2,000 U.S. troops killed in Iraq: Russian expert

[Emillereid]

By Vladimir Radyuhin

MOSCOW, JULY 23. The United States suffers far heavier casualties in Iraq than it officially admits, a Russia military diplomat claimed.

The actual U.S. military losses in Iraq may have reached 2,000 personnel, more than twice the official figure of 900, as Washington badly understates its casualty statistics, a military diplomatic source told the Itar-Tass news agency.

"Official statistics do not include casualties among non-U.S. nationals who sign up to serve in the American armed forces in order to get a U.S. `green card.' According to reliable information the share of non-Americans in the U.S. force in Iraq may be as high as 60 per cent," the source said. "The real number of U.S. losses may be as high as 2,000 casualties and up to 12,000 wounded," the military diplomat said..../

http://www.hindu.com/2004/07/24/stories/2004072402401400.htm

If this is true, Kerry should make this a big issue -- like non-American citizen's lives don't matter! This is sick.

[LittleApple81]

1. We know we cannot believe the Pentagon...but I don't know the

credibility of a Russian expert in an Indian newspaper. My guess: we have a lot more casualties than admitted but I don't think that 1100 more than declared is the right number either.

[G_j]

2. I hadn't thought about

"non-U.S. nationals who sign up to serve in the American armed forces in order to get a U.S. `green card."

I'm wondering how one could look into this further..?

[southernleftylady]

4. I never knew about that... they do that ??? please i would like more info!

[psychopomp]

25. Here's a start

23 Soldiers Sworn In As Citizens

This week Federal Judge Gary Feess singled out 23 members of the United States Armed Forces during a citizenship swearing-in ceremony in Los Angeles.

Foreign-born recruits join the military for many reasons, including education benefits, job security and love of their adopted country. And now, enlisting puts them on the fast track to citizenship.

Since President Bush signed a temporary executive order in July making all soldiers with green cards immediately eligible for citizenship, eliminating a three-year waiting period, nearly 6,000 soldiers have become U.S. citizens. The president’s executive order affects any member of the military serving after September 11, 2001. It essentially allows them to apply for citizenship immediately and is described as a gesture to thank the soldiers for their service in defending the country.

Similar decrees during World War II, the Korean War, Vietnam and the 1991 Persian Gulf War helped hundreds of thousands of immigrants become U.S. citizens. The White House says the new policy is not aimed at boosting recruitment but is intended to reward those who volunteer in the war against terrorism.

As the war in Iraq unfolds, the prominence of immigrants serving in the armed forces could help to temper the debate over immigration in the wake of the 9-11 terror attacks, which has lead the Bush administration and Congress to tighten immigration policy and increase scrutiny at the nation's borders and ports.

According to various sources, there are between 30,000 and 50,000 foreign nationals serving on active duty in the U.S. military, which constitutes about 3 percent of 1.4 million soldiers. The executive order made around 15,000 foreign nationals in the military immediately eligible.

To handle the number of requests being filed by military personnel, which have quadrupled from about 300 a month to more than 1,300 a month, the government created a team to quickly process the military applications.

Most of the new citizens come from Mexico, followed by the Philippines, Vietnam, Korea and Iran. Critics say the government is playing off the desire for citizenship to exploit these mostly poor immigrants form Latin America, Asia and the Caribbean, for this war effort.

http://www.visalaw.com/03apr1/10apr103.html

[zwielicht]

26. thank you!

so maybe (hopefully) they are already inculded in the casualties lists, as they become american citicens posthumously, and do not add up to the 1.028 coalition dead (and the 100 times more on the other side)

it's just very strange that on lists like lunaville.org or the cnn site there is not a single u.s. military member listed with a hometown outside the u.s. (+puerto rico & american samoa). i looked all the way through the list because i wanted to know this... It's so saddening to see the faces of more than thousand of the people killed in iraq, for lies and profit... :cry:

[southernleftylady]

3. Well didnt a the righties say that russians had info about iraq

and wmd's or threats or something???

[The_Casual_Observer]

5. Seeing that foreign sounding names are seldom reported

and if there are that many green card GI's, I wouldn't doubt it.

[lapfog_1]

6. I don't know about foreign nationals

but it is true that if someone is wounded and makes it to an evac
hospital and still has a pulse, they are not counted as KIA, even
if they die hours or days later from their injuries. Some estimates
put this as high as an additional 200 or about 5 percent of the wounded
in action.

Also, don't forget the army of private contractors (both those doing
civilian jobs and the mercs).

I'm guessing the number of American citizens killed as a result of
this war is likely higher than 2000 so far.

[midwayer]

7. this is interesting and could be a can of worms

ready to be reopened. A google search shows the last reporting on this back in february through, yes a russian source. The problem, it would seem, is that even know they know it's being under reported, it is still difficult to get the real numbers.

I'll bet this will become a spotlight issue again soon.


http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/feb2004/woun-f04.shtml

In keeping the number of wounded from the public, the military high command was aided by the American media. Editor & Publisher Online observed in July that while deaths in combat were being reported, the many non-combat deaths were virtually ignored and the numbers of wounded, in and out of battle, were being under-reported. Questioned by E & P Online, Philip Bennett, Washington Post assistant managing editor of the foreign desk, acknowledged blandly that “There could be some inattention to .”

The sharp increase in the number of US wounded in the autumn—the official number of combat wounded alone averaged nearly 100 a week between mid-September and mid-November (lunaville.org)—made the reluctance of the military to provide figures increasingly problematic. Even the servile US media was beginning to request figures. Still the Pentagon officialdom put up as much resistance as it could.

In September 2003, the Post itself noted, “Although Central Command keeps a running total of the wounded, it releases the number only when asked—making the combat injuries of US troops in Iraq one of the untold stories in the war.”

Sen. Bob Graham of Florida, one-time candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination and ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, declared around the same time that he wanted to know how many US soldiers had been wounded in Iraq, but had been unable to find out because the administration would not release the information.

An article in the October 13 New Republic by Lawrence F. Kaplan noted: “Pentagon officials have rebuked public affairs officers who release casualty figures, and, until recently, US Central Command did not regularly publicize the injured total either.” Ten days later, however, E & P Online commented, “Current injury statistics were easily obtained...through US Central Command and the Pentagon, so getting the numbers is no longer a problem.”

In that same New Republic piece, Kaplan discussed the state of many injured soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. He pointed out that modern medical technique meant that a far higher percentage of wounded soldiers now survived who would have died in previous wars. The use of Kevlar body armor had also reduced deaths. The result, however, was that many of the wounded were left with debilitating injuries, particularly amputated limbs. Because of the higher survival rate, information about the seriously wounded is essential to any accurate picture of the Iraq war.

Kaplan wrote: “The near-invisibility of the wounded has several sources. The media has always treated combat deaths as the most reliable measure of battlefield progress, while for its part the administration has been reluctant to divulge the full number of wounded.”

The number of “combat injuries,” however, is far from the whole story. That leaves out the thousands who have become physically or mentally ill in Iraq. As noted above, estimates of the real number of US servicemen and women evacuated from Iraq by the end of 2003 vary widely.

The British Observer newspaper asserted September 14 that the “true scale of American casualties in Iraq is revealed today by new figures...which show that more than 6,000 American servicemen have been evacuated for medical reasons since the beginning of the war, including more than 1,500 American soldiers who have been wounded, many seriously. The figures will shock many Americans, who believe that casualties in the war in Iraq have been relatively light.”

By the end of November, Roger Roy in the Orlando Sentinel could place the number of those “killed, wounded, injured or...ill enough to require evacuation from Iraq” at approximately 10,000. Roy noted that such figures were hard to track, “leading critics to accuse the military of underreporting casualty numbers.”

Mark Benjamin of United Press International (UPI) has been one of the more assiduous in pursuing an accurate total of the number medically evacuated from Iraq. On December 19, Benjamin reported that in response to a request from UPI the Pentagon had provided a figure of nearly 11,000 US wounded and medical evacuations—2,273 wounded and 8,581 medical evacuations.

Benjamin cited the comments of Aseneth Blackwell, former president of the Gold Star Wives of America, a support group for people who lose a spouse in war, who said the country had not seen such a total since Vietnam. “It is staggering,” she added.

Benjamin pointed out that the Pentagon’s official casualty update as of December 17 reported only 364 soldiers as “non-hostile wounded.”

The largest estimate of the number of medical evacuations from Iraq is to be found in a December 30 article by retired US Army Col. David Hackworth, “Saddam’s in the slammer, so why are we on orange?”

Hackworth writes, “Even I...was staggered when a Pentagon source gave me a copy of a Nov. 30 dispatch showing that since George W. Bush unleashed the dogs of war, our armed forces have taken 14,000 casualties in Iraq—about the number of warriors in a line tank division.” The former colonel adds that the figure “means we’ve lost the equivalent of a fighting division since March. At least 10 percent of the total number” of available personnel—135,000—“has been evacuated back to the USA!”

Lt. Col. Scott D. Ross of the US military’s Transportation Command told Hackworth that as of Christmas his “outfit had evacuated 3,255 battle-injured casualties and 18,717 non-battle injuries,” a total 21,972 servicemen and women. Ross, however, cautioned that his figure might include some of the same service members counted more than once.

The major categories of “non-battle” evacuations included orthopedic surgery, 3,907; general surgery, 1,995; internal medicine, 1,291; psychiatric, 1,167; neurology, 1,002; gynecological (mostly pregnancy-related), 491.

Hackworth concludes that “it’s safe to say that, so far, somewhere between 14,000 and 22,000 soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines have been medically evacuated” from the war zone in Iraq.

[Disturbed]

8. Non citizen soldiers?

Hmmm...I wonder how many there are?

[G_j]

9. quite a few I would think,

I would say this would be an excellent story for an investigative reporter to pursue further. I'm bookmarking this..

[midwayer]

12. Yes the article I posted I don't think even mentioned the non citizen

soldiers

add that into the equation and it could get nasty

[ThomWV]

10. I don't believe it

I don't believe its true and I'll tell you why. If it were true and the result was an underreporting of deaths that was greater than 50% it would mean that at least half, and probably many more than half, of our soldiers would have to be noncitizens. I know that american blacks are over representated in our military, as are poor whites, but I do not recall that over half of our military was staffed by mexicans and boat people.

[ElsewheresDaughter]

11. i absolutely believe it is plausable...and i know we have over 10,000 woun

wounded..that was the pentagons numbers from 5 months ago "over 10,000 US casualties"

[louis c]

13. I remember a Filipino who was captured

around March or April 2003.

I remember he wasn't a citizen, and there is some rule that if you serve in the military for two years, you automatically become a citizen. He didn't have a Filipino name, but his mother clearly was Filipino. They were from Texas, as I remember. He was not a U.S. citizen.

How I recall this is because I married a Filipino National on April 15, 2003. I toasted that evening by saying that this individual was granted citizenship by congress for being a POW in Saddam's Iraq. He chose the easy road, my wife had to marry me.

If some one does a little research, I'm sure there's a news story on this. I think there are more folks in this situation than you think. I would be amazed if their deaths were going unreported.

If it's true, it's a hell of a story.


On Edit----Spc. Joseph Hudson, Texas. Released in March, 2003.

[Mr_Spock]

14. I hate to do this, but I'm gonna stick with our "confirmed" figures.

At least they admit to these numbers.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

28. Well, that's certainly the safe choice, isn't it? What else are the...

...NeoCons talking about that you believe?

[Ernesto]

15. Kick time again!

[Minstrel Boy]

16. Remember the execution of Reuters cameraman Mazen Dana? He

was said to have discovered a mass grave of US troops shortly before being shot dead.


Late yesterday afternoon (Sunday 17 August), Reuters cameramen Mazen Dana was shot and killed while working near a U.S.-run prison (Abu Ghraib) on the outskirts of Baghdad.
http://about.reuters.com/pressoffice/pressreleases/index.asp?pressid=1295

His last pictures show a US tank driving towards Dana outside the prison walls. Several shots ring out from the tank, and Dana's camera falls to the ground.
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/08/18/1061059745612.html

Mazen Dana, the Award winning Reuters camera man, shot dead by US troops whilst filming outside Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison in August - with full permission and press accreditation from the US Authorities in Baghdad - told his brother Nazmi, a chilling tale days before he died.

"Mazen told me by phone few days before his death that he discovered a mass grave dug by U.S. troops to conceal the bodies of their fellow comrades killed in Iraqi resistance attacks," Nazmi said.

"He also told me that he found U.S. troops covered in plastic bags in remote desert areas and he filmed them for a TV program. We are pretty sure that the American forces had killed Mazen knowingly to prevent him from airing his finding."
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/ARB311A.html

I'm not saying it's absolutely true that official casualty figures are lies. I'm saying, we know it's been done before, by almost every army which has suffered unexpected high loses in combat. How can anyone say with confidence that it isn't happening now?

[Elidor]

17. Mazen died at Abu Ghraib???

I didn't realize that. A little too odd.

[zwielicht]

18. OMFG!! (some links - there are more than 30,000 green card soldiers)

ch**** incredibe that this hasn't been brought up yet! I want to see this on the front page!

the evidence is here:
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2003/iraq/forces/casualties


some older links:

Non-citizens fight and die for adopted country
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2003-04-08-noncitizen-usat_x.htm

Green card cannon fodder
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/1FBA61F0-8D35-4D47-A43D-CFE7DC310A91.htm

Secret US Mass Graves of Green Card Hopefuls?
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/world/2003/08/276043.html

[Liberal_Dog]

19. I Have Always Been Skeptical About The Official Casualty Figures

Have we been told the truth about anything?

[tritsofme]

20. This is not very believable

I don't think that non-citizen soldiers take up the ranks of over half our armed forces in Iraq.

Why would a group that makes up a relatively small percentage of the army account for over half of the deaths?

[troublemaker]

21. Why post nonsense?

This story is patently false. It's unpleasant to see people take a bogus story and then try to connect it to something real.

The fact that there are 30,000 non US citizens in the armed forces does not support the assertion that there are at least 80,000 non US citizen soldiers serving in Iraq alone. That undercuts the claim, not supports it.

And why would anyone think casualty figures don't include non-citizens?

[DoNotRefill]

22. Ummm....there have been a bunch of foreign nationals....

serving in the US military that have been reported killed, and were indeed listed in the number of US casualties.

[lovuian]

23. I believe this report...There are more casualties than they report

How would anybody know if they are lying???

[Tight_rope]

24. This just fucking pisses me off even more...those lying bastards!

[Emillereid]

27. Another story about green card soldiers!

US attacked over green card soldiers


Nearly 40,000 of America's frontline soldiers are not US citizens.


By James Gooder


09/01/03: (Aljazeera) Many of the troops on duty in Iraq do not count English as their first language and would prefer to take orders in their native tongue ... usually Spanish.


The revelation has prompted British MP George Galloway, one of the fiercest critics of the invasion of Iraq, to accuse the US of using its "green card" troops as cannon fodder.


Galloway went on to attack the US policy of putting its poor minorities and non-citizens in the frontline of its foreign wars.


In an exclusive interview he told Aljazeera.net that it was part of a long US tradition of using its underclass as cannon fodder.


The statistics, buried by White House spin doctors, reveal that a significant minority of troops fighting under the US banner are not in fact US citizens but residents hoping to speed up their citizenship.


<snip>
"Of course the underclass has now become increasingly more Hispanic than black."


Disproportionate casualties


This explains why a disproportionate number of the so-called US casualties in the invasion and occupation of Iraq have borne Latino names.
<snip>



The Pentagon says that there are 37,401 non-US citizens on active duty, and that joining up has a special incentive for them - an American passport.


http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4584.htm