Now this I think is a rare treat for the common citizen. We all recall how the US attempted to have the female Italian reporter killed while on her hopeful 5 mile drive to safety and freedom. We all should recall the whitewasing report that was issued, with lots of details blanked out by the Pentagon. Through some novice's little mistake, the entire report was placed on their internet website. But what happened apparently is that their report on the website had the black marker blanking out much of the report but for some reason people were still able to read the report if they had the insight to highlight and/orpick all the text and paste it on their own word program. Here's the report with the yellow highlighting which is what the US had blacked out for censorship and damage control reasons. Some of the report is mundane and predictable, but other parts show good reason as to why the American command in Iraq has to constantly lie and belittle the casualty statistics.
Some excerpts:
"The week of the (Italian reporter shooting) incident (there were) 166 IED incidents, with 131 detonations and 35 IED's rendered safe. There were 82 casualties from those incidents."
"From 12 August to 11 March, 2/10 MTN Soldiers conducted approximately 50,000 patrols and 5,237 Traffic Control Points (TCP's) during that period." <----wow. That's a lot of patrols. Gotta admire that.
The most striking for me is the "Route Irish" reality. Think about it people. The US has about 150,000 troops in Iraq. Other countries raise the toll a meagre amount higher. The road from the Baghdad International Airport to the so-called 'Green Zone' is about 12 kilometers or something. It's not at all secured. And they will never be able to secure it without more reinforcements to the tune of a hundred thousand more GI's. And before you dismiss this reality as fear-mongering or over-indulgence of negativity, consider the fact that this unsecured route is the same route all Americans coming to Iraq have to take. Every American who comes to Baghdad has to run this indian-country gauntlet of small arms fire and rocket propelled grenades, two munitions stored in abundance in weapons caches' all through Iraq.
"From 1 November 2004 to 12 March 2005 there were a total of 3306 attacks IN THE BAGHDAD AREA alone".
That's a lot more attacks than we've been privvy to unfortunately. And some "liberal haters" here say the media only focuses on the bad news coming out of Iraq. Well I'd say they haven't been telling us enough about what's really going on in there. Check the whole report out. I read most of it and no matter what your political stripes may be it's still an education in all things military.