How does a female soldier leave from RI on Monday for Kuwait, and is dead 24 hours later?

See last letter for the story.

This is an update from here:

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/columns/pressingissues_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003668890

UPDATE: I received the following two letters in response to the above. After them, there is a press clip on the latest tragic example.
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Thank you for addressing the non-combat deaths issue. I’ve been struck by the number of people killed when vehicles drove into canals (Michael Kelly of the Washington Post being the best known of these).

Another mystery you should call attention to is the medivacs of people for non-combat injuries and illnesses, which far exceed those for combat injuries. Icasualties.org reports 24,912 non-hostile medivacs, which means the people were flown out or Iraq and to Germany (or perhaps other military hospitals). Some 18,741 of the patients suffer from disease/other (as opposed to the 6,171 for non-combat related injuries, presumably trauma).

{b}Disease? Three times as many of our troops are being flown out of Iraq for disease than wounds in battle (6,354), and yet we hear nothing about this epidemic, or whatever it is. Soldiers are selected for their good health to begin with and most troops deployed are in their 20s and almost all, other than the National Guard duffers who have been sent over, are under 40. These diseases are serious enough that the soldiers have been flown out of the country, so we’re not talking about colds or even the clap, which can be treated with antibiotics. And Iraq seems a little short on prostitutes and brothels serving the U.S. forces anyway, unless they among the “contractors” being flown in from Thailand and other countries to provide services.

So we have a situation where thousands of certifiably healthy young men and women are coming down with diseases of some sort that are serious enough to get them flown out of the country on an emergency basis. What’s going on over there?

Also, as for stress levels, the U.S. Army concluded in WWII that 24 weeks of combat was about all anyone could take and still be able to function as reasonably effective soldiers. That is about a third of the current tours of duty in Iraq.

Edward Furey
New York, N.Y.
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I would defy anyone to say with any assurance that they know what the Iraq combat casualties are (under the traditional definition) or that they know of a way to calculate them.

The media has made it a practice to show only the number of deaths.
On the rare occasion that they show deaths and wounded they are hit with a barrage of letters accusing them of being anti-war. Lord help them if they ever reported a total casualties figure.

Even the dead reported may be under counted. We just have no way of knowing from official figures. No one can sit there in Dover and count the airplanes and the caskets. Its verboten.

Has anyone ever attempted to use Nexis-Lexis to count the dead
in news stories from around the country?

It is obscene to count as a non-combat death a death that occurs when a military vehicle overturns in a combat zone-- and all of Iraq is a combat zone. If I had a son or daughter killed in Iraq in that
manner I would feel that that son or daughter had some how been
denigrated, that their death was not as "worthy" as that of someone shot by an Iraqi.

The media now controlled by conglomerates involved with the defense industries or dependent on favorable governmental rulings no longer serves a higher purpose (if it ever did). It is all too ready to go along to get along.

Bob Reynolds
Orange Park, Fla.
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From the The Eagle Tribune of North Andover, Mass., Nov.8:

DRACUT -- Army Spc. Christine Ndururi of Dracut called her family Monday morning to give them the news that her first overseas deployment would be to Kuwait and then Iraq.

The next day the military announced that the 21-year-old soldier died of a "non-combat related illness" at Camp Arifjan, Kuwait.

The family was still waiting last night for an explanation about how she died.

The public affairs office at Fort Hood, Texas - where Ndururi was assigned to the 4th Squadron, 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment - released no further details about the death. Spokeswoman Nancy Bourget said it remains "under investigation."

"She has not been sick," Ndururi's father, Wilson Wachira, 45, said yesterday at the family's home at 46 Woodbine Path. "I'm waiting for them to tell me what happened. She was not ill, unless she was ill after 9 o'clock when she talked to her mother. Before she was deployed there, she had to have a medical checkup."

Ndururi, an automated logistical specialist, called her mother at 9 a.m. Monday from a pay phone in Rhode Island to tell her about her assignment.

Then the parents heard from the military at 9 a.m. on Tuesday that their daughter was dead.

"To me, she was OK," said her mother, Mary Mwaniki, 45, recalling the last time she spoke to her daughter. The conversation didn't last long. Mwaniki, a nursing aide, was at work. She told her daughter to call back, but she never did.