16 Days Without A US Combat Fatality In Iraq

Corrected: See this post, which reports data that disproves this post. I apologize for the error.

A U.S. soldier died Thursday, October 27 when he was hit with small arms fire in Salah ad Din, Iraq.

This is the first combat-related New Casualty Report posted on Cent-Comm since October 11, when a release was posted on a soldier who was killed in combat operations in Baghdad.

Two weeks and two days passed between one death and the other. Did the MSM notice? Do you recall seeing a raft of stories about success in Iraq? Let's see.

Here's a CBS story ... from July. Here's a McClatchy story from September. This USA Today story is a little hard to peg; there's a note that it was updated "95d" ago, presumably in July, like the CBS story. Even this Fox News report from last Wednesday failed to note the fact.

These stories and many like them, right up to this WaPo editorial from October 11, are reporting on the general success of the surge, one measure of which has been the dramatically falling rate of combat deaths and injuries among not just US forces, but also Iraqi forces.

Have the Dems on Congress taken notice? Certainly, some of them have, but the leadership plods on in a quagmire of denial and defeatism.

Has the media noticed? Nowhere can I find a report that says that two weeks and two days went by without a single American dying in combat in Iraq. It seems like a newsworthy story ... but what would I, a former reporter who's spent 30 years in PR, know about newsworthiness?

Note: The photo at the top, from A Soldier's Blog, doesn't show a soldier grieving over a fallen comrade. It's even more touching. Here's the caption:

U.S. military police officer Brian Pacholski comforts his hometown friend and fellow officer David Borell, both from Toledo, Ohio, at the entrance of the military base in Balad, Iraq, about 30 miles northwest of Baghdad, on June 13. Borell broke down after seeing three Iraqi children who were brought to the base seeking medical help after they were injured while playing with and burning a powder that was inside a plastic bag near their farm.

These strong, tough men who break down when seeing an injured child ... how noble they are; how different from our enemy, who plant bombs on children.