An Iraqi father cries over the body of his dead son, killed by an "insurgent" car bomb, which, strangely enough, killed just one US soldier and 34 Iraqi children.

The child's thin body was covered by a sheet. The sheet was covered with blood.

"My boy was playing around with other kids when the first car bomb exploded," Aboud said when he recovered the ability to speak. "I brought him here, but they could do nothing for him."

"Why? Why?" a mother asked as a doctor bent over the bloodied chest of Russul Abbas, whose entire front was perforated by bits of metal smaller than dimes. "Why does this have to happen to my 8-year-old kid?"

Even for September, a month that saw more than 40 car bombs detonated in Iraq, Thursday's violence was extraordinary for its callousness and the number of innocents killed. At least 41 people died, including an American soldier. U.S. forces bombed Fallujah and mounted a surprise offensive overnight to retake Samarra, another restive Sunni Triangle city. Arabic-language news channels reported that kidnappers claimed to have taken 10 new captives.

But it was the young victims -- by far the most children killed in one incident since the U.S.-led invasion 17 months ago -- who galvanized the capital.

Most had gathered around American soldiers after a ribbon-cutting ceremony at a new sewage treatment plant, an event designed to show that not all the news in Iraq is bad. The soldiers were passing out sweets to the children.

An officer of the Iraqi National Guard, which was responsible for securing the area, said a Nissan pickup truck parked near the plant apparently was detonated by remote control. Half an hour later, as parents carried away the wounded and ambulances pushed through the throngs who rushed to help, a gray Daewoo sedan nudged into the crowd and exploded.

Ten Americans were reported wounded at the scene, two of them seriously. Afterward, as volunteers searched the ground for bits of flesh to fold into plastic bags, outrage so often directed at U.S. forces in the wake of such attacks was thrown wholly toward those most directly responsible.

"What kind of resistance is this?" Majeed Hameed, who lost a child, shouted again and again at the hospital. "Why do they attack children?"

Late in the day, a Web site known as a clearinghouse for Islamic militants posted an assertion of responsibility for three "heroic operations" by Monotheism and Jihad, the organization headed by Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian who U.S. officials say has links to al Qaeda. [...]

Comment: We have said it before, but we must continue to say it: just what kind of "Iraqi resistance" sets out to kill dozens of innocent Iraqi children and manages to kill just one US soldier who just happened to get in the way?

The "event", the opening of a sewage treatment plant, was clearly a public one, meaning that the so called "insurgents" would have been aware that a number of Iraqi civilians would be in attendance. It is also claimed that the bombs were detonated by remote control, i.e. by someone who was either watching the scene or in contact with someone who was watching the scene.

Logically then, the person with their hand on the detonator consciously choose a precise moment to detonate the bombs, which, in the case of the first bomb, just happened to be the moment when dozens of Iraqi children were within the blast zone, and, in the case of the second bomb, was precisely when Iraqi mothers and fathers were attempting to rescue their children from the first attack. Clearly the main target was Iraqi children and civilians.

Notice the reaction from one grieving Iraqi father "what kind of resistance is this?" A very good question.

As we see it, there are a number of possible covert agendas which lie beneath the publicly touted agenda of bequeathing "freedom and democracy" upon Iraq.

The first such agenda involves the US military and the utilization of it by US intelligence operatives, under the instruction of people like Perle and Rove. US soldiers in Iraq are nothing more than cannon fodder and facilitators of their superiors' hidden agendas - but then that has been true of most state military personnel throughout history, regardless of who their superiors were or where they were deployed.

Whether they know it or not, US troops are in Iraq to beat, bomb and murder the Iraqi people and any "insurgents" into submission, and thereby create the "peace" that the US proxy government in Iraq, (headed by CIA asset Allawi) needs to get on with the business of robbing the Iraqi people of their identity, culture and resources, ultimately for the benefit of "big oil" back in the US.

To do so, the US military must defeat the Iraqi "insurgents" who are, we are told, attempting to thwart the establishment of American "freedom and democracy" in Iraq - and this is where it starts to get a little confusing. Bizarrely, the preferred method for the "insurgents" to achieve their goal of defeating and evicting the occupation forces is by beating, bombing and murdering Iraqi civilians! Is something wrong with this picture? We have two opposing forces, both supposedly attempting to achieve diametrically opposed goals, using exactly the same methods! So what gives?

Enter the third force.

Israel has nothing to gain from a stable Iraq, be it under Iraqi or US control, and desires only the expansion of its own control in the Middle East, if not its actual borders. By staging repeated false flag operations like the car bombing today, Israel and it's agents forestall indefinitely the establishment of the promised "Iraqi freedom" and any promise of a cohesive or truly representative Iraqi government. Most importantly however, the continued attacks attributed to "Iraqi insurgents" and "Arab terrorists" like the mythical Zarqawi, further portray the Arab people as "blood-thirsty animals" in the minds of western people and, as a result, greatly advance the cause that is closest to Sharon's heart (black as it is) - a final, bloody solution to the "Palestinian question".

SAMARRA, Iraq (Reuters) - U.S.-led forces stormed Samarra on Friday and said nearly 100 guerrillas were killed in air strikes and street-to-street combat during a major new American offensive to wrest control of the Iraqi town.

Doctors at Samarra's hospital said 47 bodies were brought in and at least 21 of those were of civilians, including women and children. They said ambulances could not reach many wounded as fighting, which lasted throughout the night, was still going on.

A spokesman for the U.S. 1st Infantry Division said an estimated 94 insurgents were killed.

Troops backed by tanks pushed slowly through the streets as guerrillas unleashed mortar attacks and fired rocket-propelled grenades and rifles from the rooftops. As the fighting continued past midday, residents found electricity and water cut off.

The U.S. military says it will retake control of guerrilla strongholds like Samarra, the western cities of Falluja and Ramadi and the Baghdad districts of Sadr City and Haifa Street by the end of the year so elections can go ahead in January.

The Samarra assault began shortly after midnight with air strikes and artillery barrages pounding the mainly Sunni Muslim town, which had been a no-go zone for U.S. forces for months.

The U.S. military said three U.S. soldiers were wounded during the operation in the town, 60 miles north of Baghdad. It said troops destroyed several mortar sites, rocket-propelled grenade teams and guerrilla vehicles.

Guerrillas were seen unloading weapons and ammunition from two speedboats on the Tigris River in the town, the military said. Troops opened fire and destroyed the boats.

Some of the fighting raged close to a mosque that attracts many Shi'ite Muslim pilgrims to the predominantly Sunni region.

U.S. OBJECTIVES

"In response to repeated and unprovoked attacks by anti-Iraqi forces, Iraqi security forces and multi-national forces secured the government and police buildings in Samarra early in the morning of October 1," the U.S. military said. [...]

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Democrat John Kerry stood his ground with President George W. Bush in their first televised debate, delivering a strong performance that could put him back into the election race after weeks on the ropes, analysts said.

Instant polls conducted by US television networks gave a clear edge to the Massachusetts senator after a showdown Thursday with Bush on foreign policy and national security issues that was dominated by Iraq.

CBS showed Kerry the winner by 44-26 percent and ABC by 45-36 percent. A CNN/Gallup poll put the margin at 53-37 percent and said 46 percent reported feeling better about the Democrat after the debate, compared to 21 percent for Bush.

Analysts agreed that neither Kerry nor Bush landed any heavy blows during the 90-minute encounter at the University of Miami, the first of three presidential debates before the November 2 election.

"This was the closest thing to a tie," said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics. "I really was impressed. Kerry was articulate and crisp for once and Bush, I've never seen him so articulate."

But Kerry managed to deliver his most cogent attack yet on the Iraq war and convey a sense of solidity and coherence in front of the man who has spent months ridiculing him as a weak-kneed waffler.

"I think he was very effective at downplaying the argument that he had flipped and flopped on different issues," said David Corbin, a political science professor at the University of New Hampshire.

It was not clear whether Kerry's showing would translate directly into the new support he badly needs to overcome Bush's lead in the polls, generally estimated at five to eight points. [...]

In a development that highlights the cowardice and subservience of the US media - and suggests there is far more to the so-called "memogate" affair at CBS News than has so far been made public - the network confirmed September 27 that it had cancelled a planned "60 Minutes" broadcast exposing the use of forged documents by the Bush administration in the run-up to the Iraq war.

The program focused on documents supplied to the US embassy in Italy that allegedly confirmed Iraqi efforts to acquire large quantities of uranium in the west African country of Niger during the last years of Saddam Hussein's regime. The documents were the basis of the claim by President Bush in his State of the Union speech in January 2003 that Iraq was seeking to purchase uranium in Africa, a charge the White House was later forced to retract.

The chief reporter of the "60 Minutes" segment, Ed Bradley, conducted the first on-camera interviews of two key figures in the affair: Elisabetta Burba, the Italian journalist who first obtained the phony documents, and the man who supplied them, Rocco Martino, a Roman businessman and former Italian intelligence agent with purported ties to other European intelligence agencies.

Burba reportedly said that she was instructed by her editor at Panarama, a news magazine owned by Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, to provide the documents to the US embassy in Rome, which forwarded them to the State Department and CIA. Berlusconi has been one of the most vocal international supporters of the Bush administration and the war in Iraq.

The documents were quickly exposed as fraudulent when turned over to the International Atomic Energy Agency for verification. According to the current Newsweek, which summarizes the suppressed CBS program, "Within two hours, using the Google search engine, IAEA officials in Vienna determined the documents to be a crude forgery."

An investigation into the forgery subsequently initiated by the FBI has been an exercise in stonewalling. Two years after the event, the FBI has not even interviewed Martino, although he has been publicly identified in the press as the source of the documents and was even flown to New York City by CBS for his interview. A Justice Department official said the Berlusconi government had not yet given its permission for the FBI to interview Martino.

Dr. Jafar Dhia Jafar, Iraq's former chief nuclear scientist, also spoke to Bradley in Rome. According to a summary of the program that CBS supplied to Salon web magazine, Jafar testified that Iraq had completely dismantled its nuclear program after the 1991 Gulf War. "So what was going on?" Bradley reportedly asked. "Nothing was going on," Jafar replied, adding that the Bush administration either was "being fed with the wrong information" or "they were doing this deliberately," i.e., lying to the American people about Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction.

Bradley also interviewed Joseph Wilson, the former US diplomat who was sent to Niger by the CIA in 2002 to investigate the Iraqi purchases and concluded that the report was bogus. When Wilson made his findings public in June 2003, exposing the lies in Bush's State of the Union speech, he became the target of a smear campaign by the White House. White House officials leaked the fact that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was a covert CIA operative, blowing her cover and exposing her to possible attack.

This transparent effort at political retaliation backfired, and a Justice Department special prosecutor has interviewed dozens of Bush administration officials in an investigation into who leaked the information on Plame, which is potentially a criminal offense.

There seems to have been a similar, but more successful, effort to block the CBS report, which was highly critical of the administration's fabrication of the Iraq WMD claims. The White House was acutely aware of the impending report, as "60 Minutes" approached both Bush administration officials and congressional Republicans as part of its preparation of the story. None would agree to be interviewed, including Porter Goss, the Florida Republican congressman who chaired the House Intelligence Committee and has just been sworn in as the new CIA chief.

The "60 Minutes" segment was initially slotted for broadcast in June, but was put off because of unspecified new developments, according to CBS spokeswoman Kelli Edwards. It was finally scheduled for the evening of September 8, but network officials decided to replace it with the report on Bush's National Guard service that included purported memos from Bush's former commander that turned out to be bogus.

That decision itself demonstrates the bankruptcy of what passes for professional journalism in the United States. CBS decided to shelve a report carefully prepared over six months, documenting systematic lying by the US government to justify an illegal war in which tens of thousands of Iraqis and more than a thousand Americans have died, and replaced it with a tabloid-style exposure of Bush's efforts to avoid combat more than three decades ago.

The fact that Bush used his family's political influence to escape military service in Vietnam is insignificant compared to the war crimes Bush has committed and continues to commit as commander-in-chief.

Even after the political furor over the use of apparently fabricated memos in the National Guard story, the CBS reporters and producers who worked on the Niger uranium story believed it would be broadcast. Before the final decision to scrap the Niger story, David Gelber, the lead producer, told Newsweek he had been told it would run within a week, adding, "Obviously, everybody at CBS is holding their breath these days. I'm assuming the story is going to run until I'm told differently."

CBS News President Andrew Heyward eventually declared that broadcasting the "60 Minutes" program on Iraq's nonexistent WMD would be "inappropriate" so close to the election, since it would give the appearance that the network was seeking to influence the vote. This rationale, of course, ignores the fact that not broadcasting the program also influences the vote, and amounts to a whitewash of the Bush administration's lies.

Newsweek, citing CBS sources, said the network feared it would become a "laughingstock" if it broadcast a program criticizing the Bush White House for using forged documents so soon after CBS itself fell victim to forged documents.

This account suggests another explanation for the whole affair: it raises more forcefully the likelihood that the bogus memos on Bush's National Guard service were supplied to CBS by dirty tricks operatives of the Republican Party, for the purpose of embarrassing the network and blowing up its planned exposure of the WMD fabrications.

There has been relatively little comment in the US media over the CBS decision to suppress its report on the origins of the bogus Niger uranium story. The chilling effect of the "memogate" scandal is being felt.

Meanwhile, the chairman of CBS's parent company, Viacom, has publicly disavowed longstanding ties to the Democratic Party and suggested he supports the Bush campaign. Viacom CEO Sumner Redstone told the Asian Wall Street Journal, "From a Viacom standpoint, the election of a Republican administration is a better deal. Because the Republican administration has stood for many things we believe in, deregulation and so on . . . from a Viacom standpoint, we believe the election of a Republican administration is better for our company."

FALLUJAH, Iraq (AP) - U.S. forces attacked a suspected safehouse used by an al-Qaida-linked group in Fallujah, the military said.
Hospital officials said at least four Iraqis were killed and eight wounded in Thursday's strike.

Also, there were conflicting accounts about the deaths of at least six people Wednesday after an incident involving U.S. forces.

Iraqis who identified themselves as witnesses said U.S. forces opened fire on a car passing Fallujah on the road from Baghdad. The driver was shot in the head and lost control of the car, which plunged into a canal, said Hussein Alwan, who lives near the scene.

A man was taken to Fallujah General Hospital late Wednesday with a bullet wound to the head, Dr. Ahmed Khalil said. Later, the bodies of two women and five children were also brought to the hospital after being recovered from the submerged vehicle, hospital officials and witnesses said.

But the U.S. military said it fired only warning shots at a vehicle driving erratically toward a convoy on the road between Ramadi and Fallujah.

1st Lieut. Lyle Gilbert, a U.S. marine spokesman, said the vehicle then swerved off the road, nose-dived into a canal and became submerged.

"The male driver - believed to be the vehicle's only occupant - exited the vehicle and was treated on the scene by a U.S. navy corpsman," Gilbert said in a statement.

However, Iraqi police, responding to the incident, later recovered six bodies from the submerged vehicle and took them to Ramadi, Gilbert said.

The two accounts could not immediately be reconciled.

Meanwhile, intelligence reports indicated the house attacked by U.S. forces Thursday was being used by followers of Jordanian terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the military said in a statement, adding the followers were planning attacks against U.S.-led forces and Iraqi citizens.

"Significant secondary explosions were observed during the impact indicating a large cache of illegal ordnance was stored in the safehouse," the statement said.

Explosions continued in the northeastern part of the city for hours.

Witnesses said two houses were flattened and four others damaged in the strike.

At least four Iraqis were killed - including two women and one child - and eight wounded, said Khalil, the doctor.

"Multinational forces take great care to minimize collateral damage and civilian casualties," the military said in the statement.

"Terrorists' placement of weapons caches in homes, schools, hospitals and mosques continue to put innocent civilians at risk."

U.S. planes, tanks and artillery units have repeatedly targeted al-Zarqawi's network in Fallujah in recent weeks as U.S.-led forces seek to assert control over insurgent enclaves ahead of elections slated for January. The U.S. military said the attacks have inflicted significant damage on the network, which has claimed responsibility for a series of bombings, kidnappings and other attacks.

Doctors said scores of civilians have been killed and wounded in the strikes.

U.S. ground forces have not entered Fallujah since ending a three-week siege of the city in April that left hundreds dead.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - In a letter to the White House, a leading US Senate Democrat expressed "profound dismay" that the White House allegedly wrote a large portion of Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's speech to Congress last week.

"I want to express my profound dismay about reports that officials from your administration and your reelection campaign were 'heavily involved' in writing parts of Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's speech," California Senator Dianne Feinstein wrote in a letter to President George W. Bush.

"You may be surprised by this, Mr. President, but I viewed Prime Minister Allawis speech as an independent view on conditions in Iraq," she wrote.

"His speech gave me hope that reconstruction efforts were proceeding in most of the country and that elections could be held on schedule."

"To learn that this was not an independent view, but one that was massaged by your campaign operatives, jaundices the speech and reduces the credibility of his remarks," Feinstein wrote.

Her letter was a response to an article appearing in Thursday's Washington Post, which also alleged that Allawi was coached by US officials -- including Dan Senor, former spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq-- in perfecting his delivery of the speech delivered before a joint session of Congress one week ago.

Comment: Ah yes, many pro-war US citizens must be brimming over with pride at the way in which American "freedom and democracy" is blooming in Iraq. An ex-CIA man as President, who comes to congress and gives a speech on the status of Iraq that was drawn up by White House officials; it doesn't get any more twisted than that folks. As for the truth about the reality of life in Iraq...

Iraq is becoming the kidnap capital of the world, though this gets international attention only when foreigners are taken hostage.

It is the one growth industry in the country. Nobody is safe. "We had one case recently where the kidnappers seized a three-year-old," said Sabah Kadhim, a senior official at the interior ministry in Baghdad.

Most kidnap victims are Iraqis and the motive is always money. Many well-off Iraqis have fled to Jordan or Syria. "I just don't make enough money in Iraq to take the risk of being taken hostage," a businessman who had moved to Amman said. Doctors are a frequent target and many of the best-qualified have gone abroad.

Mr Khadim says he is convinced the motive for kidnapping the two Italian women, Simona Pari and Simona Torreta, now freed, was always money.

"The kidnappers are not stupid," he says. "They could see Italy was part of the coalition but the war was very unpopular there. They knew that if they kidnapped women this would generate publicity, and this means more money in ransom."

Only a few kidnappings are political, probably including that of Kenneth Bigley, the British engineer, held by the Tawhid and Jihad group led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

The Jordanian-born militant has discovered that as a way to attract the world's attention, horrific videos of captives being beheaded or pleading for their life are difficult to beat. Unlike commercial kidnappers, few of Zarqawi's victims are known to have survived.

The wave of kidnappings started soon after the fall of Baghdad last year. Criminals, many released by Saddam Hussein just before the invasion, found it was an easy way to make money with almost no fear of punishment. Some gangs have their own dungeons so they can handle several victims at once.

The police admit they do not know how many people are being kidnapped because relatives or friends of victims think it is dangerous to tell them. People also think the police are paid by kidnap gangs.

One man, who turned down an offer of police assistance in getting back his business partner, had a phone call from the kidnappers 30 minutes later complimenting him on his discretion.

The hostage-takers are often cruel. One 22-year-old student called Ali was left in a room by himself for three days without food or water. Later, he met two other victims, both young men, held by the same gang. One day, a man came in and shot one victim in the head. Negotiations with his family had failed.

Months ago, the kidnappers realised they could make even more money seizing foreigners. Word spread that a Kuwaiti company had paid $100,000 each for the return of several employees. Before, the kidnappers had thought taking foreigners could cause them trouble, but as the strength of the US occupation ebbed over the past six months, expatriates became fair game.

It is impossible to draw a line between commercial and political kidnappings. This is because kidnappers whose only aim is to make money often pretend to be fighting the occupation. Iraqi security men, who have not had much success against kidnappers, tracked one gang which had seized a Lebanese man. In their hideout the police found banners with religious and political slogans.

The head of the gang said they were to be used as a backdrop if they made a video of their victim, in the hope that it would be shown on television. "If you can get a kidnap on television, you can make more money," the gang leader said.

Kidnapping foreigners also became easier after the Sunni Muslim uprising in April. Fallujah and most of Anbar province in western Iraq, stayed in rebel hands. Insurgents also control towns south of Baghdad, including Latafiyah, Mahmouiyah and Iskandariyah, a large no-go area for Iraqi government forces where hostages can be concealed.

This was where the two French journalists, Georges Malbrunot and Christian Chesnot, were kidnapped on 20 August.

Commercial and political kidnappings are likely to continue because they are successful. But the pool of available kidnap victims is now small. This puts foreigners in greater danger.

One dark night in Iraq in February 1991, a U.S. Army tank unit opened fire on two trucks that barreled unexpectedly into its position along the Euphrates river. One was carrying fuel and burst into flames, and as men scattered from the burning trucks, the American soldiers shot them.

"To this day, I don't know if they were civilians or military - it was over in an instant," says Desert Storm veteran Charles Sheehan-Miles. But it wasn't over for him.

"For the first years after the Gulf War it was tough," says the decorated soldier. He had difficulty sleeping, and when he did, the nightmares came. "I was very angry and got drunk all the time; I considered suicide for awhile."

Like many young Americans sent off to war, he was highly skilled as a soldier but not adequately prepared for the realities of combat, particularly the experience of killing.

Much is rightly made of the dedication and sacrifice of those willing to lay down their lives for their country. But what is rarely spoken of, within the military or American society at large, is what it means to kill - to overcome the ingrained resistance most human beings feel to slaying one of their own kind, and the haunting sense of guilt that may accompany such an action. There is a terrible price to be paid by those who go to war, their families, and their communities, say some experts, by ignoring such realities.

"We never in our military manuals address the fact that they go forward to kill," says Lt. Col. David Grossman, a former Army Ranger. "When the reality hits them, it has a profound effect. We have to put mechanisms in place to help them deal with that.

"Every society has a blind spot, an area into which it has great difficulty looking," Colonel Grossman says. "Today that blind spot is killing."

It may seem strange that a central fact of war for millenniums should become an urgent concern now. But some close to the scene say modified warfare training that makes it easier to kill - and a US cultural response that tends to ignore how killing affects soldiers - have taken an unprecedented emotional and psychological toll. A lengthy conflict in Iraq, they worry, could increase that toll dramatically.

Society has a moral obligation, some argue, to better prepare those sent to war, to provide assistance in combat, and to help in the transition home.

"We have a profound responsibility because we send these people into combat on our behalf, to kill for us," says Shannon French, who teaches ethics at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md.

Postwar tragedy may have been averted, says Mr. Sheehan-Miles, if help had been available to his tank unit. "Within my own tank company, half of the married soldiers were divorced within a year after the Gulf War; one shot another over a girl," he says. "They didn't know how to get help, and the Army essentially did nothing."

Psychological injuries of war can't be tied solely to killing alone - seeing close comrades die and other horrors of war are also factors. But mental-health professionals and chaplains who've worked closely with veterans see killing as a significant contributor, along with other demoralizing elements of combat that soldiers experience or see as "a betrayal of what's right," says Veterans Affairs psychiatrist Jonathan Shay.

The devastating impact of war on soldiers was visible after World Wars I and II and the Korean War as well. But particularly evident today is the ongoing toll of the Vietnam War, whose vets are overrepresented in the homeless and prison populations. One-third are said to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

In July, the New England Journal of Medicine reported that 16 percent of veterans of the war in Iraq suffer from depression or PTSD, and that fewer than 40 percent have sought help.

Along with several studies, the efforts of two men are stirring thinking within the US military: Grossman, who wrote "On Killing: the Psychological Costs of Learning to Kill in War and Society," and Dr. Shay, who has worked with vets for 20 years at the VA Outpatient Clinic in Boston. Shay has written two books ("Achilles in Vietnam" and "Odysseus in America") that provide in-depth analyses of how combat can affect individual character and the homecoming to civilian society.

The military has hired both to help improve training and recommend changes to military culture.

A natural resistance to killing

The military's responsibility to respond is great, Grossman says, because of the way combat has been transformed since World War II. Interviews by a US Army historian during that war showed that only 15 to 20 percent of infantrymen in the European and Pacific theaters chose to fire at the enemy when they were under fire. Resistance to killing was strong.

Whether because of religious and moral teachings or what he terms "a powerful, innate human resistance toward killing one's own species," soldiers' apparent willingness to die rather than kill stunned military officials.

To overcome that resistance, the military revamped its training to program soldiers, through psychological conditioning, to make shooting reflexive. The techniques were applied with "tremendous success," Grossman says, raising the firing rate to 55 percent in the Korean conflict and 95 percent in Vietnam. But little thought, he adds, went to the aftereffects of overriding the soldiers' natural inclinations.

Shay also flags concerns about combat leadership, citing instances when soldiers have been treated unfairly, lacked necessary equipment, been asked to do things they considered wrong, or seen questionable behavior rewarded. These are all experiences he includes under the heading of "the betrayal of what is right." People don't have to be injured by their wartime experience, he adds, but that requires "assuring them cohesion in their units; expert and ethical leadership; and highly realistic training for what they have to do."

The first responsibility of leadership and the public, many say, is not to put the country's sons and daughters at risk unless going to war is essential.

If it is, then they need help sorting through the issues. Rabbi Arnold Resnicoff, a retired Navy chaplain, calls for "spiritual force protection."

"We have a responsibility to understand the dangers war poses to the humanity of our people and do all we can to protect them, to develop 'moral muscle,' " he says.

In "The Code of the Warrior," his course at the Naval Academy, Dr. French focuses on moral distinctions - the historical legacy of the warrior and rules of war, and how to be alert to crossing the boundaries, as occurred at Abu Ghraib prison.

"It has been very well documented that there is a close connection between severe combat stress and the sense of having crossed moral lines," she says.

While the military academies offer officers some ethical training, the rank and file learn mostly from their commanders. Recent training Grossman has provided to Marine battalions heading to Iraq included distinguishing between killing and murder.

"Many have 'Thou shalt not kill' in the back of their minds, and think they've broken a profoundly moral law," he says. Grossman helps them see that the Judeo-Christian ethos generally accepts the idea that killing can be justified at times, and he emphasizes the importance of close adherence to the rules of engagement.

But there are gray areas, particularly in urban conflict, where it is not always clear whether to shoot, says Paul Rieckhoff of the Army National Guard, who led a platoon through combat patrols, raids, and ambushes in Baghdad until February of this year.

During one operation, "a female truck driver dropped us off and was guarding the truck when a kid about 10 years old came around the corner and started shooting at her," he says. "What does she do - shoot him or get shot?"

Vital to the health of soldiers is what happens after each combat experience. It's essential to have "after-action reviews," many say, in which units sort through experiences that were disturbing to them. These may include killing, or seeing their comrades or innocent civilians killed. "The worst thing is to not think about it. You can't not think about something for a lifetime," Grossman says.

At the end of the 1989 US invasion of Panama, Army chaplain R. Ryder Stevens, now retired, and another chaplain sought out soldiers individually. "One guy talked, but kept his M-16 between us and kept taking it apart, cleaning it, and putting it together again," says Colonel Stevens. "Finally he blurted out, 'I murdered a woman and her baby the other day and I'm going to burn in hell!' " He had followed the rules of engagement and shot at a car that didn't stop fully at a checkpoint. After he was assured that God's love was big enough to forgive him, "he fell into my arms crying," Stevens recounts.

In Iraq, there may be one chaplain for every 1,500 soldiers, Rieckhoff says. Those who need help must be encouraged to seek it. But the system is failing, many insist. Seeking help carries a stigma, and procedures for getting help lack privacy. [...]

Comment: Having faced the reality of life on this planet over the past few years, we have come to a tentative hypothesis that in a very general way, there may well be two very different "types" of human beings sharing said planet.

The theory goes like this:

The first group of humans, as evidenced in the story above, naturally experience a great deal of remorse and psychological problems when ordered by their government to kill another human being. It seems that, for these people, despite relentless indoctrination and brainwashing at the hands of the military, they still can't cope with the after effects of taking another life. They cannot help but feel EMPATHY for their victims, and realize deep down that by committing such crimes is akin to a "sin against the soul". Their internal conflict arises from what they are told is true; that Arabs are the enemy and must be wiped out at all costs, and what they feel inside is true; that Arabs are human beings too and are really no different from you or I.

On the other side of the coin are people who not only seem to enjoy killing other people, but seem to derive some sick and twisted sense of power from holding another's life in their hands. These people appear to lack any empathy or compassion for their victims and seem to become more ruthless and energized as their "kill count" rises.

For this second "type" of human, killing is merely a mechanical task like any other, and far from requiring counseling, they are usually the ones who rapidly rise up through the ranks to become commanders, generals and presidents. According to the theory, our social system is structured in such a way that such unconscionable behaviour is rewarded and, in the end, we find our societies being run by the "worst of the worst" - aka psychopaths and madmen - albeit very able and sometimes even "charming"examples.

Perhaps such a theory can answer some of the questions that have troubled "free thinkers" throughout the ages - questions which truly need answers if we are to ever wake up and understand just "what this whole show is all about, before it's out".

The young American Marine is exultant. "It's a sniper's dream,' he tells a Los Angeles Times reporter on the outskirts of Fallujah. "You can go anywhere and there so many ways to fire at the enemy without him knowing where you are."

"Sometimes a guy will go down, and I'll let him scream a bit to destroy the morale of his buddies. Then I'll use a second shot."

"To take a bad guy out," he explains, "is an incomparable "adrenaline rush." He brags of having "24 confirmed kills" in the initial phase of the brutal U.S. onslaught against the rebel city of 300,000 people.

AN Iraqi has died of his wounds after US troops beat him with truncheons because he refused to remove a picture of wanted Shiite Muslim leader Moqtada Sadr from his car, police said today.

The motorist was stopped late yesterday by US troops conducting search operations on a street in the centre of the central city of Kut, Lieutenant Mohamad Abdel Abbas said.

After the man refused to remove Sadr's picture from his car, the soldiers forced him out of the vehicle and started beating him with truncheons, he said.

US troops also detained from the same area five men wearing black pants and shirts, the usual attire of Sadr's Mehdi Army militiamen and followers.

Qassem Hassan, the director of Kut general hospital, identified the man as Salem Hassan, a resident of a Kut suburb.

He said the man had died of wounds sustained in the beating.

A spokesman for the US-led coalition could not confirm the incident.

A 20-year-old Milford Haven soldier, who broke down as his father was driving him back to his unit for further service in Iraq, was later found hanged from the swings at a village play area.

Gary John Boswell, of 34 Woodbine Way, Hakin, had served with the Royal Welch Fusiliers in Iraq, Germany and Canada since joining up in 2002, the Pembrokeshire Coroner, Mr Michael Howells, was told at a Milford Haven inquest on Thursday.

Before recording a suicide verdict, the coroner heard from Mr John Moses Boswell how his popular young son had suddenly banged his head on the car door and asked him to take him back home.

He had previously attempted to cut his wrists and had also taken an overdose of tablets, but he had seemed happy at the start of the car journey back to camp.

Mr Boswell said his son had never cried in front of him before, but he would not open up about what had happened out in Iraq. "I think there was one man who was bullying Gary," he told the coroner.

It was at 7.15am on Sunday, July 25th, that a motorist driving past Herbrandston play area saw a figure hanging from the crossbar of the swings.

Police found Gary hanging from his car towrope, which had been tied to a fence and stretched over the swings.

The coroner expressed sympathy with the family over the tragic incident.

Comment: "Compassionate leadership", that's what Tony Blair is all about. Bush, on the other hand, is more into passion than compassion. He is passionate about a lot of things - radio stations that don't share his views for example...

Guns drawn, agents of the U.S. Marshals Service served a warrant on a tiny Santa Cruz pirate radio station early Wednesday, rousting and frisking the pajama-clad residents of the co-op house from which the station had been broadcasting. No one was arrested.

"This is not a criminal action against people,'' said Supervising Deputy Cheryl Koel.

The target was Free Radio Santa Cruz, an FM micro-station boasting 35 to 40 watts of power and offering round-the-clock music, activism and other local programming, in addition to such national programming as Radio Pacifica's "Democracy Now''-- all in defiance of federal licensing laws.

The blue-jacketed marshals, along with agents of the Federal Communications Commission, dismantled the station's equipment and carried it to a waiting pickup with a camper shell as a crowd of perhaps 60 people yelled "Shame! Shame!'' and "Go home!''

Residents, programmers, friends of alternative radio and enemies of corporate media were joined by two city council members, one council candidate and two congressional candidates. They milled around on the sidewalk and in the street, careful to avoid traffic.

Culinary consultant Joseph Schultz, founder of the legendary but now defunct India Joze, brought vegetable soup.

But despite Koel's assurances, residents of the house on Laurel Street did feel "acted-against.''

"They got me out of bed,'' said Erin Calentine, 21. "They were yelling, `Federal marshals! We have a warrant! Come down! We're here for the radio,' '' she said.

After being frisked, the residents were kept outside for about half an hour while the marshals "secured the location,'' said Calentine, quoting the marshals.

Mayor Scott Kennedy and Councilman Mark Primack condemned the raid, while candidate Tony Madrigal, a union organizer by profession, led a chant of "Sí, se puede'' -- the Cesar Chavez motto that means "Yes, we can.'' The student co-op house is named for Chavez.

Kennedy said the city would be willing to lend assistance, perhaps by filing a friend-of-the-court brief. The fact that the station frequently airs criticism of city government "makes it important'' that the city support it, Kennedy told the Santa Cruz Sentinel last year.

The warrant bore no names, listing as "defendant'' "any and all radio station equipment . . . used in connection with the transmissions.'' It gives the station operators 20 days to respond in court.

"I don't want the reason we're doing this to get lost in the hubbub about the raid,'' said George Cadmon, who hosts a show called "Peace Talks.'' "This is civil disobedience, anti-corporate action, First Amendment protest. We feel very strongly that local voices aren't getting out there.''

Evelyn Hall hosts a program called "Eye of the Storm,'' which she describes as "spiritual activism.'' Her daughter and a friend, both 11, have their own show, too, called "For Your Information.'' And so does her mother, Michelle Hall, 74.

"Could it be,'' she wondered, "they are really kind of worried?'' Hall asked, reflecting the paranoia and anger circulating in the crowd.

The station's technical director, who as Uncle Dennis plays 1960s and '70s rock, psychedelic music and blues, said the FCC has had its eye on the station for years. Uncle Dennis said the station has moved several times during its nine-plus years of life on the fringes of broadcasting.

The FCC spokeswoman declined comment on the case except to say that it was an open investigation. A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's office in San Francisco suggested a reporter consult the station's Web site, www.freakradio.org, where it charges that the FCC "has proved itself to be controlled by monied interests.''

Cadmon estimated the value of the equipment seized at $5,000, including the antenna agents removed from the roof.

Comment: Or people who don't really like him...

THE DAY BEFORE President Bush arrived in New York to address the U.N. last week, it was announced that the Secret Service was hunting for upstate resident Lawrence Ward, 57, whom they considered to be a possible threat to the president's safety.

The notion that the reclusive guitar teacher was a potential assassin arose after a neighbor, with Ward's blessing, entered the mentally unbalanced man's one-bedroom home. There he found a picture of Bush with the words "Dead Man" spraypainted across it, obscenities painted on the floor and—proof positive that Ward was an out-of-control lunatic—quotes from Orwell's 1984 and the Declaration of Independence on his walls.

After seeing that quote from the Declaration, the neighbor panicked and called the authorities. Moments later, Secret Service agents arrived on the scene to conduct a more thorough search of the premises.

The case against Ward only grew stronger when agents uncovered a VHS copy of Canadian Bacon, a Michael Moore film in which the president (portrayed by Alan Alda) declares war on Canada; an issue of Time magazine that contained a picture of a gun; and a bag of Ruffles potato chips, one of which, investigating agents agreed, bore a striking resemblance to Osama bin Laden.

"Sgt. Mallet and I," one of the investigating Secret Service agents told New York Press on the condition of anonymity, "we were having a little snack, you know. Just taking a break. And this guy had a bag of chips in the cupboard, so we opened them up. And I'll be darned if the third chip I pulled out didn't look just like Osama bin Laden. Swear to god. I mean, at first I thought it looked more like Buddy Ebsen—you know, from The Beverly Hillbillies? That and that other show. But then Mallet says no sir—that's bin Laden. I turned it a little, and saw just what he meant. It really did look like him."

When asked if we could examine the chip, or see a picture of it, the agent explained, "I'm afraid we had to bag it as evidence, see? And so I went and put it on the front seat of the car. When we were all done in there and everything was sealed off, wouldn't you know it, we got back in the car and Mallory sat on it. He's a big guy, you know. That chip didn't have a chance. But it really did look like bin Laden when it was all together. And what does that tell you? It tells me that anyone who was in possession of a chip like that is a potentially dangerous man. Very dangerous. But we'll get him."

Comment: Joking aside, there is mounting evidence that the US is very definitely going the same way as Germany during the 1930's and early 40's. It was not so much Hitler's barbarity that made the Nazi regime unique, but rather the wholesale way in which the German people, via the dissemination of fear-based programming and jingoism, were ever so slowly co-opted into supporting the rise of a police state, brutal dictatorship, and all that resulted.

Today, we see the same creeping fascism in the US, and it is at an alarmingly advanced stage. People must understand that there are many millions in the US today who see nothing wrong with the actions of either Lawrence Ward's neighbours or the FBI, and indeed applaud them. They seem unaware of history and its tendency to repeat itself, and appear quite willing to offer themselves up as yet further examples of the ignorant and somnolent nature of the majority of human beings. As to whether future generations will finally learn the lesson, we cannot say. Given the fervor with which current humanity is embracing subjectivity and illusion, we hesitate to speak of the possibility of there even being a future for any of us.

"What no one seemed to notice," said a colleague of mine, a philologist, "was the ever widening gap, after 1933, between the government and the people. Just think how very wide this gap was to begin with, here in Germany. And it became always wider. You know it doesn't make people close to their government to be told that this is a people's government, a true democracy, or to be enrolled in civilian defense, or even to vote. All this has little, really nothing, to do with knowing one is governing.

"What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if he people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it.

"This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter.

"You will understand me when I say that my Middle High German was my life. It was all I cared about. I was a scholar, a specialist. Then, suddenly, I was plunged into all the new activity, as the universe was drawn into the new situation; meetings, conferences, interviews, ceremonies, and, above all, papers to be filled out, reports, bibliographies, lists, questionnaires. And on top of that were the demands in the community, the things in which one had to, was "expected to" participate that had not been there or had not been important before. It was all rigmarole, of course, but it consumed all one's energies, coming on top of the work one really wanted to do. You can see how easy it was, then, not to think about fundamental things. One had no time."

"Those," I said, "are the words of my friend the baker. "One had no time to think. There was so much going on."

"Your friend the baker was right," said my colleague. "The dictatorship, and the whole process of its coming into being, was above all diverting. It provided an excuse not to think for people who did not want to think anyway. I do not speak of your "little men", your baker and so on; I speak of my colleagues and myself, learned men, mind you. Most of us did not want to think about fundamental things and never had. There was no need to. Nazism gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about - we were decent people - and kept us so busy with continuous changes and "crises" and so fascinated, yes, fascinated, by the machinations of the "national enemies", without and within, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us. Unconsciously, I suppose, we were grateful. Who wants to think?

"To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it - please try to believe me - unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, "regretted," that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these "little measures" that no "patriotic German" could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.

"How is this to be avoided, among ordinary men, even highly educated ordinary men? Frankly, I do not know. I do not see, even now. Many, many times since it all happened I have pondered that pair of great maxims, Principiis obsta and Finem respice - "Resist the beginnings" and "consider the end." But one must foresee the end in order to resist, or even see, the beginnings. One must foresee the end clearly and certainly and how is this to be done, by ordinary men or even by extraordinary men? Things might have changed here before they went as far as they did; they didn't, but they might have. And everyone counts on that might.

"Your "little men," your Nazi friends, were not against National Socialism in principle. Men like me, who were, are the greater offenders, not because we knew better (that would be too much to say) but because we sensed better. Pastor Niemoller spoke for the thousands and thousands of men like me when he spoke (too modestly of himself) and said that, when the Nazis attacked the Communists, he was a little uneasy, but, after all, he was not a Communist, and so he did nothing: and then they attacked the Socialists, and he was a little uneasier, but, still, he was not a Socialist, and he did nothing; and then the schools, the press, the Jews, and so on, and he was always uneasier, but still he did nothing. And then they attacked the Church, and he was a Churchman, and he did something - but then it was too late."

"Yes," I said.

"You see," my colleague went on, "one doesn't see exactly where or how to move. Believe me, this is true. Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for the one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don't want to act, or even to talk, alone; you don't want to "go out of your way to make trouble." Why not? - Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.

"Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the general community, everyone is happy. One hears no protest, and certainly sees none. You know, in France or Italy there will be slogans against the government painted on walls and fences; in Germany, outside the great cities, perhaps, there is not even this. In the university community, in your own community, you speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, "It's not so bad" or "You're seeing things" or "You're an alarmist."

"And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can't prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don't know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh- pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have.

"But your friends are fewer now. Some have drifted off somewhere or submerged themselves in their work. You no longer see as many as you did at meetings or gatherings. Informal groups become smaller; attendance drops off in little organizations, and the organizations themselves wither. Now, in small gatherings of your oldest friends, you feel that you are talking to yourselves, that you are isolated from the reality of things. This weakens your confidence still further and serves as a further deterrent to – to what? It is clearer all the time that, if you are going to do anything, you must make an occasion to do it, and then you are obviously a troublemaker. So you wait, and you wait.

"But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That's the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and the smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked – if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in "43" had come immediately after the "German Firm" stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in "33". But of course this isn't the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.

"And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying "Jew swine," collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in – your nation, your people – is not the world you were in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.

"You have gone almost all the way yourself. Life is a continuing process, a flow, not a succession of acts and events at all. It has flowed to a new level, carrying you with it, without any effort on your part. On this new level you live, you have been living more comfortably every day, with new morals, new principles. You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things that your father, even in Germany, could not have imagined.

"Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven't done ( for that was all that was required of most of us: that we do nothing). You remember those early meetings of your department in the university when, if one had stood, others would have stood, perhaps, but no one stood. A small matter, a matter of hiring this man or that, and you hired this one rather than that. You remember everything now, and your heart breaks. Too late. You are compromised beyond repair.

"What then? You must then shoot yourself. A few did. Or "adjust" your principles. Many tried, and some, I suppose, succeeded; not I, however. Or learn to live the rest of your life with your shame. This last is the nearest there is, under the circumstances, to heroism: shame. Many Germans became this poor kind of hero, many more, I think, than the world knows or cares to know."

I said nothing. I thought of nothing to say.

"I can tell you," my colleague went on, "of a man in Leipzig, a judge. He was not a Nazi, except nominally, but he certainly wasn't an anti-Nazi. He was just – a judge. In "42" or "43", early "43", I think it was, a Jew was tried before him in a case involving, but only incidentally, relations with an "Aryan" woman. This was "race injury", something the Party was especially anxious to punish. In the case a bar, however, the judge had the power to convict the man of a "nonracial" offense and send him to an ordinary prison for a very long term, thus saving him from Party "processing" which would have meant concentration camp or, more probably, deportation and death. But the man was innocent of the "nonracial" charge, in the judge's opinion, and so, as an honorable judge, he acquitted him. Of course, the Party seized the Jew as soon as he left the courtroom."

"And the judge?"

"Yes, the judge. He could not get the case off his conscience – a case, mind you, in which he had acquitted an innocent man. He thought that he should have convicted him and saved him from the Party, but how could he have convicted an innocent man? The thing preyed on him more and more, and he had to talk about it, first to his family, then to his friends, and then to acquaintances. (That's how I heard about it.) After the "44" Putsch they arrested him. After that, I don't know."

I said nothing.

"Once the war began," my colleague continued, "resistance, protest, criticism, complaint, all carried with them a multiplied likelihood of the greatest punishment. Mere lack of enthusiasm, or failure to show it in public, was "defeatism." You assumed that there were lists of those who would be "dealt with" later, after the victory. Goebbels was very clever here, too. He continually promised a "victory orgy" to "take care of" those who thought that their "treasonable attitude" had escaped notice. And he meant it; that was not just propaganda. And that was enough to put an end to all uncertainty.

"Once the war began, the government could do anything "necessary" to win it; so it was with the "final solution" of the Jewish problem, which the Nazis always talked about but never dared undertake, not even the Nazis, until war and its "necessities" gave them the knowledge that they could get away with it. The people abroad who thought that war against Hitler would help the Jews were wrong. And the people in Germany who, once the war had begun, still thought of complaining, protesting, resisting, were betting on Germany's losing the war. It was a long bet. Not many made it."

NEW YORK - Nearly 17,000 service members medically evacuated from Iraq and Afghanistan are absent from public Pentagon casualty reports commonly cited by newspapers, according to military data reviewed by United Press International. Most don't fit the definition of casualties, according to the Pentagon, but a veterans' advocate said they should all be counted.

The Pentagon has reported 1,019 dead and 7,245 wounded from Iraq.

The military has evacuated 16,765 individual service members from Iraq and Afghanistan for injuries and ailments not directly related to combat, according to the U.S. Transportation Command, which is responsible for the medical evacuations. Most are from Operation Iraqi Freedom.

The Pentagon's public casualty reports, available at www.defenselink.mil, list only service members who died or were wounded in action. The Pentagon's own definition of a war casualty provided to UPI in December describes a casualty as, "Any person who is lost to the organization by having been declared dead, duty status/whereabouts unknown, missing, ill, or injured."

The casualty reports do list soldiers who died in non-combat-related incidents or died from illness. But service members injured or ailing from the same non-combat causes (the majority that appear to be "lost to the organization")are not reflected in those Pentagon reports.

In a statement Wednesday, the Pentagon gave a different definition that included casualty descriptions by severity and type and said most medical evacuations did not count. "The great majority of service members medically evacuated from Operation Iraqi Freedom are not casualties, by either Department of Defense definitions or the common understanding of the average newspaper reader."

It cited such ailments as "muscle strain, back pain, kidney stones, diarrhea and persistent fever" as non-casualty evacuations. "Casualty reports released to the public are generally confined to fatalities and those wounded in action," the statement said.

A veterans' advocate said the Pentagon should make a full reporting of the casualties, including non-combat ailments and injuries. "They are still casualties of war," said Mike Schlee, director of the National Security and Foreign Relations Division at the American Legion. "I think we have to have an honest disclosure of what the short- and long-term casualties of any conflict are."

A spokesman for the transportation command said that without orders from U.S. Central Command, his unit would not separate the medical evacuation data to show how many came from Iraq and Afghanistan. "We stay in our lane," said Lt. Col. Scott Ross. But most are clearly from Operation Iraqi Freedom where several times as many troops are deployed as in Afghanistan.

Among veterans from Iraq seeking help from the VA, 5,375 have been diagnosed with a mental problem, making it the third-leading diagnosis after bone problems and digestive problems. Among the mental problems were 800 soldiers who became psychotic.

A military study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in July showed that 16 percent of soldiers returning from Iraq might suffer major depression, generalized anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder. Around 11 percent of soldiers returning from Afghanistan may have the same problems, according to that study.

Comment: The 'Operation Truth' website is claiming that part of the reason the Bush administration can get away with "cooking" the body count is due to the fact that more than 31,000 members of the U.S. armed forces are not even American citizens:

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