6,000 dead and wounded US in Iraq

There's a reason the Pentagon is keeping the number of American wounded secret -- it's a way to hide the human toll of the war.

The true scale of American casualties in Iraq is revealed today by new figures obtained by The Observer, which show that more than 6,000 American servicemen have been evacuated for medical reasons since the beginning of the war, including more than 1,500 American soldiers who have been wounded, many seriously.

Now the article doesn't give the source of those figures which is a serious omission. But it includes 1,178 soldiers wounded in combat operations and nearly 300 dead. Throw in soldiers injured in non-combat situations, heat strokes, heart attacks, appendectomies, and other illnesses, as well as those evacuated for psychological reasons, and 6,000 is plausible.

Posted September 14, 2003 11:02 AM | Comments (46)