WASHINGTON, Sept 19: Nearly 17,000 service members medically evacuated from Iraq and Afghanistan are absent from the Pentagon's public casualty reports sent to the media.
The Pentagon has reported 1,019 dead and 7,245 wounded from Iraq but statistics collected by an American news agency, UPI, shows that the real number of US service members affected by the war was higher.
The military has evacuated 16,765 individual service members from Iraq and Afghanistan for injuries and ailments not directly related to combat, according to the US Transportation Command, which is responsible for the medical evacuations. Most are from Operation Iraqi Freedom.
The Pentagon's public casualty reports, available at its website, list only service members who died or were wounded in action. The Pentagon describes a war casualty as, "any person who is lost to the organization by having been declared dead, duty status/ whereabouts unknown, missing, ill, or injured".
The casualty reports do list soldiers who died in non-combat-related incidents or died from illness. But service members injured or ailing from the same non-combat causes (the majority that appear to be 'lost to the organization') are not reflected in these reports.
In a recent statement, the Pentagon gave a different definition that included casualty descriptions by severity and type and said most medical evacuations did not count.
"The great majority of service members medically evacuated from Operation Iraqi Freedom are not casualties, by either the Department of Defence definitions or the common understanding of the average newspaper reader."
It cited such ailments as "muscle strain, back pain, kidney stones, diarrhoea and persistent fever" as non-casualty evacuations. "Casualty reports released to the public are generally confined to fatalities and those wounded in action," the statement said.
A veterans' advocate said the Pentagon should make a full reporting of the casualties, including non-combat ailments and injuries. "They are still casualties of war," said Mike Schlee, Director of the National Security and Foreign Relations Division at the American Legion. I think we have to have an honest disclosure of what the short- and long-term casualties of any conflict are."
A spokesman for the transportation command said that without orders from US Central Command, his unit would not separate the medical evacuation data to show how many came from Iraq and Afghanistan. "We stay in our lane," said Lt-Col Scott Ross. But most are clearly from Operation Iraqi Freedom where several times as many troops are deployed as in Afghanistan.
Among veterans from Iraq seeking help from the VA, 5,375 have been diagnosed with a mental problem, making it the third leading diagnosis after bone problems and digestive problems. Among the mental problems were 800 soldiers who became psychotic.
A military study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in July showed that 16 per cent of soldiers returning from Iraq might suffer major depression, generalized anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder. Around 11 per cent of soldiers returning from Afghanistan may have the same problems, according to the study.
