Is The Pentagon Is Refusing To Acknowledge Casualties In The War Against The Islamic State?

Nancy A. Youssef, Daily Beast: The U.S. War Casualties the Pentagon Doesn’t Want You to See

Five Americans have been wounded in action while fighting ISIS in Iraq. But the U.S. military won’t say the first thing about who they are, or how they got injured.

The Pentagon says Master Sgt. Joshua Wheeler, the Delta Force soldier who died last week in a hostage rescue mission in Iraq, was the first U.S. service member killed in action in the ISIS war. But Wheeler was not the first combat casualty.

Five other service members have been “wounded in action” since the U.S. first sent troops back into Iraq last year, according to statistics from the Pentagon and interviews with officials in Iraq (PDF). But how and when they were injured, the Pentagon refuses to say.

As the Obama administration holds to the increasingly dubious claim that U.S. troops are not engaged in combat against the self-proclaimed Islamic State, the Pentagon is withholding details about its wounded that would give key insights into the kind of fight American troops are facing in Iraq. Were any of the five shot by the Iraqi forces they are training? Did a mortar round shot at their base injure a soldier? Has ISIS wounded a U.S. service member?

WNU Editor: The Pentagon is not alone in acknowledging casualties .... the other agencies involved in the war against the Islamic State (CIA, contractors, etc.) are also not acknowledging their casualties.