Grim Milestone Alert

The media just love these grim milestones, and this piece from Bloomberg is rather curious, now combining casualties in both Iraq and Afghanistan while using some interesting wording and some dubious sources.

Four thousand U.S. service members have died in U.S. President George W. Bush's ``war on terror'' in Iraq and Afghanistan 5 1/2 years after American forces ousted the Taliban in December 2001.

See, it was simply Bush on his own, without any consent from anyone else, who invaded Afghanistan and Iraq.

A total of 3,596 have died in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion that removed Saddam Hussein from power. Some 2,957 of that number were killed in action, according to the latest Department of Defense figures. More than 26,500 personnel have been wounded in that conflict, 11,959 of them so seriously they couldn't return to duty.

In Afghanistan, 404 American personnel have died, of which 224 were killed in action. Those deaths include 61 personnel who died in Pakistan and Uzbekistan in support of the operation. Some 1,361 have been injured; 813 of them couldn't return to duty.

I'm not questioning or downplaying those figures. It just seems a bit duplicitous to cobble together every military casualty in those areas over nearly six years.

However, I do question the credibility of this:

Between 66,939 and 73,253 civilians have died in Iraq since March 2003, according to the Iraq Body Count Web site that counts casualties reported by at least two media outlets.

Hmm, you think perhaps the fact they're a far-left antiwar outfit may be a reason why a mere two media outlets rely on them as a source?