Over the past several months, CNSNews.com has strangely obsessed with the number of U.S. troop deaths in Afghanistan while Obama has been in office.
Here are some of the headlines of stories, all written by Edwin Mora:
- A Third of All U.S. Casualties in Eight-Year Afghan War Have Occurred Since Obama Ordered Escalation
- U.S. Casualties in Afghanistan in First Quarter of 2010 More Than Double Those for 2009
- 2010 On Track to Be Deadliest Year for U.S. Forces in Almost Nine-Year-Long Afghanistan War
- A Majority of U.S. Combat Casualties in Nine-Year-Long Afghanistan War Have Occurred in Less Than Year-and-a-Half of Obama Presidency
- 37 Percent of All U.S. Deaths in Nearly Nine-Year-Long Afghan War Have Occurred Since Obama’s Troop Surge
- Almost Half of U.S. Fatalities in Afghan War Took Place Since Obama Took Office
Most recently, Mora wrote an Aug. 31 article headlined “2010 Already Deadliest Year for U.S. in Nine-Year Afghan War.” As with the other articles, Mora conveniently omits any comparison to the fatality rate in Iraq at the height of the war there. It’s not that he could not easily obtain those numbers — in fact, a fellow CNS writer noted them less than a month ago.
The Aug. 5 article by Patrick Goodenough — headlined, in a contrast to Mora’s parade of death, “U.S. Casualties in Iraq Dropped to All-Time Low in July” — notes:
According to a Cybercast News Service database, the deadliest months of the war for U.S. forces were April 2004 (136 total deaths, 125 hostile), November 2004 (146 total, 139 hostile), December 2006 (117 total, 106 hostile) and May 2007 (125 total, 121 hostile).
All of those numbers are approximately twice that of the peak monthly deaths in Afghanistan that Mora has been reporting:
The majority of all American deaths in the war in Afghanistan have occurred under Obama’s watch, according to a CNSNews.com database of Afghanistan war casualties. 612 U.S. soldiers have died since Obama was inaugurated on Jan. 20, 2009, or about 52 percent of the overall 1,181 fatalities (which includes both combat-related casualties and non-combat fatalities).
Mora gives little attention to the fact that the reason there have been more troop deaths in Afghanistan is because there are more troops in Afghanistan.
It’s unclear why CNS has gone the body-count route, but we don’t recall it doing this when President Bush was in office, certainly not to this extent.