Hmmm...

Keep your eyes open for a suspicious lack of casualty totals in this Monday's summaries of Iraq violence. For reasons I don't understand, the casualty report available from Defenselink has been switched back to the one available on August 2nd. In that report, the total count stood at 914 dead in Operation Iraqi Freedom. I didn't save it, but I'm almost positive that the most recent one I had seen was dated August 10th, with a count standing at 931.

At first I figured maybe it was just a mistake. The name of the file is very determinate. Only files from the current month tend to be available, but the format of the filename is "d20040802.pdf" which is d+year+month+date. I've found you can cycle through the reports of the month by just changing the filename in your browser and scroll rapidly between different releases. But I can't find the Aug. 10 report that way anymore either.

Haven't tried cycling through all the dates. But I thought I'd just point out this curious behavior. Haven't seen it before, and I think I noticed an absence of casualty totals in reports over weekend losses. Maybe not, but my impression is that most press sources get the total count from the defense department and quite possibly directly from this link, since the counts in news reports have tended to exactly match the count from the Defense Department.

I'm trying not to read anything into it. But I'd be curious to know what's up...