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Spinning the Number of Casualties Today

by Theodore Brown, Jr.

Mr. Brown, the author of "The Formative Period in the History of the Supreme Court of Tennessee, 1796-1835," in A History of the Tennessee Supreme Court (Univ. of Tenn. Press, 2002), is the co-editor of the Legal Papers of Andrew Jackson (Univ. of Tenn. Press 1987). His biographical profiles of Senator Estes Kefauver, Tennessee Supreme Court Justice William J. Harbison, and early Tennessee jurists John McNairy and John Overton were published in the Tennessee Historical Society's Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture (1998). His interview discussing Sen. Kefauver's investigation of organized crime was included in the A & E Network's documentary "Las Vegas and the Power of Money," which aired in 2002. Brown, who is at work on a book about Sen. Kefauver, practices law in Atlanta.

By now, most Americans are no doubt aware that more than 1,000 Americans have been killed in Iraq since the United States invaded that country in the spring of 2003. There are significant discrepancies, however, in the Bush administration's account of the number of American soldiers who have sustained such serious injuries in Iraq as to warrant being evacuated back to the United States for treatment. The American people are entitled to have these discrepancies explained by the Bush administration in order that the true extent of the cost of the war in Iraq can be known.

National Public Radio reported on January 7, 2004--in a segment of "All Things Considered" entitled, "Elusive Numbers of U.S. Troops Evacuated from Iraq Due to Serious Injury or Illness"--that Steve Stover, a spokesman for the Army, stated that for the Army alone there had been 8,848 soldiers whose severe injuries or illnesses warranted evacuation out of Iraq since March 19, 2003. Earlier, when the NPR reporter, Daniel Zwerdling, had contacted the Department of Defense in an effort to obtain the official numbers, a spokesman for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld admitted that he did not know how may troops had been evacuated because of injuries and illnesses. When Zwerdling subsequently telephoned the U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Florida, in an effort to obtain those numbers, a spokesman for the Central Command told him that the Command had been directed to send casualty numbers up to the office of the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs.

In an article for the French newspaper L'Humanité earlier this year--reprinted in the United States as "Forgotten Soldiers from Iraq" in the April 15, 2004, number of The Progressive-Populist--journalist Natasha Saulnier reported that according to the Pentagon a total of only 3,139 American soldiers had been wounded in hostile and non-hostile fire as of March 1, 2003, which is far less than half the 8,848 number that was given to NPR by the Army in January of this year (even assuming that all of the 3,139 wounded soldiers had to be evacuated, which, of course, is not likely to have been the case). Ms. Saulnier further reported that the Air Force, which actually transports wounded and ill soldiers stateside from Iraq, had confided to her that it had flown approximately 12,000 evacuees into Andrews Air Force Base over the preceding nine months. NPR's numbers are certainly consistent with those provided to Ms. Saulnier by the Air Force. Both suggest that the Pentagon's numbers are inaccurate and that the public is not being told the truth about the full cost of the Bush administration's war in Iraq.

According to the Department of Defense's official web site, as of October 15, 2004, a total of 4,240 soldiers have been wounded "in action" in Iraq and not returned to duty within 72 hours. This figure is still less than half the 8,848 number that was given to NPR by the Army in January of this year and only slightly more than one-third of the 12,000 figure that the Air Force gave Ms. Saulnier in March of this year (even assuming that all of the 4,240 wounded soldiers identified by the Department of Defense had to be evacuated, which, again, is not likely to have been the case).

This is not the first time that an American president has apparently misrepresented the true cost of an unpopular war to the American people. Similar discrepancies occurred during the Vietnam War. One of my responsibilities as a very young member of Senator Albert Gore, Sr.'s staff in 1969 and 1970 was to obtain weekly casualty figures from the Pentagon. President Richard Nixon's Pentagon insisted that "casualties" consisted only of military personnel who had been killed in combat. Senator Gore viewed the matter very differently. Every life lost or ruined in Vietnam--whether in combat or not--was, he believed, a casualty of our misguided policy in Southeast Asia. So, once a week, I obtained all casualty figures from the Pentagon--combat killed, non-combat killed, combat wounded, and non-combat wounded, military and civilian alike--and the senator took those numbers to the Senate floor and read them into the record so that the American people might know the full extent of the cost of the war in Vietnam.

The American people are entitled to know the total cost of the war in Iraq as well. The full measure of that cost in terms of human lives lost or ruined can only be determined by calling upon the Bush administration to account for these discrepancies and to concede that the soldier whose life has been ruined as a result of having been sent into harm's way in Iraq (regardless of whether his wounds were incurred in actual combat or not) is every bit as much a casualty of this war as the soldier whose life has been lost there. Yet, such an accounting by the Bush administration for the substantial discrepancies between the numbers reported by NPR in January 2004 and those reported by Ms. Saulnier in April of this year is not likely to be forthcoming. This administration seems incapable of telling the truth and, by operating behind its veil of secrecy, makes it virtually impossible for anyone else to determine what the truth really is.

My secretary has a cousin whose husband, an Army reservist, is now a quadriplegic confined to a wheelchair as a result of having been sent into harm's way in Iraq by the Bush administration. His story and the stories of all of the other "forgotten casualties" of the war in Iraq need to be told. Only then can Americans gauge the full cost of this war and make an informed determination about whether the Bush administration's decision to embark upon its troubling "preemptive" war in Iraq, the justifications for which we now know were untrue, has been worth the price in human lives that has been paid--and that continues to be paid--for that undertaking.