How many purple hearts have been handed out from Iraq?

[jkbsun]

wouldn't it be interesting to find out how many wounded and dead have been given purple hearts from Iraq. It would be a good way to find out how many actually have been wounded or killed. How would you find out that kind of info? anyone know?

[babylon_system]

1. Defense Department Casualty Stats

DOD admits to 965 deaths and 6590 wounded.
http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Aug2004/d20040824cas.pdf

Counting Purple Hearts might not give any more accuracy:
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/1205-13.htm

Denial of Purple Heart Medals Raises Questions About Casualty Count
by Patrick Peterson

GULFPORT, Miss. - An influential Mississippi congressman has raised the possibility that the Pentagon has undercounted combat casualties in Iraq after he learned that five members of the Mississippi National Guard who were injured Sept. 12 by a booby trap in Iraq were denied Purple Heart medals.

The guardsmen were wounded by an artillery shell that detonated as their convoy passed the tree in which it was hidden, but their injuries were classified as "noncombat," according to Rep. Gene Taylor, D-Miss. Taylor, a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee, learned of the classification when he visited the most seriously injured of the guardsmen, Spc. Carl Sampson, 35, at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington.

[arbusto_baboso]

2. Booby trap casualties have NEVER received Purple Hearts to my knowledge..

Even back in WWII. Have a family member that had a hand shattered by a booby-trapped German machine gun, and no Purple Heart for him. So, yeah, Purple Hearts are not an accurate count of casualties.

[DoBotherMe]

4. And Kerry's Third Purple Heart was

awarded for his shoulder injury received by being thrown against the pilothouse after the detonated mine went off during the ambush, not the shrapnel in his "leg" that he received blowing up a rice stash earlier that same day. The day he rescued Rassmann.

[Vickers]

3. Only the RW could classify an injury from a mortar in a combat zone

as a "noncombatant" injury.

That is just....wow. War is peace.