Lying Bastards: New Pentagon Numbers Raise Health Care Worries

[Wiley50]

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/18180

All Things Considered, February 4, 2007 · Last month, Harvard professor Linda Bilmes presented a paper at a meeting of social scientists about the cost of treating injured soldiers. She reported that 50,000 American troops had been wounded in Afghanistan and Iraq.

A few days later she got a call from a senior Pentagon official.

"The assistant secretary for Health of the DOD phoned me up asked me where I had found the numbers, and I faxed him his own Web site and that was the last I heard from them," Bilmes says.

Now both the Pentagon and the Department of Veterans Affairs have changed the number of wounded on their Web sites.

The Pentagon says the more accurate number is 23,000, and that this lower number simply makes a distinction between injuries of combat and other health problems, like the stomach flu.

Bilmes says that using the bigger number gives a more realistic picture of the health care that's going to be needed.

"Regardless of the official number the Pentagon wants to put out — whether they want to count nonhostile injuries or they don't — either way, the VA is not going to be prepared," Bilmes says.

Bilmes is a professor of public finance at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, and was an official in the Clinton administration. She's been looking at historical comparisons.