] MARK BENJAMIN: Well, with respect to the wounded, the ] Pentagon does report a number that it says is the number ] of soldiers that are wounded in the war. I think we're ] running around 7,000 or 8,000 in Iraq. But what that ] number does not include is the number of soldiers who are ] wounded or ill, or injured in operations that are not ] directly due to the bullets and bombs of the insurgents. ] So, for example, as of mid-September, if you take ] actually Afghanistan and Iraq together, there were 17,000 ] soldiers who were injured or ill enough to be put on ] airplanes and flown out of theater, and none of those ] casualties, and I call them casualties because they fit ] the Pentagon's definition of casualties, none of those ] casualties appear on any public casualty lists. |