U.S. Government

"U.S. battlefield casualties in Iraq are increasing dramatically in the face of continued attacks by remnants of Saddam Hussein's military and other forces, with almost 10 American troops a day now being officially declared 'wounded in action,'" the Washington Post's Vernon Lobe writes. With so many troops wounded in action and attacks on soldiers becoming "commonplace," U.S. Central Command only releases the number of wounded when asked -- "making the combat injuries of U.S. troops in Iraq one of the untold stories of the war," Lobe writes.

"This month, the General Accounting Office (GAO) - the investigative and auditing arm of Congress - issued a report that contains some startling revelations," notes John Dean. "Though they are couched in very polite language, they are bombshells nonetheless.

"If the first Iraq war of 1991 was dubbed Desert Storm , the second might be called Perfect Storm," writes Lance Bennett, professor of political science at University of Washington. "The run-up to the 2003 war witnessed an extraordinary convergence of factors that produced near-perfect journalistic participation in government propaganda operations. ... On a scale from one to ten -- if 'one' is rigorously sceptical and 'ten' supine -- Perfect Storm scored ten out of ten, far exceeding the already impressive levels of press complicity achieved in the first Iraq war. ...

As the American death count continues to rise in Iraq, the White House has launched a campaign to defend its handling of the Iraq occupation, addressing a number of different veterans groups. The number of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq since the May 1 "end of major combat operations" has surpassed the number of troop deaths during "Operation Iraqi Freedom," begun March 19.