I don't know how well you pay attention to the casualty figures coming out of Iraq but if you go to this site on a daily basis some interesting things come to light. One is that there is an incredible amount of violence going on in that country. I check this site, Iraq Coalition Casualty Count (linked to the right), daily. If you go there and look at what has been listed for today you may notice that it is not just US casualties that are listed. For example today a newspaper editor and Baghdad's deputy mayor were killed along with 2 US soldiers. Also you find this, DoD Identifies Army Casualties, which was not reported until today. This type appears quite a bit, 82d ABN DIV SOLDIER DIES OF NON-HOSTILE GUNSHOT WOUND, non-hostile gunshot wound and this being under investigation are two key elements to the story. From what I understand about these types of deaths they are either suicide or a fragging, which is:

Main Entry: frag

Function: transitive verb
Inflected Form(s): fragged; fragged; frag·ging; frags; -s
Etymology: frag, noun
: to deliberately injure or kill (one's military leader) by means of a fragmentation grenade
- frag·ger

Another sign of how good things are going there. So when you hear about casualties in the main stream media most of the time all you hear about are the number killed. It does seem they are mentioning the number of wounded more lately. Most of the time they do not mention the number of Iraqis killed. They also do not mention the "non-hostile" dead nor do they go back and mention those who die that come out a few days after the fact as evidenced above. What this goes to show is that there is plenty of violence still going on in Iraq and still plenty of dying, no matter what the President is saying.
- posted by Mom/Dad @ 12:01 PM