Iraq Coalition Casualties Site - Where the Death Numbers Come From

[Miss Chybil]

I just found this link in an article in LBN. I thought I'd share it here:

http://icasualties.org/oif/

Where the Death Numbers Come From?

There is no magic to coming up with the number of coalition dead from our war on Iraq . Our sources are not secret. In fact, our primary source is the U.S. government. Any private individual or news organization who wishes to keep track of war dead gets their information from this same source.

Whenever a death occurs, CENTCOM (the United States Central Command in Tampa , FL ) issues a brief news release that gives the bare facts about the incident: when it happened, how it happened, and the soldier’s regiment, if known. The only information not provided at this point is the soldier’s name. These releases are published regularly on the Internet at:

http://www.centcom.mil/

After the soldier’s relatives are notified of the death, the U.S. Department of Defense then issues its own news release that gives the soldier’s name, age, unit and hometown. Again, these can be found on the Internet here:

http://www.defenselink.mil/releases/

The trouble with this system of notification, however, is that the government provides no tally of those releases. Occasionally, the Department of Defense will release a total number of deaths to date. But it certainly doesn’t go out of its way to divulge those numbers. If you want to know the number of deaths at any given point, you have two choices: count up the news releases yourself … or find a non-governmental entity that is tracking the numbers and posting them somewhere.

This has not always been the case. We are told that during the Korean and Vietnam wars, the names and numbers of dead AND injured were readily available from the government. No longer.

Incidentally, it should be mentioned that the British do a much better job with their dead. All of their deaths are listed in one place at the British Ministry of Defense’s website at http://www.operations.mod.uk/telic/casualties.htm .

more
http://icasualties.org/oif/Methodology.aspx

[Pryderi]

1. I think it's important to *bump*

Are soldiers who die from wounds included?