Tailored Results

Cop Killa...Witty!!!

Today's Washington Post Headline, U.S. Forces Kill 54 Iraqis After Ambushes, signifies a subtle policy shift in the Pentagon's public relations campaign. Ever since at least April '03, the military has followed a strict doctrine of apathy towards the enemy combatant body count.

"We don't count enemy dead," said Maj. Ted Wadsworth, a Department of Defense public information officer.

"This is very much driven by the Vietnam experience," said Robert Turner at the Center for National Security Law at the University of Virginia. "[Former Defense Secretary Robert] McNamara was into quantifying everything to do with the war. His idea was, 'Let's count the number of enemy dead,' with high body counts meaning you were doing a good job.

One wonders if The Post's article is actually an example of a surreptitious policy shift in order to increase morale, or if its descriptions of the battle and the ensuing casualty count are the slip up of an erring commander.

If it is a policy change, who can blame the Pentagon. After a month of daily headlines slowly but steadily raising the casualty count, it would seem logical to be pleased with a battle producing 18 times the average daily GI death count. (If one estimates that through out the month of November '03 on average 3 GI's died every day. The actual number is 2.7 per day) I suppose the dillema for the Pentagon is how to balance the morale benefits from marginalizing US casualty counts with enemy body counts against using the counts to evidence their "progress," in further stablizing the country.