More disgraceful than the deception that this story
reveals is the complicity of the "US mainstream news
media," and the cable news networks in particular...
"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. The figures will shock many Americans, who believe that casualties in the war in Iraq have been relatively light."
America's hidden battlefield toll
New figures reveal the true number of GIs wounded in Iraq
Jason Burke in London and Paul Harris in New York
Sunday September 14, 2003
The Observer
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. The figures will shock many Americans, who
believe that casualties in the war in Iraq have been
relatively light. Recent polls show that support for
President George Bush and his administration's policy
in Iraq has been slipping.
The number of casualties will also increase pressure
on Bush to share the burden of occupying Iraq with
more nations. Attempts to broker an international
alliance to pour more men and money into Iraq
foundered yesterday when Colin Powell, the US
Secretary of State, brusquely rejected a French
proposal as 'totally unrealistic'.
Three US soldiers were killed last week, bringing the
number of combat dead since hostilities in Iraq were
declared officially over on 1 May to 68. A similar
number have died in accidents. It is military police
policy to announce that a soldier has been wounded
only if they were involved in an incident that
involved a death.
Critics of the policy say it hides the true extent of
the casualties. The new figures reveal that 1,178
American soldiers have been wounded in combat
operations since the war began on 20 March.
It is believed many of the American casualties
evacuated from Iraq are seriously injured. Modern body
armour, worn by almost all American troops, means
wounds that would normally kill a man are avoided.
However vulnerable arms and legs are affected badly.
This has boosted the proportion of maimed among the
injured.
There are also concerns that many men serving in Iraq
will suffer psychological trauma. Experts at the
National Army Museum in London said studies of
soldiers in the First and Second World Wars showed
that it was prolonged exposure to combat environments
that was most damaging. Some American units, such as
the Fourth Infantry Division, have been involved in
frontline operations for more than six months.
Andrew Robertshaw, an expert at the museum, said wars
also claimed casualties after they were over.
'Soldiers were dying from injuries sustained during
World War I well into the 1920s,' he said.
British soldiers are rotated more frequently than
their American counterparts. The Ministry of Defence
has recently consulted the National Army Museum about
psychological disorders suffered by combatants in
previous wars in a bid to avoid problems.
The wounded return to the USA with little publicity.
Giant C-17 transport jets on medical evacuation
missions land at Andrews Air Force Base, near
Washington, every night.
Battlefield casualties are first treated at Army field
hospitals in Iraq then sent to Landstuhl Regional
Medical Centre in Germany, where they are stabilised.
Andrews is the first stop back home. As the planes
taxi to a halt, gangplanks are lowered and the wounded
are carried or walk out. A fleet of ambulances and
buses meet the C-17s most nights to take off the most
seriously wounded. Those requiring urgent operations
and amputations are ferried to America's two best
military hospitals, the Walter Reed Army Medical
Centre, near Washington, and the National Naval
Medical Centre, Bethesda.
The hospitals are busy. Sometimes all 40 of Walter
Reed's intensive care beds are full.
Dealing with the aftermath of amputations and blast
injuries is common. Mines, home-made bombs and
rocket-propelled grenades are the weapons of choice of
the Iraqi resistance fighters. They cause the sort of
wounds that will cost a soldier a limb.
The less badly wounded stay overnight at the air base,
where an indoor tennis club and a community centre
have been turned into a medical staging facility. Many
have little but the ragged uniforms on their backs. A
local volunteer group, called America's Heroes of
Freedom, has set up on the base to provide them with
fresh clothes, food packages and toiletries. 'This is
our way of saying, "We have not forgotten you,"' said
group founder Susan Brewer.