Masking the human costs of war: Go to the Department of Defense's website and you'll find out right away what our terror threat level is (Yellow: Elevated). You'll get plenty of mentions of the "War on Terror," references that toe the White House line of conflating Iraq and 9/11. And you'll get lots of jargon about supporting our troops. But try this little test: click on the link above and time how long it takes you to find a comprehensive list of soldiers, by name, who've died in Iraq. I've logged on three times and haven't discovered it yet. Yet, not only is the Pentagon hiding the dead—1,547 Americans to date—but they're apparently hiding the wounded. The Independent reports that the US military is "smuggling wounded soldiers into the US under cover of darkness to avoid bad publicity about the number of troops being injured and maimed in Iraq."