ON MILITARY SO-CALLED VEHICLE ACCIDENTS??? IN IRAQ

Some people have noticed that there seem to be a rather--disporportionately--high incidence of U.S. soldier "vehicle accidents" in Iraq. So many vehicles "running off the road and flipping over", killing soldiers and injuring others! What!: can't American soldiers drive!? THE TRAFFIC IN URBAN BAGDAD OR ON IRAQ'S COUNTRY ROADS CAN'T BE *THAT* HEAVY!

It has been pointed out that many of these cases might involve Iraqis purposely *running* U.S. military vehicles off the road (and perhaps *purposely* running into American soldiers at intersections) as a rudimentary, but easy way to opportunistically injure or kill unwanted occupying American soldiers. Other "vehicle accidents" could involve soldiers swerving to avoid hostile hit-&-run guerilla fire, mortars, or smaller exploding landmines. So, some/many these many "vehicle accidents" could be, and perhaps should be, counted as "combat-related deaths".

We should also call up the American news media and ask WHY THEY ARE NOT REPORTING ON OR COUNTING THE SERIOUSLY WOUNDED, non-lethal military casualties (quietly evacuated and flown to American military base hospitals in Germany) - always much higher than combat deaths. From the American news media, you'd think that the only casualites are those soldiers who have been actually killed directly by hostile fire. And, of course, numerous caualties (like losing eyes or limbs or serious head injuries) are *directly* related to soldiers performing military duties in Iraq in support of the fighting/occupation. None of these wounded or serously injured are reported in the daily casualty counts. We also don't hear about the half-dozen or so suicides or a few "friendly fires." And later, we won't hear about the fraggings. Those soldiers go invisible, unnoticed, and unacknowledged.

Finally, in WWI, the British and French used to keep total "combat" battlefield casualty figures artificially low by expeditiously removing critically wounded - especially all-but-dead - soldiers from the battle field/theatre as soon as possible, before they inevitably died, and thus not counting those deaths as "battlefield" deaths, or combat deaths in the trenches. Those removed critically wounded soldiers would soon quietly die back home in some British/French hospital, without being counted as actual combat fatalities.

Listen closely and carefully to how narrowly the American govt/media reports and defines American casualties in Iraq.