We’re consistently told that counting the number of dead Taliban, al Qaeda, or other terrorists is an inaccurate metric to gauge success. And I agree; a focus just on the number of dead enemy fighters does not tell the story, only a small part of it. Analyzing casualties alone is highly misleading.

So why does the media report on US and allied casualties, but exclude enemy casualties? Take today's story in the AP, "Soldier’s Death a Milestone in U.S. Afghanistan Operations". We know exactly how many US and Coalition soldiers were killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, because websites like iCasualties.org (Iraq and Afghanistan statistics) keep the numbers. And the media quotes iCasualties monthly to let us know the stats.

If an organization decided to build a tCasualties (Taliban in Afghanistan) or aqCasualties (al Qaeda global) website, would the media quote the numbers? Or would that be crass body counting, harkening back to Pentagon information campaigns in Vietnam?