Veterans for Common Sense:nearly 75,000 casualties

Apr. 9, VCS Special Report: Nearly 75,000 U.S. Service Member Battlefield Casualties from the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars

Paul Sullivan, Executive Director, VCS


Apr 09, 2008

Last month, the US marked five years in Iraq with the tragic news of 4,000 service members killed in the war zone. But the 4,000 U.S. deaths are only part of the story.

In addition to the deaths, the devastating facts about the war continue to leak out. On the night of April 8, in an effort to conceal bad news from the public and press, the Department of Defense quietly released their new U.S. service member battlefield casualty statistics from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars: 74,713.

Veterans for Common Sense vigilantly monitors these statistics for our members by checking for new DoD casualty reports about Iraq and Afghanistan at the beginning of the month, based on a Freedom of Information Act request we sent in nearly two years ago.

DoD prepares one report for Iraq War casualties and one for Afghanistan war casualties and posts them to a hard-to-find web site. VCS then combines the statistics in easy-to-read fact sheets for distribution to our members, the public, journalists, and our lawmakers. VCS obtained the difficult-to-find DoD web site address for the reports through the Freedom of Information Act.

The sad news: the total number of casualties from both wars reached nearly 75,000, where casualty is defined as killed, wounded, injured, and ill. The Afghanistan War caused more than 9,000 casualties to date. And the Iraq War quagmire caused more than 65,000. The DoD casualty reports document more than 70,000 total non-fatal casualties, plus nearly 4,500 deaths, from the two war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan, for a grand total of 74,713 U.S. service member battlefield casualties.
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http://www.veteransforcommonsense.org/ArticleID/9782