The Blog

TODAY’S MUSING:   National Public Radio just aired yet another update on American casualties in Iraq.  Now there’s a fascinating word:  casualties.   According to Webster’s, the military usage refers to the loss of personnel from active service due to “death, injury, etc.”

Not to pick on NPR, which generally does a great job, but it astounds me that we Americans continue to embrace the use of this horribly non-specific euphemism.  I mean, what other reference to human beings takes people from those two polar-opposite camps — the dead and the living — and lumps them together in the same group?

Is it too much effort to tell us how many were actually killed and how many were merely wounded or injured? It’s a fairly important distinction, given that the dead are . . . well, DEAD.   That’s the end of the line.  The Big Adios. 

Somebody who is knifed in the arm or shot in the ankle still has, maybe, seventy or eighty good years left.

I can only think that the spin doctors at the Pentagon love putting everyone under one category, casualties, because it sounds a hell of a lot less awful than flat-out saying X number of people died.  In fact, casualty sounds a lot like injury.   It’s just amazing that the media continue to allow the Pentagon flaks to get away with it.  Somebody should really hold them accountable for accurate, specific totals.