Don't believe everything you read on a blog.

posted by The Vidiot @ 7:37 AM Permalink

When I first saw this story,

Excerpt: How come the government numbers of 3,777 as of 9/7/7 are so low? The answer is simple, the government does not want the 73,000 dead to be compared to the 55,000 U.S. soldiers killed in Vietnam Iraq = Vietnam. What the government is doing is only counting the soldiers that die in action before they can get them into a helicopter or ambulance. Any soldier who is shot but they get into a helicopter before he dies is not counted.

I was like ohmygawd that's awful. How can they keep this quiet. 73,000! But, my brain took over and I thought, where the hell are they getting their information? So, I dug up the actual report and read it. Yeah, it does say over 73,000 dead, but that's ALL Gulf War Vets (from 1990 to present) and as near as I can tell, it doesn't matter how they died. They could've died in a car wreck years after coming home or from Gulf War Syndrome or whatever. The footnote at the bottom of the page even said to not take this number at face value.

I didn't have time to wade through the jargon, but suffice it to say that, as far as the Dept. Vet's affairs goes, as of May 2007, 4,330 vets have died in the "Theater" which are all the first Gulf war deployments (post-1991). There are a bunch of other numbers in there, but they don't really break them all out into pre- and post-1991 numbers so there's really no way to see from this report, how many have died this time around.

Of course, we KNOW they're lying to us. We KNOW there are more dead than just 4,400. Like the blogger said, they don't count the ones that died on the way to the hospital or in the hospital. But saying 73,000 dead is misleading. This is not the report to be wagging your finger at.

At least, that's the best I could do on a the A-train, coming home after a long day, sitting next to a rather large and smelly fella who insisted on knocking me with his elbow every time he turned a page in his book. Maybe Bill, who understands the jargon better than I can make a more definitive comment.

Labels: casualties, Iraq war