Pentagon alters how wounded are calculated

[nosmokes]

if this surprises you, shame on you. if it doesn't move you to take some action, be it a phone call to a congress critter or a LTTE or holding a sign atan intersection then what will it take?

original-RegisterGuard

Pentagon alters how wounded are calculated

By Denise Grady
The New York Times
Published: Friday, February 2, 2007

Statistics on a Pentagon Web site have been reorganized in a way that lowers the published totals of American nonfatal casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Michael Kilpatrick, deputy director of force health protection and readiness at the Defense Department, said the previous method of tallying casualties was misleading and might have made injuries and combat wounds seem worse and more numerous than they really were.

The old method lumped many problems under the label ``casualties,'' including illnesses, minor injuries and injuries from accidents, as well as wounds sustained in combat.

But the public may assume that every casualty is a war wound, Kilpatrick said, so the site was changed to avoid misunderstandings.

On Monday, the bottom line of the Defense Department's Web page on casualties in Iraq listed a total of 47,657 ``nonmortal casualties.''

By Tuesday, the same page no longer showed a total for nonmortal casualties. The bottom line is now ``total - medical air transported,'' and the figure is 31,493.

The new total excludes 16,164 soldiers who were wounded but did not require medical air transport because their injuries were minor. The total does include combat wounds, nonhostile injuries and diseases serious enough for medical transport.

Half the nonhostile injuries are from vehicle accidents, and a third are sports injuries from activities such as basketball, Kilpatrick said.

About 50 disease categories - including mental problems and gastrointestinal illnesses - have led to medical evacuations. Kilpatrick said 85 percent of those who were flown out for medical reasons eventually returned to duty.

``It may be a few weeks or it may be a year or more,'' he said.
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complete article here

[ShortnFiery]

1. Lies, Damn Lies, and The Pentagon's *Statistics,* n/t

[peacetalksforall]

2. The count should include those who commit suicide - their wound

is in their heart and mind. It should include all those with any kind of mental pain. It should include immune disabilities. It should include all who are in agony of any kind. And maybe it should include their close family members who are hurting because their son, daughter, spouse, parent is hurting.

I support our kids. I don't support the business of war and themilitary-businessmen and women who rah-rah and pimp for the military-industrial-media complex. Most of the brass.

When are they going to start selling military stocks? Trade on the market?

The design of our country as it has evolved through greed, arrogance, deception, and outright contempt for human beings is beyond wiggle room.

I believe in military defense. We are NOT about defense. We are about grand offenses to the human race. In this country, the truth hurts horribly.

[Bucky]

3. Can we nominate the Pentagon for a DUzy award?

Seriously, how are diseases contracted on an overseas mission not a hazard of warfare?

Stoopid damn NewSpeak.

[nosmokes]

4. Keep in mind, too,

hese are the same people that want us to believe that Iran is intimately involved w/ attacking our troops and supplying arms to the resistance in Iraq, even though, so far, to date, they have declined to provide one fucking iota of proof, simply the exact same rumor and innuendo from unnamed sources that assured us Iraq had WMD and ties to al-Qaeda and was an imminent threat.

but we impeached bill clinton for lying about a blow job. a hundred years from now kids are gonna be reading their history texts and they're gonna be unbelieving about the chapters covering this period.

[Monkeyman]

5. Can you say Vietnam again only it was phony body counts