Persnickety Statistics

I know this posting is a bit out of date, but it's really not out of date as long as we are still being fed propaganda about how the war is going, and I just came across a neat bit of info that makes it all the more timely.

I had been wondering for a while how the Pentagon/White House came up with their ideas about how to count the dead and/or wounded in our latest misadventure with guns and bombs.

As we all know, troops are only counted as dead if they actually die on the ground in Iraq or Afghanistan. If they die on the plane, or in the hospital in Germany, or on the plane, or in the hospital in USA, they don't count - either as wounded or dead. ??

Wounded troops are apparently only counted if they cannot be forced back into combat within a reasonable period of time - say a week or so - even if they have head wounds, concussions, and minor stuff like that.

Never mind about all that crap of counting the Iraqis (not counted at all if blown up by IED, only counted as "war" casualties if shot in front of head, not back, and wounded only if they happen to turn up in a film on Faux News or some such).

I found the following historical information from a Civil War history authored by a genealogy buff friend in his description of the Battle of Gettysburg:

The true number of wounded from both armies at Gettysburg will never be known. Gen. Lee had changed how the Conf. wounded were counted; if a man could walk, he was not wounded. So Gen Heth, who led the south into the battle was not wounded, even after having his bell rung by a part of a shell fired and struck him in the head. He was not able to ride,or lead his unit; he likely had a concusion(sic), but was not wounded.

Of the wounded, 40-50% died, in the south the% was higher. Now when they counted the killed on a battlefield, they counted only those dead on the field. The wounded who died later, of infection of their wounds, were not added to any totals. So my Gt Gt uncle who died of wounds at Vicksburg, a month after the battle ended, was not killed because of Vicksburg. He died of the "hardships of war", in an army hospital in Quincy, Ill.

As they say, the more things change, the more they remain the same.

Of course, then we get to the issue of when even these techniques become useless and a deliberate and complete cover-up is the only way to prevent the sheeple of this country from finding out just what this war is really costing us.

Anyone remember Forward Base Falcon? Little secret - 300 of our soldiers and other personnel died that day. Where? In Iraq. Don't remember? Well, the cover-up worked!

If you want more info, just ask. I'll be happy to provide full story and list of dead (including ranks, unit numbers, etc etc just so you know I'm not lying) OOPS better be careful or I'll have FBI/CIA/Homeland Security/NSA/Secret Service/Blackwater knocking at my door.

If you think this war is bad - it is easily ten times worse than you think because of the "statistics". Petraeus/BetrayUs is just following a long line of liars when he used his "statistics" to say the surge is working.

Although there is historical precedent for this kind of lies, it is not always used. Five names were recently added to the Vietnam War Memorial Wall (like just a year or so ago), one was just an inadvertent left off, the other four were certified to have died within the last few years "of the cumulative and final effect of wounds received in combat in Vietnam". We have the capacity to do the right thing. Why don't we?