Juan Cole gets snowed

Check it out! He's a wonderful repository of factual information, but occasional posts like this make me wonder if he isn't just a gullible chump with a professorship.

He credulously shares the following note from "Clive Ausle" in Australia:

Molly appears to have omitted counting the number killed but unidentified pending notification of kin. Total US dead is reported at 1012 as at end of August (244 days of 2004 with 530 dead versus 482 dead in 2003's 287 days despite end of official war and return of "sovereignty").

Of at least equal concern is US casualties totalling 6987 as at end of August including a big jump of 1112 in the most recent month alone. Note that the wearing of bullet-proof vests means that many of these would have been deaths in earlier combats such as Vietnam. The vests have reduced deaths but greatly increased total incapacitation wounds such as brain injuries and limb loss. (Note that Pentagon has been trying to "spin" the number of wounded by only reporting "hostile" wounded since 1 April 2004).

If you assume that the 6987 wounded cannot return to fight and nor can the 4416 reported non-battle injury evacuations, the US loses 21.47 soldiers per day to injury (and 36 per day in most recent month) on top of the 1.9 average deaths per day (total 23.37 per day equals 8530 per year that this continues, more if rates escalate as they are currently). Too many years at this rate and the US military is severely depleted, not to mention the increased vet costs and resultant family impact back home.

Note also that most recent deaths have not been in Najaf, implying there is a largely unreported but much more effective uprising elsewhere in Iraq (Al-Anbar district seems to be where most deaths are still occuring). '

There are several factual errors in Mr. Astle's analysis. For starters, the combined figure he reaches of 1012 is not reached by counting in "missing, presumed KIA." Rather, it is reached by massaging Defense Department releases.

Check it out:
Astle: 1012 KIA in Iraq
DoD: 978 KIA in Iraq, 135 KIA in OeF (mostly Afghanistan)

Total: 978 + 135 = 1113

Maybe that's just an accident. Maybe the reader doesn't realize he's lumping military deaths in Afghanistan and throughout the world into the Iraq total.

But then, how can he fuck up his stats about the wounded? He asks that we assume there have been 6987 wounded, not returning to duty soldiers in Iraq.

This is laughable on its face, since the DoD reports only 3,840 such soldiers. He claims that the discrepancy lies in the DoD's unwillingness to report non-combat injuries.

But then how to explain this curious sum:
DoD: Iraq, WIA Not RTD: 3840
DoD: Iraq, WIA RTD: 3076
Total Wounded: 6916

Again, the number's slightly off (I don't know what day he consulted. I've consulted Aug. 31). But only by 71 people.

Odd that.

I don't mean to belittle the casualties we're facing in Iraq. They are very serious, and to me they have grown unacceptable in light of the absence of any clear U.S. purpose in Iraq.

But I don't think lying does the argument any favors.

UPDATE:
Asle's getting snowed too. I should've slowed down (but seeing the 1012 number which seemed so close to 1114 leapt out at me) and checked out GlobalSecurity.org more thoroughly. Sorry, that.

Anyhow, they do believe they've identified deceased soldiers who are not reported by the DoD. Their methodology however is highly suspect.

We list a number of people as unidentified pending notification of next of kin. We count people as soon as they get killed, while others wait until they are named. As of late April 2004 we counted three deaths [17 Jan 2004, 17 Feb 2004 and 02 Mar 2004] that were still unidentified, as well as over two dozen unidentified from April 2004. As of late August 2004, after rechecking and cross-checking the available data, this number was reduced to a dozen unidentified for April. In addition, eight casualties were still unidentified for May, two for June and seven for the month of July.In most cases we had pretty high-quality reporting at the time that these deaths had occurred, and in our experience it can take a week or ten days to notify next of kin and publish the name.

In other cases, it can take some time to dis-ambiguate separate and disparate reports of a single incident. April was the cruelest month, and by the end of the month the Pentagon had named 120 who had been killed, while we counted over 150 deaths. With closer analysis, we were able to conclude that some of the apparent 35 unidentifieds were probably multiple reports of single incidents.

Good job, guys. My guess is that the 12 remaining "pending" deaths from April will find their way into that same category. There's a lot of mean things you can say about the Defense Department.

Accusing them of misrepresenting the total number of American casualties isn't one of those things.