As of 13th May 2006, the U.S. military states its casualties as 2,436 deaths of US soldiers and 17,648 injured. These very precise figures are updated daily. The problem with these statistics is that they are misleading and wrong and deliberately so. To arrive at these figures, the following deaths and casualties are excluded:

- Soldiers killed or injured in any other way other than a direct bullet or bomb. In other words, if a pilot or driver crashes because he had to evade a missile or bomb, it would not be counted as a death.

- The dying and critically wounded are listed as en route to military hospitals outside of the country and not reported on the daily postings. This means a soldier who was shot and/or wounded but died on a flight to a U.S. military hospital would not be counted.

- Anyone who dies in hospital or a U.S. military base.

- Anyone who suffers from severe mental illnesses as a direct result of the war. This category includes those who are medically diagnosed as depressed and/or suicidal.

- Anyone who is seemingly not seriously hurt at the time of a bombing or battle but who has long term physical or mental problems as a result. The most common example of this are soldiers who survive a road side bomb but who suffer long term brain damage. 

- Soldiers in the U.S. Army who are not U.S. citizens. These are commonly citizens of poor South and Central American countries who are persuaded to fight in the hope of U.S. citizenship after years of risking their lives.

The Pentagon has followed this deliberately deceitful policy from the time of the invasion. It is now admitted that in the six month period from the pre-planned date of the invasion of Iraq on 20th March 2003 till September 2003, the true scale of American casualties in Iraq was far higher than officially stated.


During those six months, more than 6,000 American servicemen were evacuated for medical reasons, including more than 1,500 American soldiers who have been wounded, many seriously. The figures shocked many Americans, who believed that casualties in the early period of the invasion of Iraq were relatively light. Even when these figures came to light, it did not persuade the Pentagon or the Bush administration to be any more honest about what followed.

On June 29 2005, the Veterans Administration (an official U.S. body) admitted to the U.S. Congress that there were over 103,000 U.S. military casualties from Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The estimated costs of looking after the injured and disabled was estimated at $2.6 billion more than originally budgeted. The official figures at the time were showing 13,000 casualties - meaning that the true figure was many multiples higher.

The U.S. Defence Department admitted in November 2004 that there have been over 15,000 troops evacuated from Iraq for medical reasons that have never been counted in official statistics. Only 20% of those ever evacuated for medical reasons are ever returned to active service.

Amongst the 15,000 evacuated and never counted as official casualties were those with serious spinal injuries, bone fractures, heart problems and mental illness.

The most serious exclusion, however, was and is traumatic brain injury, or TBI. Because of the body armour worn by U.S. troops, many soldiers survive a road side bomb but with the brain damage caused by the bombs often undetected. The explosions often cause brain damage similar to "shaken-baby syndrome," according to neurologists at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington. The injury is often hard to detect immediately after being hurt. Many soldiers may look fully recovered, but their brain functions are damaged and often deteriorate over time. An explosion can cause the brain to move violently inside the skull and the shock wave from the blast can also damage brain tissues. To try to identify cases of TBI, doctors at Walter Reed screened every arriving service member wounded in an explosion, along with those hurt in Iraq or Afghanistan in a vehicle accident or fall, or by a gunshot wound to the face, neck or head.

They found TBI in about 60% of the cases. Till January 2005, 437 cases of TBI were diagnosed among wounded soldiers at the Army hospital.

Slightly more than half had permanent brain damage. Similar TBI screening began in August at National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., near Washington. It showed 83% - or 97 wounded Marines and sailors - with temporary or permanent brain damage. TBI may come to characterize this war, much the way illnesses from Agent Orange typified the Vietnam War according to doctors. The numbers involved make it a serious long term problem for the U.S. as the financial and social cost are yet to be fully calculated.

The Pentagon refusal to be honest and open about the human cost on U.S. servicemen and women has led several members of Bush's own Republican Party who are members of the U.S. Congress to write to Bush on 7th December 2005. In the letter they state that there have been "50,000 cases of mental trauma. Moreover, 101,000 of the 431,000 troops who have returned home from service in Iraq and Afghanistan and who have separated from the military have sought help. This figure shows the Pentagon's official Iraq casualty count of 2,082 U.S. troops killed, and 15,477 wounded as of today, to be inaccurate by several multiples".


Terrified of losing public support for what is already a highly unpopular war, President Bush personally ordered that no pictures be taken of the coffined and flag-draped dead under any circumstances. The justification of this was to protect the bereaved relatives but is obviously designed to keep the huge number of arriving bodies secret.

Yesterday, a senior Pentagon official confirmed on the condition of anonymity that the actual death toll of U.S. service personnel as of 1st May 2006 in Iraq is in excess of 12,000. The real number of casualties - i.e. those unable to return to active service - is in excess of 150,000. He also confirmed that all reports from the U.S. military in Iraq confirmed that Iraqi resistance to the occupation growing better organized and more deadly by the day.

Whatever the Americans do, it seems that the British army have an irresistible urge to follow - which includes hiding casualties figures. In January 2006, the British Defence Minister claimed that there were only 230 British wounded since the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. That figure was too low for anyone to take seriously and within 2 months of constant pressure, the more accurate figure of 6,700 British servicemen and women needing hospital treatments was given by the British Ministry of Defence.

The UK government was forced to admit that 4,000 British soldiers were seriously injured enough to be flown back to the UK for medical treatment in the previous three years. It is worth bearing in mind that the total British contingent is 8,000. With an admitted 4,000 casualties, the figure of 109 military deaths seems incredibly low and could only be reached if the Bush method of calculating casualties is used.

However hard the Americans and British try to hide the true human cost of the invasion to the world, of both Iraqi and their own; the true figures will emerge one day.

With the large majority of the U.S. public already having lost faith in their Commander in Chief, it remains to be seen if the invasion of Iraq will be viewed as another Vietnam or whether future American invasions will be dubbed 'another Iraq' due to the huge financial and human losses that were inflicted.

Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora urged the U.S. to help end Israel's sea and air blockade, saying his country was making "every effort" to secure its borders.

"Time is working against those who would like to see this resolution applied," Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said after talks her French counterpart, Phillipe Douste-Blazy. "We are now in the most sensitive and explosive position."

"We therefore need extremely quick action from the international community," she said.

Syrian President Bashar Assad was quoted as saying he would consider such a deployment along the Lebanon-Syria border a "hostile" move toward his country.

"First, this means creating a hostile condition between Syria and Lebanon," Assad told Dubai Television, according to excerpts released by the TV station ahead of the broadcast. "Second, it is a hostile move toward Syria and naturally it will create problems."

Assad did not elaborate on that point in the excerpts. But Finland's foreign minister, after meeting with his Syrian counterpart, said Damascus threatened to close the frontier with Lebanon if U.N. peacekeepers were deployed there.

"They will close their borders for all traffic in case U.N. troops will be deployed along the Lebanon-Syria border," Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja said after meeting Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem in Helsinki. Finland holds the rotating presidency of the European Union.

"This closing of the border would certainly have negative consequences for the people living in the region," Tuomioja told reporters after his meeting with Moallem.

An Aug. 11 U.N. resolution outlined a cease-fire agreement that called for a 15,000-member force of international peacekeepers and another 15,000 Lebanese army troops to deploy to southern Lebanon, as Israeli troops withdraw.

But efforts to raise the force were moving slowly with the European Union nations expected to lead it reluctant to commit troops without safeguards to ensure they do not get sucked into the conflict.

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Israel would not lift its air and sea blockade until international peacekeepers were deployed at the Beirut international airport and along the Lebanese border with Syria. Hezbollah's vast arsenal of rockets and other weapons is believed to originate in Iran and reach the guerrillas across the Syrian border.

"The United States can support us in putting real pressure on Israel to lift the siege," the Western-backed Saniora said Wednesday. His government has called the blockade a violation of the U.N.-brokered cease-fire, and has asked the international community to intervene.

Olmert's tough stance on the blockade appeared to be an attempt to pressure the international community to speed the dispatch of a vanguard of the 15,000-strong force of international peacekeepers called for by the cease-fire agreement.

Sporadic violence has marked the U.N.-brokered cease-fire that took hold Aug. 14 and ended 34 days of ferocious fighting between Israel and Hezbollah. But the truce has held thus far.

The cease-fire was tested Wednesday when the Israeli army fired artillery into a disputed border region in response to what it said was an attack from inside Lebanon.

Lebanese security and military officials said there had been no fire by either Hezbollah or the Lebanese army in the region. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk with reporters.

Israel claimed there was a three-hour exchange of fire in the disputed Israeli-occupied Chebaa Farms area, where the borders of Lebanon, Syria and Israel meet.

Lebanese security officials said Israeli military fired artillery into the village of Chebaa, which is controlled by Lebanon. The officials said the artillery fire landed near Lebanese army positions but no one was hurt.

Lebanese troops entered the village of Chebaa last week for the first time in four decades as part of an eventual deployment of 15,000 troops in southern Lebanon under the cease-fire deal.

Lebanon has demanded that Israel hand over maps of the mine emplacements in the region. Hezbollah guerrillas also have laid mines in the south before and during the recent fighting to stop the Israeli army's ground push.

Three Lebanese soldiers were killed Wednesday near the village of Tibnine while they dismantled an unexploded missile in southern Lebanon, Lebanese security officials said.

Earlier in the day, an Israeli soldier was killed and three others were wounded by a land mine Israel planted in southern Lebanon, Israeli officials said. The soldier was the second casualty since the truce.

The Israeli military said it could not confirm the incident.

Hundreds of Israeli troops have remained on the positions in southern Lebanon they occupied during the war as they wait for a U.N. peacekeeping force to move in and guarantee a buffer zone between Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas.

Diplomats said EU talks in Belgium on Wednesday were unlikely to produce a breakthrough, though there were expectations that nations may come forward with at least tentative offers of more troops ahead of a meeting scheduled Friday with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

Saniora also said Wednesday his government would accept a $230 million aid package offered by President Bush, despite widespread criticism in Lebanon of U.S. support for Israel.

That resolution, passed August 11, gives the mandate for a UN force of up to 15,000 international troops to assist the
Lebanese army in taking control of southern Lebanon from Hezbollah.

Livni, speaking in Hebrew, said Israel halted its offensive on Lebanon on the basis of the resolution and on the international community's willingness to act to stop Hezbollah missile attacks.

"The international community's forces must be there to help the Lebanese government and army to regain control of its territory," she said.

She added that Israel and the Lebanese population paid "an extremely heavy price" for the non-application of an earlier UN resolution which had demanded the disarmament of Hezbollah and other Lebanese militia.

"The final goal is that of a Lebanon that is free and free of militias," she said, adding that "all extremists' eyes are focused on the region now" to see what will be the outcome of the conflict.

Livni also thanked Douste-Blazy for calling for the release of Israeli soldiers in the hands of Hezbollah and Hamas, and said: "I hope that after these months of violence we can turn towards a brighter future for all the region."

Douste-Blazy, who made four trips to Lebanon during and after the recent Israel-Hezbollah conflict, said before meeting Livni that he would ask her to lift Israel's blockade on Lebanese ports and airports.

"If Lebanon is to reconstruct, if it is going to recover economically, this blockade must be lifted," he told France 2 television.

Israel imposed a total embargo on Lebanon shortly after the start of its offensive against Hezbollah on July 12, and has maintained it even after a UN-brokered ceasefire went into effect on August 14.

Douste-Blazy also said he would ask that the UN Interim Force in Lebanon, UNIFIL, enforce an embargo on the transport of arms across Lebanon's border -- implicitly including the border with Syria, considered a Hezbollah sponsor and arms provider.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has said that he would consider the presence of an international military force on the border between Syria and Lebanon as a "hostile" act.

Later Wednesday, Livni was to meet French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin and Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy.

Hamas officials identified the captured man as Younis Abu Daka, a local Hamas leader and a lecturer at Islamic University in Gaza City. His brother, Yousef, was killed in the fighting, the militant group said.

The army confirmed that a senior Hamas operative was arrested, and at least one militant was killed. It did not identify the men.

The violence came as Israel continued its offensive in the Gaza Strip, which it began June 28, three days after Hamas-linked militants tunneled into Israel, attacked an Israeli army post and captured a soldier, Cpl. Gilad Shalit.

Israel said it would maintain its offensive until Shalit was released and militants ceased firing rockets into Israel.

The army has routinely carried out nighttime raids into Gaza since the offensive began.

Israel has killed more than 200 Palestinians - most of them militants - since the offensive began two months ago. Palestinian officials fear that Israel, after battling Hezbollah guerrillas to a stalemate in Lebanon, now turn its attention back on Gaza.

Late Wednesday, an Israeli tank fired a shell at two men who approached Gaza's border fence with Israel near Abasan, according to Palestinian officials and the army.

An Islamic Jihad militant's body and a wounded group member were found near the area, Islamic Jihad and ambulance crews said.

Ambulance crews found one wounded person, an Islamic Jihad militant, in the area and were searching for others.

The army said soldiers identified two suspicious men crawling toward the border post, fired a tank shell at them.

Also Wednesday, a top Palestinian militant leader in the West Bank was shot in the head and seriously wounded, militants and hospital officials said.

Hospital officials said Hossam Jaradat, the West Bank leader of Islamic Jihad's militant wing, was shot by Israeli soldiers in the Jenin refugee camp. But Islamic Jihad said they were not sure Israel was behind the shooting.

The Israeli army said it had no information on the report.

Israel knew exactly what it was bombing, says station manager Dr. Drar Abu-Sisi. It's impossible to operate the station without the transformers. Replacing them would take at least a year - either by ordering new transformers or by hooking up to the Egyptian power network.

With a capacity of 140 megawatts, the power station was the most advanced in the Arab world. Israel could have paralyzed the station by simply stopping its fuel supply, without putting it out of action for months.

"Had they told us on the phone to cut the power off, we'd have done so right away," says Abu-Sisi, who is convinced that the bombing was politically motivated.

"It was a foolish attack, which only sows more and more hatred for Israel," he says.

Each transformer costs around $2 million, but the main damage is indirect - the loss of income to the power station, grave damage to all its systems that could rust, and the huge blow to the Gaza Strip's miserable economy.

The Israel Defense Forces Spokesman's Office told Haaretz yesterday that "the bombing was intended to disrupt the activity of the terror networks directly and indirectly associated with Gilad Shalit's kidnapping."

Meanwhile, the station's 160 workers are out of work and Gaza has electrical power for only a few hours a day. Those who can afford it buy generators, and everyone goes up on the rooftops at night to escape the burdensome heat inside.

The employees demanded the Hamas-led government to pay their salaries. Otherwise, they called on the government to resign "if it was unable to carry out its obligations."

The Palestinian government was unable to pay salaries for the 165,000 public employees since it took office in late March due to an aid cutoff by key donors.

Meanwhile, rift between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Ismail Haneya over forming a coalition government has widened.

On Aug. 17, Abbas and Haneya agreed on forming a coalition government, however, Haneya outlined three preconditions to form the coalition on the next day, which includes the release of jailed Hamas ministers and lawmakers by Israel, ending international boycott against the Hamas government and nominating a prime minister from Hamas.

The Arabic-language newspaper Al-Hayat quoted unidentified Palestinian sources as saying on Wednesday that Abbas was very angry and rejected the three conditions put forward by Haneya. Other well-informed sources said on Tuesday that Abbas favored the formation of a technocrat government instead of a coalition one to replace the current Hamas-led cabinet.

Analysts believe that there are three tasks for Abbas and Haneya at the time being and if they failed to reach an agreement on the three tasks, the ongoing crisis in the Palestinian territories will never be resolved.

"The first task is to end up with forming a national unity government, the second one is to find a solution to the kidnapped Israeli soldier and the third is to reach a ceasefire with Israel," said Adnan Abu Salem, a Palestinian scholar who teaches political science in Gaza.

He underscored that everyone "should work in parallel until each task achieves its positive results, then if these three issues are settled, I do believe that Hamas would escape from the ongoing pressure and suffering of the Palestinian people would end."

On the financial front, as the fiscal situation was getting worse, Palestinian employees, including teachers and other civil servants as well as unemployed workers were getting angry. "We regret to vote for Hamas in the election," a Palestinian employee complained, adding, "Hamas ran in the election under the slogan 'change and reform', but we have seen neither change nor reform."

Salim al-Khawaja asked, "Where are the huge amounts of cash that many Hamas leaders have recently smuggled into the Gaza Strip through Rafah border crossing?"

Hamas, who overwhelmingly won the January election, rejected to meet three demands to recognize Israel, renounce violence and accept previous peace deals between Israel and the Palestinians.

Key donors including the United States and the European Union have cut off direct aid since Hamas single handedly form the cabinet in late March.

Earlier, Israel has already halted monthly transfer of tax money it collects on behalf of the Palestinian government while vowing no contact with the Palestinian government led by Hamas, a group which calls for Israel's destruct.

The pressures on Hamas movement have mounted since one of its armed wing, along with two other Palestinian factions, nabbed an Israeli soldier in an armed attack on June 25, which sparked Israel's comprehensive offensive against the Gaza Strip.

As part of the offensive to free the hostage and halt rocket attack, Israel has arrested eight ministers and more than two dozens lawmakers in the Hamas-led cabinet including the parliament speaker Aziz Dweik, vowing to continue targeting Hamas until militants free the soldier.

Haneya said, "Cutting financial aids to the government, and detaining speaker of the parliament, the Hamas lawmakers and the ministers would never break our determination and would never force us to surrender."

A Palestinian analyst in Gaza Ahmed Oudeh said, "This kind of financial pressure has affected neither the Hamas leaders nor the Hamas-led government's officials, but unfortunately, it hurt the Palestinian people and deepened their suffering."

He continued that "Hamas can't challenge the whole world and the highest interests of the Palestinian people. It should sooner or later recognize the peace initiatives and international legitimacy."

"There is the Arab peace initiative that Hamas should recognize, and there is also the document of national accordance issued by leaders of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails that Hamas should completely adopt," said Oudeh.

During a tour of the Middle East with NDP and Bloc colleagues, the Toronto MP was quoted as saying that Hezbollah should be taken off Canada's list of terrorist organizations.

He later denied making those remarks, insisting that he considers Hezbollah a terrorist organization.

But he said he was concerned Ottawa's list of terrorist groups doesn't differentiate between the militant and political wings of the party.

He said Canada's legislation should be amended to allow contact with the political arms of banned organizations.

All 10 leadership hopefuls condemned the remarks. Scott Brison and Carolyn Bennett said Wrzesnewskyj should no longer retain his post as a foreign affairs spokesman.

Hizbollah has made it clear that it has no intention of disarming under the UN Security Council's 1701 ceasefire resolution and yesterday afternoon, Major-General Alain Pellegrini, the commander of the UN Interim Force in southern Lebanon - which the Americans and British are relying upon to seize the guerrilla army's weapons - personally confirmed to me at his headquarters in Naqoura that "the Israelis can't ask us to disarm Hizbollah". Describing the ceasefire as "very fragile" and "very dangerous", he stated that disarming Hizbollah "is not written in the mandate".

But for now - and in the total absence of the 8,000-strong foreign military force that is intended to join Unifil with a supposedly "robust" mandate - Hizbollah has already won the war for "hearts and minds". Most householders in the south have received - or are receiving - a minimum initial compensation payment of $12,000 (£6,300), either for new furniture or to cover their family's rent while Hizbollah construction gangs rebuild their homes. The money is being paid in cash - almost all in crisp new $100 bills - to up to 15,000 families across Lebanon whose property was blitzed by the Israelis, a bill of $180m which is going to rise far higher when reconstruction and other compensation is paid.

In the 20sqkm of Beirut's southern suburbs which have been destroyed or badly damaged in 35 days of Israeli bombing, 500,000 residents - most of them Shia - lost their homes. But money is being poured in. For example, one Shia owning four floors of an apartment block, Hussein Selim, has already received $42,000 in cash for his possessions and lost furniture. And Hizbollah has pledged to rebuild the entire municipal area from its own - or perhaps Iran's - funds.

A frightening side to this long-term promise for believers in the UN ceasefire is that Hizbollah has encouraged its Shia population to rent homes in Khalde, south of Beirut, since it intends to delay its entire city construction project for a year - because of its conviction that the ceasefire will break down and that another Israeli-Hizbollah war will only wreck newly built homes.

Across the devastation of southern Lebanon, Hizbollah has now visited hundreds of thousands of Shia families for details of their losses. In some cases, Lebanese government officials - largely distrusted by the local population - have also made notes of compensation costs but all the authorities have done so far is to start the repair of water pipes and power lines. I found bulldozers working for Hizbollah's "Jihad al-Bena" company, clearing rubble from streets and tearing down half-destroyed houses. "We are doing this for nothing at the moment, but we know we will get paid because we trust Sheikh Hassan," a construction team leader told me. Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, the Hizbollah leader, has promised to indemnify all survivors.

Driving more than 100 miles across the south of the country yesterday, the sheer enormity of Hizbollah's task - and of the Lebanese government's failure - becomes evident. Looking across thegreen countryside of southern Lebanon, the villages appear undamaged as they bask in thesun. But the closer you get, the more you notice vast grey fields of rubble that were once homes. Some villages - Bint Jbeil, for example, and Zibqin - have been half-destroyed.

In Zibqin itself, I found one especially poignant ruin: the bombed remains of a mosque well over 1,000 years old which the Lebanese believe contains the body of Zein Ali Yaqin, son of the Prophet Yacoub - Jacob in the Jewish faith - and grandson of the Prophet Ibrahim, or Abraham. Two of Abraham's sons - Yacoub and Ismail (Ishmael) - define the split between Islam and Judaism, the former believing God told Abraham to sacrifice Ismail and the latter contending it was Yacoub/Jacob who was to be sacrificed. Zein Ali Yaqin is thus of precious Jewish lineage - yet the casket containing his mortal remains actually moved on the floor of the shrine as Israeli bombs fell outside.

The explosives have blasted down an old façade and tumbled hundreds of rocks from the original outside wall of the green-domed mosque on the slope below, cracking open the interior walls and cascading wreckage on to the floor beside the cloth-covered tomb. "The Israelis did all this to their own man," Hussein Barakat said as he hobbled down the road below. "Everyone here knows the origin of our little shrine, but look at it now." Mr Barakat is 69 and was the only villager to remain in Zibqin when the rest of the villagers fled the Israeli bombardment. He has a wound on one finger and has been left half deaf from the sound of explosions.

Bodies of civilians and Hizbollah fighters were still being unearthed from the wreckage of southern Lebanon this week; four brothers, all members of Hizbollah it turned out, died together under Israeli fire in the eastern town of Khiam. Some civilian families searched in vain through the rubble for relatives. In Siddiqin, just east of Qana, I found one shopkeeper who had spent hours trying to discover the ruins of his two shops which had been turned to dust by aerial bombs. But he, too, believed that "Sheikh Hassan" would rebuild his home. A few miles away, I found a 65-year-old woman clambering like a cat over the pancaked roof of her home, looking for her family gold in clefts between the packed concrete.

It is Hizbollah's army of workers which has been told to rebuild these villages. The guerrilla army's political and economic organisation will hire the tens of thousands of men to reconstruct a virtual city within Beirut and turn south Lebanon's wasteland back into the farming and tobacco-growing villages that existed two months ago.