WE'RE BEING LIED TO ABOUT THE WAR DEAD; TAKE THAT INTO THE VOTING BOOTH

"By now, it should be clearly obvious that the reporting of fatal casualties in both Iraq and Afghanistan are really understated. For example, we had a young officer in here about three days ago who was talking with several of us. He is assigned to the air field from which the dead are shipped back to Dover, Md. According to him, last month, he supervised the loading of over one hundred and seventy military caskets but amazingly, the official DoD reportage had only a fraction of that. Of course he has no names, only numbers, and perhaps some high officer or Halliburton thief is shipping dope or underaged girls back to the states inside the boxes but this man had no reason to lie. It will be interesting to see if the DoD website shows the deaths of the Falcon incident. Time will tell but they won't."
--300+U.S. Casualties: Forward Base Falcon "Coverup", reported by Brian Harring, Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2006 from Houston Independent Media Center.


Remember back, oh, about three weeks ago--October 10, 2006, to be precise--when the evening news showed vivid footage of an ammunition dump on a major American military base outside Baghdad going off in a spectacular explosion? It was visible for miles around, absolutely massive, and was followed by other, gigantic explosions.

Remember how it was widely reported that no one was hurt or killed in that incident?

Didn't you find that just plain ODD? I know I did. I didn't see how such an accident could occur without the loss of at least a couple of guards' lives. I waited for several days for follow-up reporting, for an explanation as to what happened, for a list of casualties.

It never came.

At least, not on the evening news, nor have I read it in any of my usual news sources--none of the major newspapers have bothered to check out what really happened that day. But at http://houston.indymedia.org, I came across an article after all about the incident and automatically hit the print button, and I was surprised when it printed out 14 pages. That seemed like an awfully long article for a few explosions on a military base in a warzone.

Turns out, it wasn't a long article after all.

It was a casualty list.

Let me repeat that in case you are reading too quickly or just took a sip of coffee and so didn't quite get that.

IT IS A CASUALTY LIST. MORE THAN 300 NAMES, RANKS, AND UNITS OF DEAD AMERICAN SOLDIERS & MARINES, AS WELL AS A FEW CIA OFFICERS, TRANSLATORS, AND CIVILIAN CONTRACTORS. BUT THE VAST MAJORITY ARE AMERICAN TROOPS. KILLED IN THE MASSIVE SERIES OF EXPLOSIONS THAT WENT ON AND ON AND ON ALL NIGHT LONG ACCORDING TO WITNESS REPORTS.

According to the article, this base was constructed with the assistance of Iraqi contractors, and it is believed that one or more of them provided specific information to insurgents as to the most important and vulnerable targets within the huge base to direct the 82mm mortar rounds, Grad and Katyusha rockets so that they would strike tank rounds, artillery shells, and small-arms ammunition at the base, called Forward Operating Base Falcon. Once the ammunition was ignited, explosions and fires followed for the rest of the night, gutting the base.

Something like $1 BILLION worth of ammunition, artillery and rocket rounds, tons of fuel, six Apache helicopters, Humvees, and supply trucks were also damaged or destroyed.

There were 3000 people living on that base--not the 100 reported by the Pentagon. More than one-tenth did not make it out alive. There were also 165 seriously injured requiring major medical attention and 39 suffering lesser injuries. There were also 122 memobers of the Iraqi army killed and 90 seriously injured. They are not included on the list I am holding that goes on for NINE PAGES, single-spaced, in alphabetical order.

This list came from the U.S. military hospital at al-Habbaniyah, located 70km west of Baghdad.

And here is the report made two days after the incident, on Oct. 12, in Stars & Stripes Midease Edition, reported by Joseph Giordono:

Insurgent mortar fire hit an American military ammunition dump late Tueday night, setting off huge explosions and rattling windows and nerves throughout the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, military and civilian officials said Wednesday.

Tank rounds, artillery shells and small-arms ammunition at the Forward Operating Base Falcon site were ignited by the explosion and subsequent fire, casting an orange glow overnight and into Wednesday morning. No injuries were reported by late Wednesday.

And yet, satellite pictures and reports from neutral sources detailed the extensive damage, and BBC reporters took note of no less than NINE large American military transports with prominent Red Cross markings were observed leaving the base the next day.

FOB Falcon was home base to mostly the 4th Infantry Division, stationed at Ft. Bliss, Texas.

I understand why casualties in wartime are often under-reported. It has to do with morale of the troops and it has to do with not wanting to give any emotional ammunition to the enemy.

But during the Vietnam war, we saw a diabolical manipulating of casualty figures, done deliberatly to manipulate the American public into thinking the war was going well when it was, in fact, an endless horror of almost 60,000 of our brightest and best.

This casualty list brings the dead in Iraq well over the 2,801 reported so far--to well over 3.000. And if what that young soldier reported is true, that we've had many many more dead loaded onto planes heading to Dover--which are censored by the Pentagon--then who knows how many boys and girls have lost their lives in that hell hole.

The Bush administration and Donald Rumsfeld's Pentagon lied in order to get us into their photo-op political-campaign war, and I can't help but believe that these casualties were not hidden from the media for purposes of morale, but to LIE TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE JUST BEFORE AN ELECTION SO THEY WOULD VOTE IN IGNORANCE.

I've got a casualty list NINE PAGES LONG in my hand right now. For one incident at one base on one day of this endless war.

When you go into the voting booth, I beg of you, vote for truth.