May War On Terrorism Up-Date

0805gwotstatsgraph
Originally uploaded by Randuwa

The Pentagon reported that this past May was the safest for U.S. troops since February of 2004. And, indeed, it was a very low casualty month, but as usual my numbers differ from theirs. The press cited 21 deaths as reported by the Pentagon for purposes of news reports; however, as I read and collect Department of Defense casualty reports as presented in news releases on a nearly daily basis over the month of May, I come up with 36 casualties.

So "Does the right hand know what the left is doing?"

Upon a more careful and disaggregated examination in which I tallied the casualties by 6 categories, I came up with the following results:

Iraq combat deaths = 14
Iraq non-combat deaths = 4
Afghanistan combat deaths = 13
Afghanistan non-combat deaths = 2
Other combat deaths = 1
Other non-combat deaths = 2

Excluding the 15 deaths in Afghanistan, you do get 21 casualties.

It strikes me as kind of odd that of those 21, one was from natural causes in the tiny African nation of Djibouti, and another was a soldier killed by a hit-and-run driver in Chicago; and yet, 15 soldiers killed in Afghanistan appear to have been conveniently omitted from the monthly pentagon report....

And THIS really IS the story. After more than six years since our victory over the Taliban in Afghanistan it has become again an arena of U.S. occupation as deadly as that of Iraq: A trend that is moving rapidly in the wrong direction.