As the Globe Spins

Maybe I'm just a cynic at heart, but as soon as I saw this Boston Globe headline...

Amputation rate for US troops twice that of past wars

...my first thought was, "OK, but how many of those injuries in wars past would have resulted in soldiers bleeding out and dying on the battlefield?"

Sure enough, two paragraphs in:

The data are the grisly flip side of improvements in battlefield medicine that have saved many combatants who would have died in the past: Only 1 in 10 US troops injured in Iraq has died, the lowest rate of any war in US history.

God forbid the story and the headline should focus on that aspect. That might result in an increase in popular support for the Bush administration. We can't have that now, can we?

Oh, THAT liberal media.

And how's this for defective perspective?

"The death rate isn't great compared to Vietnam, Korea, and World War II. But these soldiers are coming back to their communities and people are seeing just how high the price is that these young people are paying,"

As opposed to what people were seeing when soldiers were being sent home in boxes by the thousands? Good grief.

UPDATE: Even CNN (and the Associated Press) gets it right:

Report: 9 in 10 survive wounds in Iraq

(AP) -- For every American soldier killed in Iraq, nine others have been wounded and survived -- the highest rate of any war in U.S. history.