. Then add in Afghanis and Iraqis.
Note also that US private military contractors outnumber the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan and that they are not counted in the available figures and ratios.
There is a line when sheer incompetence becomes sheer lunacy. The US crossed that line long ago.
I'm curious how US soldiers die in Eritrea? It seems as if that would require some sort of treatment in hospitals in Eritrea. The United States recently said Eritrea was a destabilizing force in the region so I doubt that is the case. They have also rejected Eritrea's offers at a military base. I was wondering in what capacity US soldiers have then died in Eritrea?
I recall reading that the Pentagon counts as war fatalities only those who die in Afghanistan and Iraq. If a wounded soldier is airlifted out and dies elsewhere then that death does not show up as a combat statistic. Such a reporting policy significantly under counts American war casualties.
Does anyone have any insight into this?
Where will the future momument to the “Fallen of the Great War on Terror (Islam?)” be placed? I am suggesting at the entrance to Lockheed or General Dynamics; the front lawn of the Israeli Embassy would be most appropriate if they didn’t charge us too much to put it there. These brave men shall not have died in vain – they died for the right of the Israeli settlers to steal more land. And they will never be forgotten by those who made billions in profits from their sacrifice.
Nice to see Eugene Costa posting – he always gives interesting views..
When countries invade other countries that have not attacked them, who picks up the bill for the hundreds of thousands of persons killed and displaced by those actions? In Iraq, between 100,000 to 500,000 persons have been killed and about 4 million displaced as refugees, mainlly to Syria and Jordan. I do not believe that the whole world should be asked to pay for these dislocation costs that resulted from one government's stuborness. If Americans only knew and had been given a choice that they would be charged about $10,000 to 20,000 per tax payer for their destructive actions, how many would have agreed to the Iraq and Afgahnastan wars?
JDonald,
Of course you are right, but unfortunately, Americans don’t know diddely because they aren’t told the simple truth. The average American (IQ of 100) cannot possibly ferret out the truth from all of the lies we are bombarded with daily. Our corporate capiltalist culture is basically a culture of lies. Buy this, buy that, you will be slim, you will be beautiful, your penis will be enormous, etc.,etc. Our political culture is also based upon the same culture of half-truths and outright lies. Vote incumbent if you don’t like what is happening, send them a message, the Muslims all want to kill you, AlQaeda hates your freedom, you are actually free, etc., etc. It is constant.
If you don’t know the truth, what good is free choice – not that that matters anyway. Do our leaders like Cheney care what you think ? F–k you, you voted for me!
JDonald, don’t look for rational thinking from a country whose culture has gone insane . Just pray for its peaceful disintegration.
I've read 1984 three or four times since it was required reading in a college English class I had back in the early seventies. My inventory of books that have never read has run out so I dug out my old copy of 1984 and will read it again as soon as I'm finished with my present read. I believe I will find it even more relevant this time around than ever before since it's been about twenty years since I last read it and, as your post suggests, we are, more than ever before, living in a culture where government propaganda is broadcast as truth by nearly all the MSM and Americans, on the whole, are too dumb to realize what they are being fed.
Richard, from where I'm sitting, you're letting the war pigs off the hook. Bush's torture chambers and other war crimes were widespread public knowledge BEFORE the American people rewarded the guy with a second term in power, back in 2004. The American people KNEW what was going on – torture and the like – and they approved. Polls show that they still do. Statements such as 'the American people didn't know diddly' are plain wrong. Americans weren't frightened into supporting war crimes – that's just the kind of people they are.
God Bless America.
Richard,
Actually most Americans do not want to know or face the truth.It is extremlly uncomfortable.They rather keep on pretending.The goevrnment keep telling them lies and they keep on buying those lies.
There were several casualties in adjacent countries which the DoD chose to attribute to Operation Iraqi Freedom. Almost all were accidents or illnesses.
America has become a large DisneyWorld or mammoth LasVegas. Americans have become so inured to the 'show' that the media, advertising, PR firms or the government presents, that they've allowed its purveyors to sell it to them as 'real' life.
Then they wonder what happened when they lose their jobs or are beggared by an illness? Not the majority of them, thank goodness, just enough to remind the others that 'life is good' for 'winners'.
Nike,
I think I understand what you are saying; American people actually like the destruction and toture that we are inflicting. Yes, but I attribute that to a cultivated false world view; cultivated by what I can only attribute to evil forces. E.g., our media always protrays torture as ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY for our children’s safety, never as the callous excesses by the sociopaths we hire as investigators. Our media always shows the frightened crowd scenes in Israel when a flying pipe bomb actually does some damage; our media never shows the results of dropping white phosphorus on thousands of trapped civilians. This false world view doesn’t come about from planning sessions around some big conference table, it arises from shared intent of the perpetrators just as a pack of hyenas don’t plan an attack upon a wounded wildebeast, they just act in unison by coordinated instinct.
And our choice of opponents – it is always the Harlem Globetrotters against the Washington Generals – we always win and winning is fun. Our opponents are always third or fourth rate powers like Afghanistan, Panama or Grenada.
So the average American, exploited and trapped by our corporatist capitalism, lied to and bedazzled, reacts as a trained circus dog and jumps through all the hoops presented.
American people actually like the destruction and toture that we are inflicting. Yes, but I attribute that to a cultivated false world view; cultivated by what I can only attribute to evil forces. E.g., our media always protrays torture as ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY for our children's safety, never as the callous excesses by the sociopaths we hire as investigators. Our media always shows t hackett
Clicking one more link will take you to their actual toll for Afghanistan (including neighboring Pakistan and Uzbekistan), which is still 70 shy of the millennium mark. The rest of the servicemembers died in such far away countries as Cuba (Guantánamo Bay), Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Jordan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Philippines, Seychelles, Sudan, Tajikistan, Turkey, and Yemen.sports limo
Some have asked me why I care where they died, as it’s still one war. True, but that’s 15 other countries where our relatives, friends and neighbors are dying in this worldwide war. It may not bring them back to notice the details, but it underscores how absurdly spread out the war machine has gotten. And for what purpose Movies Online
We can all look much the same kind of a country about to be visited. There are many types of countries of course have differences that we can not equate.
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