UPI says media ignores 17,000 Iraq US casualties in its Iraq reporting

[papau]

Nothing that new here - UPI compared the Bush reported dead of 1,019 dead and wounded of 7,245 wounded from Iraq to the reported 16,765 individual service members from Iraq and Afghanistan for injuries and ailments not directly related to combat per the U.S. Transportation Command, and notes that under Bush the Pentagon ignores its own rules that say one must count more than just the dead (combat and non-combat-related action or illness) under the rule to count "Any person who is lost to the organization by having been declared dead, duty status/whereabouts unknown, missing, ill, or injured."
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http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000630846

Press Reports on U.S. Casualties: About 17,000 Short, UPI Says

By Mark Benjamin, UPI

Published: September 15, 2004

NEW YORK (UPI) Nearly 17,000 service members medically evacuated from Iraq and Afghanistan are absent from public Pentagon casualty reports commonly cited by newspapers, according to military data reviewed by United Press International. Most don't fit the definition of casualties, according to the Pentagon, but a veterans' advocate said they should all be counted.<snip>

A spokesman for the transportation command said that without orders from U.S. Central Command, his unit would not separate the medical evacuation data to show how many came from Iraq and Afghanistan. "We stay in our lane," said Lt. Col. Scott Ross. But most are clearly from Operation Iraqi Freedom where several times as many troops are deployed as in Afghanistan.

Among veterans from Iraq seeking help from the VA, 5,375 have been diagnosed with a mental problem, making it the third-leading diagnosis after bone problems and digestive problems. Among the mental problems were 800 soldiers who became psychotic.

A military study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in July showed that 16 percent of soldiers returning from Iraq might suffer major depression, generalized anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder. Around 11 percent of soldiers returning from Afghanistan may have the same problems, according to that study.

Mark Benjamin, UPI