Department of Veterans Affairs Reports 73 Thousand U.S. Gulf War Deaths
(First published in the early part of 2010)
More Gulf War Veterans have died than Vietnam Veterans. This probably is news to you. But the truth has been hidden by a technicality. So here is the truth.
The casualties in the Vietnam War were pretty simple to understand. If a soldier was dead from his combat tour, he was a war casualty. There are 58,195 names recorded on the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, DC.
But something odd has happened with the Iraq War. The government, under the Bush and Obama administrations, did something dishonest that resulted in a lie that’s persisted since the war began — and continues to this very day. They decided to report the war deaths in Iraq only if the soldier died with his boots on the ground in a combat situation.
What’s the difference, you might ask?
The combat in Vietnam was in rural areas, far removed from medical treatment centers. Injured soldiers were treated by a Medic. Most died at the scene of the battle before they could be evacuated. Many died on route or were declared dead at the medical treatment facilities. The situation in Iraq is vastly different.
Fighting in Iraq is mainly in urban areas. Plus, Iraq has had little if any means to obstruct full access to retrieve wounded and dead American soldiers. Soldiers who are injured are quickly evacuated with armored personnel carriers or helicopters. It’s a much more efficient system than what was possible in Vietnam, but for those that are seriously injured it means that death is more likely to happen while they are in transit or at the treatment facility and away from the battle field.
Under the new reporting system, deaths that happen en route or post evacuation are not counted as combat deaths. This is why the number seems unusually low — a little over four thousand as of 2009.
According to The Department of Veterans Affairs, as of May 2007, reports in the Gulf War Veterans Information System reveal these startling numbers:
Total U.S. Military Gulf War Deaths: 73,846
* Deaths amongst Deployed: 17,847
* Deaths amongst Non-Deployed: 55,999
The stastics for non-lethal injuries are likewise staggering:
Total “Undiagnosed Illness” (UDX) claims: 14,874
Total number of disability claims filed: 1,620,906
* Disability Claims amongst Deployed: 407,911
* Disability Claims amongst Non-Deployed: 1,212,995
Percentage of combat troops that filed Disability Claims 36%
And we will probably never know the number of innocent Iraqis who were indiscriminately murdered in this war … not to mention the multiplied millions of families there who have been ruined, left with nothing, and trying to survive in a hell on Earth.
I know you probably will think this is another conspiracy theory — I did when I first heard about this — so please read the original report for yourself. [Source: http://www1.va.gov/rac-gwvi/docs/GWVIS_May2007.pdf Note: Sometimes this link is not active so we have posted the pdf file 393 kb.]
While we never found any WMD’s (Weapons of Mass Destruction) in Iraq, we sure made up for it by importing our own! Birth defects among Iraqi newborns are up a whopping 600% from before the war. The defects are typical of the kind produced by exposure to chemicals, diseases, and war trauma. And these injuries are happening to the civilian population of Iraq — the people we were supposedly “liberating.” We may never know the count of the dead or maimed Iraqis, or the families whose lives have been ruined. But you can be assured that America is making millions of enemies who have lost everything and have no greater ambition than to turn their rage upon Americans in any way they can. And who can blame them?
If the goal of the US Government is to create enemies and future wars, then it is succeeding masterfully.
This writer happened to visit Iraq back in 2001, at the time Saddam Hussein was still in power. The world’s nations were imposing an embargo on all imports in an attempt to punish the nation for invading the neighboring nation of Kuwait (which the US Government encouraged Saddam to do with promises that the US would look the other way). I remember the good people of Iraq who treated me with kindness and hospitality — even while knowing I was an American. Despite the embargo on such vital things as medicine and hospital supplies, the markets were thriving with local produce. Children freely played in the streets and there was laughter. To see what this war has done to Iraq is especially painful and speaks loudly of the immorality that has caused these innocent people to suffer. And now, to see that this same immorality extends to the American people in the form of deception and lies crosses the line.
I live in a small town in New England. We have known of many casualties from Iraq — too many. Yet the numbers being reported in the media make it seem that this is a rare occurrence. Just over 4,000? How can this be? In short — it’s NOT.
Now the US Military venture that began in Iraq has spread to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Syria, Northern Africa, Saudi Arabia, and the US Government wants to expand the war into Iran, Russia, and China. At what point will Americans realize what is going on, and what the maniac monsters in government are doing?
What will it take to awaken people and make them angry enough to not only stop trusting the government responsible for these lies, but to raise a righteous hatred for it? If Americans are happy to be fed manure and kept in the dark then they truly are a nation of mushrooms.
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