Are we getting the truth about troop deaths in Iraq? Lunaville notes that there are conflicting accounts of an incident in Ad Duluiyah on December 9 in which three soldiers died -- Centcom called it an accident, but a news story now cites an Iraqi attack. And last week Needlenose cited this Knight-Ridder story:

An influential Mississippi congressman has raised the possibility that the Pentagon has undercounted combat casualties in Iraq after he learned that five members of the Mississippi National Guard who were injured Sept. 12 by a booby trap in Iraq were denied Purple Heart medals.

The guardsmen were wounded by an artillery shell that detonated as their convoy passed the tree in which it was hidden, but their injuries were classified as "noncombat," according to Rep. Gene Taylor, D-Miss. Taylor, a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee, learned of the classification when he visited the most seriously injured of the guardsmen, Spc. Carl Sampson, 35, at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington.

"How could no one have caught this?" Taylor said....

Is this just a fog-of-war thing, or is the Pentagon concealing the truth?