Price of War

Following a challenge under the Freedom of Information Act, The Pentagon released photos of flag-draped caskets. These are photos you have not been meant to see; photos which the US government hid from its citizens.

Now you can see them.

The man who initiated the challenge says.." seeing the cost of war, like any highly-charged political issue, can have strong political consequences."

But that's not the whole story, is it? You'll notice that there aren't any grieving families in those photos. One family wanted to share their grief with the world, and the National Guard obeyed their wishes instead of the Pentagon's. You can see it HERE.

Meanwhile US comes to grip with 1500+ dead.

"In the cold calculation of military operations, the American casualty levels are sustainable. They pose no serious threat to the viability of operations in Iraq.
Whether such figures are sustainable politically back home in America is another question."
Read the rest.

Whether the casualty levels are sustainable or not, the US is running out of soldiers, especially as the allied forces begin announcing pull-outs. Operation Truth considers whether a draft is coming.

And, let's not forget the wounded, who are coming out of Iraq with unimaginable wounds. The Washington Post reports: "doctors at the main combat support hospital in Iraq are reeling from a stream of young soldiers with wounds so devastating that they probably would have been fatal in any previous war.

More and more in Iraq, combat surgeons say, the wounds involve severe damage to the head and eyes -- injuries that leave soldiers brain damaged or blind, or both, and the doctors who see them first struggling against despair." Read more.

And see the New England Journal of Medicine's Iraq Wounded Photo Essay HERE.

And that's just the American side. Don't forget the Iraq Body Count.