How many casualties?

Is it possible...could it be...that the Pentagon is lying to us about the number of casualties we've suffered since the invasion of Iraq? Check out this transcript of an interview broadcast on Bill Moyer's program. An excerpt:

MITCHELL: The cost is great and far higher than the approximately 5,000 wounded-in-action the public has been hearing about.

BENJAMIN: The number of casualties from Operation Iraqi Freedom are exponentially higher, thousands and thousands of soldiers higher than what the Pentagon seems to say the casualty numbers for Operation Iraqi Freedom are.

MITCHELL: Mark Benjamin is the investigations editor at U.P.I. For the past year, he's traveled to American military bases to report on how the military counts casualties.

BENJAMIN: It just seemed to me from walking around on military bases that the human cost of the war was a lot higher than what I had been reading.

Essentially just the numbers didn't seem to add up.

MITCHELL: Didn't add up, says Benjamin, because the Pentagon only reports as casualties those soldiers who are wounded-in-action. Those hit, for example, by enemy fire or improvised explosive devices.

What's missing in the Pentagon's count of the wounded are all the other soldiers — at least 11,000 more, injured or sickened in what the Pentagon considers non-combat circumstances.