"There's a lot of grumbling from guys at all ranks about it. That's a really impolite and impolitic thing to say ... but it's what you would hear over here."

At least 2,242 troops have died in Iraq since the war's start, 1,753 of them killed in action. Another 16,000 have been injured, half of them seriously enough to require evacuation from the battlefield. According to the Pentagon, 60 percent of the deaths are the result of IEDs. IEDs have injured more than 9,200 troops, nine times more than gunshots.

"The point that is currently being made (is that) that press folks are more important than mere military folks," a senior military officer told UPI Tuesday.

The unavoidable consequence of war is this: People are savagely wounded and killed. Soldiers in Iraq watching the coverage on satellite television and reading the news on the Internet are getting the impression that the press has only just discovered this fact.

It's not quite as simple as that, of course. Military personnel often express frustration that the media harps on military casualty reports at the expense of what they consider their successes in Iraq.

However, as it promoted its story on Woodruff and Vogt Monday evening, the local ABC News affiliate in Washington showed a montage of exploding vehicles in Iraq -- footage culled largely from insurgents, who videotape the attacks and post them on Web sites to advertise or magnify their successes.

The families of the 76 troops killed and 533 wounded in action in Iraq from the District of Columbia, Virginia and Maryland might say the war had already come home.

"It's just a bit frustrating to see something so dramatized that happens every day to some 20-year-old American -- or worse to 10, 30-year-old Iraqi soldiers or cops alongside us. Some of the stories don't even mention the Iraqi casualties in this attack, as if they're meaningless," wrote the officer in Baqubah.

Kathryn Montgomery, a professor at American University's School of Communication, has been thinking the same thing.

"When you see the kind of coverage this story is getting it draws attention to the lack of coverage that hundreds of cases don't get," said Montgomery.

Having a personal connection to someone injured or killed on the battlefield is a relatively rare experience for journalists. Fewer than 1 percent of the U.S. population is part of the military; very few reporters have served. The war is comfortably distant, until a fellow journalist is affected. It could have been me, we think. The full weight of war is hard to comprehend until it happens to you, or someone you know, or someone like you.

Incidents like the serious wounding of Woodruff are rare. It has never before happened to any anchorperson for any of the U.S. television networks. Consequently, the event had significant news value.

But many journalists have been injured and killed covering the current conflict in Iraq: According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 61 have died from hostile action since March 2003, many of them Iraqi or Arab and therefore unfamiliar. That compares to 66 journalists killed during the entire Vietnam War, according to the Freedom Forum.

Modern American celebrity culture has certainly magnified the latest incident: Woodruff is recognizable, relatable, respectable. He was selected for his job as co-anchor not just for his undoubted journalistic credentials but also because ABC decided he was the kind of person Americans would want to welcome into their homes every night. His injury, therefore, feels personal to many viewers.

"He's the kind of celebrity we feel we know. That's the mature of these anchors. But we feel we know these people and we care what happens to them," Montgomery said.

That leaves the uncomfortable question about how much the media, or the American public, cares about the injured who are less well known, but in just as dire straits.

ABC News' national broadcast Monday ran coverage on the extremely well equipped field and manned hospital at Balad Air Base, a transportable emergency room with not one but two neurosurgeons on duty, better than most emergency rooms in the United States.

It was a story ABC News became aware of because that was where Woodruff and Vogt were treated. It was not a story ABC necessarily had reason to do before; there was no news hook. However, this was where hundreds of wounded soldiers and Marines had previously been stabilized before being moved to Landstuhl Air Base.

"As we are hearing the details of Bob Woodruff's medical care and how he was shipped to Germany, and we go inside the operating room, (we realize) it's a part of the war that the press has basically ignored," said Montgomery.

In the midst of a two-month reporting trip in Iraq in 2005, I stopped at the Balad emergency hospital, toured it for an hour and interviewed a dozen doctors and nurses. I couldn't find a news hook to write about it, so I didn't.

Woodruff volunteered for the assignment, and he was where he ought to have been because he wanted to report with authority on Iraq. But reporters' trips to Iraq are brief by comparison to soldiers, and we calculate the risks before going out on a mission. Soldiers and Marines do not have the option of demurring, and they are almost guaranteed to see colleagues maimed and killed during their seven to 12 months deployed there. They are as much volunteers as Woodruff in Iraq, and less well paid.

Here is an incomplete list of American service members who were killed by hostile fire in Iraq that same week that Woodruff and Vogt were hit. The Pentagon does not release the names of the injured.

Spc. Brian J. Schoff, 22, of Manchester, Tenn., died in Baghdad, Iraq, on Jan. 28, when an improvised explosive device detonated near his HMMWV.

Sgt. David L. Herrera, 26, of Oceanside, Calif., died in Baghdad, Iraq, on Jan. 28, when an improvised explosive device detonated near his HMMWV during combat operations.

Lance Cpl. Billy D. Brixey Jr., 21, of Ferriday, La., died Jan. 27 at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, Germany, from wounds received as a result of an improvised explosive device while traveling in a convoy in Afghanistan on Jan. 25.

Lance Cpl. Hugo R. Lopez, 20, of La Habra, Calif., died Jan. 27 at Brooke Army Medical Center, San Antonio, from wounds sustained from an improvised explosive device while conducting combat operations against enemy forces in Rawah, Iraq, on Nov. 20, 2005.

Staff Sgt. Jerry M. Durbin Jr., 26, of Spring, Texas, died in Baghdad, Iraq, on Jan. 25, when an improvised explosive device exploded near his dismounted patrol during combat operations.

Sgt. Joshua A. Johnson, 24, of Richford, Vt., died in Ramadi, Iraq, on Jan. 25, when a rocket propelled grenade struck his vehicle during combat operations.

Staff Sgt. Lance M. Chase, 32, of Oklahoma City, Okla., and Pfc. Peter D. Wagler, 18, of Partridge, Kan., died in Baghdad, Iraq, on Jan. 23, of wounds sustained that day when an improvised explosive device detonated near their M1A2 Abrams tank during patrol operations.

Sgt. Sean H. Miles, 28, of Midlothian, Va., was killed in action Jan. 24 from small arms fire while conducting combat operations against enemy forces in Al Karmah, Iraq.

Sgt. Matthew D. Hunter, 31, of Valley Grove, W.Va., died in Baghdad, Iraq, on Jan. 23, when an improvised explosive device detonated near his dismounted patrol during combat operations.

Sgt. Sean H. Miles, 28, of Midlothian, Va., was killed in action Jan. 24 from small arms fire while conducting combat operations against enemy forces in Al Karmah, Iraq.

Tech. Sgt. Jason L. Norton, 32, of Miami, Okla. and Staff Sgt. Brian McElroy, 28, of San Antonio, Texas, were killed Jan. 22, when their vehicle struck an improvised explosive device while conducting convoy escort duties in the vicinity of Taji, Iraq.

© Copyright 2006 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved

A soldier was shot dead in Iraq yesterday, bringing to 99 the number of British troops who have lost their lives since the invasion.

The soldier was on a multinational patrol in Maysan province in the south of Iraq when he was hit by small arms fire. He was serving with the 1st Battalion, the Highlanders in the 7th Armoured Brigade, which was visited by Tony Blair during a trip to Basra before Christmas. His death prompted renewed demands for Britain to prepare a timetable for early withdrawal of troops and for a fresh inquiry into Mr Blair's conduct over the war.

The Ministry of Defence said: "It is with very deep regret that we can confirm that one UK soldier from the 7th Armoured Brigade serving with the 1st Battalion, the Highlanders, subsequently died of his injuries. There were no other injuries to UK service personnel." The soldier's family has been informed.

The soldier's death intensified pressure at Westminster for an inquiry by a committee of seven Privy Councillors into the Prime Minister's handling of the Iraq war and the use of intelligence reports to boost public support for the invasion. Leaders of a cross-party group calling for Mr Blair to be impeached will meet tonight at Westminster to discuss their tactics.

They believe they will be able to persuade either the Liberal Democrats or the Conservatives to allocate time for a debate and a vote in the Commons in mid-March, to coincide with the third anniversary of the Commons vote that endorsed military action in Iraq. Among the 122 MPs who have signed the motion are the former international development secretary Clare Short, who resigned from the Cabinet over the war; Peter Kilfoyle, the former defence minister; and the former Conservative minister Douglas Hogg. Adam Price, the Plaid Cymru MP, said 22 Labour MPs and more than 50 Liberal Democrats had signed the motion.

"There is a constitutional issue over how we balance the power of the Prime Minister and a small group of people around him, with Parliament. It predates Blair but now is the time for Parliament to stand up and be counted and say we need a full inquiry.

"We have to learn the lessons from this wrong-headed invasion. We have to stop this happening again, whether it is Iran or Syria or somewhere else." He said the calls by General Sir Michael Rose, the British UN commander in Bosnia, for Mr Blair to be impeached had strengthened the campaign for a inquiry.

A former Labour minister said: "If we had not gone into Iraq, we could have put more resources into sorting out Afghanistan. It has been a complete disaster. The sooner we get out the better. We need a clear timetable for withdrawal."

Alex Salmond, leader of the Scottish National Party, said more MPs would put their names to the motion. "It will strengthen the case for impeaching Tony Blair and fully investigating his conduct in the run-up to the war in Iraq," he said.

Mr Blair returned from Basra impressed by the ability of the Iraqi forces to take over their own security. However, he received pessimistic reports about the Iraqi police force, which it is feared has been infiltrated by insurgents.

He gave strong signals while he was there that British troop reductions would begin in the coming months. Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, announced in December that 7,000 US troops would be withdrawn from a total deployment of more than 138,000 personnel. British ministers have resisted setting out a timetable because they fear that it would increase attacks by insurgents.

Hassan, who held dual British and Iraqi citizenship and had lived in Iraq for 30 years, was kidnapped on October 19, 2004.

Her death was announced by al-Jazeera on November 16.

According to the Italian police report, extracts from which were published in La Repubblica, the ransom for Hassan, who ran the charity CARE International in Iraq, was demanded by Sheik Qubaisi, with whom the Italian authorities have repeatedly negotiated over the fate of Italian hostages in Iraq.

Negotiations in hostage crises were handled on the Italian side by Maurizio Scelli, special representative of the Italian Red Cross in Iraq, and Nazar Nawar al-Rawas, an Iraqi doctor resident in Italy and a "close collaborator" of Mr Scelli.

La Repubblica quoted from an intercepted telephone call made by Dr Rawas to Sheik Qubaisi in October 2004, just after the release of Simona Torretta and Simona Pari, two kidnapped Italian aid workers.

According to the transcript, Dr Rawas was aghast when Sheik Qubaisi demanded $US10million for the release of Hassan.

"But surely, if they paid five million to get the two girls out, how on earth can you ask 10 million for just one woman?" Dr Rawas asked.

Sheik Qubaisi, contacted in his home in the lawless western Baghdad district of Amariyah, rejected the allegations. "I totally deny this story," he said. "It's an attempt to defame the ulema, just because I'm a leading campaigner against the occupation.

"If I had $US5million, I would be thanking God."

Britain has consistently refused to pay ransoms.

However, the leaked police investigation appears to confirm that Italy has done so, despite official denials.

Italian Foreign Minister Gianfranco Fini again denied that Italy had paid for the release of any hostages.

La Repubblica, however, said ransoms had been disguised as "humanitarian aid".

"No-one was injured," the official said, calling it an "unfortunate incident" and adding: "We are in close contact with Canadian officials."

The official could provide no further details of the incident.

Four passengers were riding in the vehicle, including Stewart Henderson, Canada's charge d'affaires in Iraq, when US soldiers fired on it "after it reportedly wouldn't stop," Canada's CTV News reported.

The vehicle was apparently travelling alone in the heavily fortified Green Zone when it came across an American military convoy and tried to pass it, the report said.

Members of the US Army's 4th Infantry Divisions gave the driver hand signals to stop. When the car did not, they shot over it, then at it.

"Finally they plugged the car with three rounds. Two went through the hood into the engine block. One shot went through the lower part of the windshield," CTV said.

Canada's ambassador to Iraq, John Holmes, was not in the car, and neither the four passengers nor the driver were injured, the report said.

BOSTON – After 9/11, hundreds of thousands of America's part-time soldiers answered the call to serve. Along the way, some have asked whether the costs they bear - from insufficient body armor to mounting debt for their families at home - is fair.

Now, Massachusetts National Guard soldiers are taking the question straight to the top. They have filed a class-action lawsuit claiming they are owed $73 million in food, lodging, and commuting expenses they paid out-of-pocket while activated under state orders to protect sites such as military bases and reservoirs from terrorist attacks.

The lawsuit, filed recently in federal court against the Massachusetts National Guard and the US Department of Defense, is believed to be the first of its kind nationally, and raises new questions about what the government owes its men and women in uniform.

For the soldiers' lawyers in the case, the denial to provide or pay room and board represents a diversion from standard practice. "It doesn't make sense, under applicable law, military procedure, or military experience," says John Shek, a Boston-based lawyer representing the plaintiffs. The case currently names four plaintiffs.

Both the Massachusetts National Guard and the National Guard Bureau in Arlington, Va., would not comment on the case, they said, because it is pending. But Maj. Winfield Danielson, spokesman for the Massachusetts National Guard, did say that this case has been under investigation since May, before the lawsuit was filed.

The plaintiffs contend that suing was their last resort. When retired Capt. Louis Tortorella was called to serve at Camp Edwards on Cape Cod in December 2001, his orders read: "Government quarters not available, meals not available, per diem not authorized."

But his station was 250 miles round trip from his home in Brookline, N.H. In 21 months, he says, he was forced to spend $14,625 in out-of-pocket expenses. He says when he questioned his superiors, he was told to forget about it, to "drive on," but was never told why per diem was denied.

"Never in 25 years of military service have I experienced a set of orders like that," he says.

The lawsuit comes as other units across the country have faced problems with payments. According to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report last year, units in Maryland housed off-post had to pay for meals themselves or hitchhike to their post's dining facilities. In other states, National Guard members in some cases had not been given proper documentation to collect reimbursements, or standard answers about their entitlements.

"There are lots of disputes over reimbursements for meals," says Gregory Kutz, director of Financial Management and Assurance at the GAO. The sheer number of part-time soldiers, he says, was a major reason.

"It's like trying to put a 10-pound sack of sugar into a five-pound bag," he says, "with soldiers spilling into hotels ... or riding bicycles back and forth. There were all kinds of novel situations created because of the unprecedented volume of people that didn't have sufficient on-base housing."

Still, it is unclear whether this lawsuit will have a ripple effect. There have been problems with payments in other states and even cases of appeals, but John Goheen, spokesman at the National Guard Association of the United States, says he has no indication that disputes such as the one in Massachusetts have been widespread.

Mr. Shek maintains that military culture might play a role - that soldiers who were told not to complain would be hesitant to come forward. He says the plaintiffs in this suit had no choice but to obey their orders and pay whatever it took to fulfill their missions. "If they were to, for instance, quit, they would do so under criminal offense under federal law," says Shek. "They would be AWOL."

Captain Tortorella compares the situation to a bank sending an employee on a business trip, and requiring him or her to pay for lodging and meals.

What's more, the plaintiffs say they worked side by side with other units who did receive per diem because they were called up under Title 10, which means they were federalized. Those activated under state command, or Title 32, did not receive such entitlements. Lawyers for the plaintiffs say that up to 1,200 soldiers may not have received reimbursements.

Experts say the fairness issue is compelling. "If soldier A would have gotten per diem as a member of federal services, and soldier B didn't [under state command], that just doesn't seem fair," says Michael Noone, a retired colonel and law professor at Catholic University of America in Washington.

Still, he says, that point will be tough to argue unless laws show they are owed the money.

Sgt. Steven Littlefield of Plymouth, Mass., another named plaintiff, hopes to recover some of the money he lost, but his main motive goes deeper. "In the grand scheme of things, I just don't want this to happen again," he says. "People are volunteering to serve their country, but they also have to make a living."

Diplomats and defence officials from Australia, Britain, Japan and the United States reached a basic agreement over the timing of the withdrawals at a secret meeting in London last Monday, the sources told Kyodo.

Citing prospects that Iraq's new government will be established as early as next month, Britain tabled its schedule to withdraw around 4,000 of its 8,000 troops in southern Iraq, including the 500 stationed in and around Samawah where the Japanese are based, by the end of May.

Washington agreed in principle to Britain's plan, on the condition that there are no significant upheavals in Iraq's political process and security condition.

Japan and Australia also agreed to move along with Britain's schedule and withdraw their troops around the same time, Kyodo reports.

The 600 Japanese Ground Self-Defence Force (GSDF) troops stationed in the city of Samawah to help in reconstruction will begin to pack up in mid-March.

Japanese newspaper Sankei Shimbun, which closely covers national security issues, also reported the planned withdrawal, without identifying its sources.

Japanese Defence Agency officials, however, said that nothing has been decided.

The GSDF will be under the protection of British and Australian forces when withdrawing from Iraq, the sources said.

The GSDF camp will not be dismantled and Japan plans to hand the facility over to local residents, according to the sources.

At the same time, Japan is considering expanding the Air Self-Defence Force's Kuwait-based mission in response to Washington's request for more assistance in airlifting US soldiers and supplies to and from US bases in Iraq, the sources said.

Last December, Japan extended its troop deployment into a third year with an eye to beginning to pull out key units in mid-2006.

Until recently, the United States was requesting that Japan maintain GSDF deployment in Samawah.

Washington is now asking Japan, Britain and Australia to send personnel to support a new US reconstruction plan for military-civilian joint efforts to strengthen capabilities of local Iraqi authorities, the sources said.

It is understood a Senate sub-committee did not pursue the AWB investigation in the face of the fierce resistance of AWB.

Mr Thawley met Norm Coleman, chairman of the Senate permanent sub-committee on investigations, in the weeks before the Australian general election on October 9, 2004.

A statement to the Herald last night from the office of the Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, confirmed Mr Thawley "argued strongly" to Senator Coleman for AWB's case, which was to block a US Senate inquiry.

"The Government was very concerned that because of the strong campaign by American wheat interests, the Senate committee would be used by those interests to damage Australia's wheat interests with Iraq," the statement said.

Mr Thawley had "expressed surprise" to Senator Coleman that his committee was focusing on AWB. The statement said the Government was "very concerned at the time that AWB Ltd would be unfairly treated". It added: "The Government had no reason to believe other than that the AWB Ltd was behaving properly."

Around the time of Mr Thawley's meeting it is understood there was also a meeting involving Australian government officials and the Senate committee staffers during which the US-Australia alliance and Australia's role in the "coalition of the willing" was raised.

Senator Coleman's committee at the time was launching investigations into several companies and individuals accused of paying kickbacks to Iraq in return for lucrative oil, food and equipment contracts. With the information that AWB may have been paying such kickbacks, the committee began negotiating with the company's US lawyers to obtain internal company documents.

It is understood there was a series of meetings in the second half of 2004 between Senate staffers and AWB lawyers, who argued that Senator Coleman's committee had no jurisdiction to investigate the wheat exporter.

Mr Thawley's meeting with Senator Coleman came after these meetings as well as those with Australian government officials.

It is understood that in at least one of those meetings AWB executives were present and emphatically denied AWB had knowingly paid kickbacks.

Senator Coleman's office did not return calls from the Herald. It is unclear whether his committee will reopen investigations into AWB following the revelations in Sydney at the Cole inquiry into the affair.

The Herald has been told Senator Coleman's committee dropped the investigation into the AWB because it had its hands full pursuing the dealings of the British MP George Galloway.

But a check of the congressional records shows the investigation into Mr Galloway did not begin until the beginning of last year. The Galloway investigation made headlines when the rebel MP appeared before the committee and accused it of a politically motivated smear campaign against him because he had opposed the war in Iraq.

The US committee also investigated several foreign companies that had agreed to hand over documents.

The Herald could find no evidence that any officials from any other government made representations to the committee on behalf of companies implicated in the scandal. There is no evidence to suggest any other company refused to co-operate with it. As far back as November 2003, when a group of US senators wrote to the then secretary of state, Colin Powell, expressing "grave concerns" about reports that AWB had been paid inflated prices for wheat by Iraqi, the Australian embassy in Washington was arguing that US wheat interests were trying to blacken AWB's reputation.

When the then Senate minority leader, Tom Daschle, wrote to President George Bush in October 2003 asking him to raise the allegations about AWB with the Prime Minister, John Howard, during his visit to Australia, the Australian embassy wrote to Senator Daschle saying the allegations against AWB were "reprehensible".

Mr Thawley, who finished his five-year stint as US ambassador last year and is now in private business in Washington, could not be contacted for comment.

Denis Richardson, who replaced Mr Thawley last year, said the embassy often made representations to members of Congress. Asked whether he knew of contacts between the embassy and committees of Congress investigating the United Nations oil-for-food program, he said he could not comment, and these questions should be put to Mr Downer's office.