Transcript
BROOKE GLADSTONE: This is On the Media. I'm Brooke Gladstone, with a couple of your letters. On my interview with Salon's Mark Benjamin last week about the counting of soldiers wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan, Daniel Taylor of Washington, DC wrote:
"You disappointed me today. When Mr. Benjamin said that no one had gotten a handle on the numbers, one and only one question came to me. Why haven't the purple heart medals and their citations been requested through the Freedom of Information Act? A proper FOIA request should provide such information. If for some reason my reasoning is wrong, Mr. Benjamin would have provided, but the question must be asked."
George Kay of Sylvania, Ohio writes that Benjamin's (quote) "suggestion about counting actual war casualties, like really getting hit from shrapnel and the like, together with casualties from traffic accidents and Humvees, injuries loading trucks, etcetera, again reveals the desperation of liberal Democrats to undermine the war effort. The Pentagon rightfully provides two separate casualty totals. Let's expand that kind of thinking to the US - why don't we add in all the business-related vehicle and other on the job accidents in the US, with all the robberies and shootings going on here? Wouldn't that be a truer picture of all the pain and suffering in the US in one big number? Maybe we could even help undermine the Bush administration with that one."
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