War News Updates Editor: This Is Why I Do What I Do

From his home in Stone Mountain, Ga., Michael White, the founder of iCasualties.org, logs deaths among coalition forces. Erik S. Lesser for The New York Times

Close Watch On Casualties In Afghanistan And Iraq -- New York Times

“EVERY morning I wake up and go looking for dead people,” says Michael White, a computer programmer from Stone Mountain, Ga., who publishes the Web site iCasualties.org, which tracks deaths and injuries among coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It is grim work of trolling through news sites and official releases about each episode, assessing the reliability of those accounts and then entering the details about the wounded and killed into a database.

Mr. White, 54, has done so since the 2003 invasion of Iraq — “when everything was flowers and chocolate,” he said. Yet he had a hunch that events might not continue so smoothly.

Read more ....

My Comment: When reading this article I could not help but feel that I was reading about myself. Like Mr. Michael White, I do what I do because it is a calling .... nothing more or nothing less. I wake up every morning scanning and reading numerous blog posts, news web sites, and official announcements. I hunger for information .... especially information that everyone else has ignored. There is uttlerly no financial gain in this work .... the gain is all spiritual and intellectual and a satisfaction that others appreciate what this blog is trying to do.

Kudos to the New York Times in revealing the man behind iCasualties .... this recognition is warranted and long overdue.

If for some reason iCasualties cannot continue .... I will carry that baton because it is necessary and essential to preserve the legacy of what our men and women in the armed forces have gone through and must go through every day, and to those who want to remember them.