U.S. CASUALTIES ON THE RISE IN IRAQ

After a steady decline for four months, the Pentagon is reporting U.S. casualties are on the rise in Iraq.

With the twin suicide bombings on Friday that claimed the lives of 80 Baghdad civilians with another 240 injured, and now the announcement that U.S. troop casualties are on the rise, the highly praised "surge" doesn't look so good anymore.

However, the media in the United States is still looking the other way when it comes to covering the war in Iraq.

What is going to take for the mainstream media to come out of their self-imposed exile and start covering the Iraq war like it should be covered?

We have 160,000 troops in Iraq battling insurgent elements every single day, but you would think the war was over if you were to tune into FOX NEWS, MSNBC, CNN or look at any major newspaper in the United States.

Not only is the lack of war coverage a disgrace, but it is an insult to every American serving in the military in Iraq and here in the United States and their families who turn to the free press in the United States for information on the war.

Bill Corcoran, editor of CORKSPHERE http://corksphere.blogspot.com/, a blog which brings readers up-to-date information on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan which are not found in any of the mainstream media in the United States.

U.S. casualties rise in Iraq after falling for 4 months

Nancy A. Youssef McClatchy Newspapers

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/26030.html

WASHINGTON — The U.S. death toll in Iraq increased in January, ending a four-month drop in casualties, and most of the deaths occurred outside Baghdad or the once-restive Anbar province, according to military statistics.

In all, 38 American service members had been reported killed in January by Thursday evening, compared with 23 in December. Of those, 33 died from hostile action, but only nine of them in Baghdad or Anbar.

A total of 3,942 American service members have been killed in Iraq as of Thursday, according to icasualties.org, an independent Web site that tracks the statistics.

U.S. officials in Iraq said the death toll had risen because the military was targeting armed groups that had been driven out of Baghdad and Anbar by the increase in American troops.

In January, the military launched a major offensive in northeastern Diyala province, where nine service members were killed. In addition, the U.S. moved troops to the northwestern Ninevah province, which has become an al Qaida in Iraq stronghold. Seven service members were killed there in January, compared with four in December.

The fact that more Americans have been killed in those provinces has some fretting that the U.S. is fighting another round of "whack-a-mole," a term that Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., once used to describe chasing insurgents and terrorists from one part of Iraq to another.