These territories include not only Muslim majorities but also, according to former Centcom Commander Tommy Franks, 68 percent of the world’s proven oil reserves and the passageway for 43 percent of petroleum exports, another American geo-interest that was heavily denied in official explanations. (See Michael Klare’s Blood and Oil and Antonia Juhasz’s The Bush Agenda for more on this.)
A combined 6,197 Americans were killed in these wars as of Aug. 16, in the name of avenging 9/11, a day when 2,996 Americans died. The total American wounded has been 45,338, and rising at a rapid rate. The total number rushed by Medivac out of these violent zones was 56,432. That’s a total of 107,996 Americans. And the active-duty military-suicide rate for the decade is at a record high of 2,276, not counting veterans or those who have tried unsuccessfully to take their own lives. In fact, the suicide rate for last year was greater than the American death toll in either Iraq or Afghanistan.
The Pentagon has long played a numbers game with these body counts. Accurate information has always been painfully difficult to obtain, and there was a time when the Pentagon refused to count as Iraq war casualties any soldier who died from his or her wounds outside of Iraq’s airspace. Similar controversies have surrounded examples such as soldiers killed in non-combat accidents.
The fog around Iraqi and Afghan civilian casualties will be seen in the future as one of the great scandals of the era. Briefly, the United States and its allies in Baghdad and Kabul have relied on eyewitness, media or hospital numbers instead of the more common cluster-sampling interview techniques used in conflict zones like the first Gulf War, Kosovo or the Congo.
The United Nations has a conflict of interest as a party to the military conflict, and acknowledged in a July 2009 United Nations human rights report footnote that “there is a significant possibility that the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan is underreporting civilian casualties.” In August, even the mainstream media derided a claim by the White House counterterrorism adviser that there hasn’t been a single “collateral,” or inno- cent,
death during an entire year of CIA drone strikes in Pakistan, a period
in which 600 people were killed, all of them alleged “militants.”
As a specific explanation for the blindness, the Los Angeles Times reported
on April 9 that “Special Forces account for a disproportionate share of
civilian casualties caused by western troops, military officials and
human rights groups say, though there are no precise figures because
many of their missions are deemed secret.”
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