For a while now, a reader at Josh Marshall’s TPM named s DK is doing the weekend blogging there.

He is quite good, better than Marshall in my view. But then today he writes:

I was under the impression that U.S. air strikes in Iraq had dwindled to only very occasional, discreet sorties months if not years ago. Fighting an insurgency with air strikes is like performing heart surgery with a chain saw. Apparently, though, that’s exactly what we are doing.

Yes, DK, thanks for saying so. Air strikes in Iraq are definitly underreported and the are a chain saw.

But the "CENTAF releases airpower summary" is a nearly daily report made public at the Air force site and copied at GlobalSecurity.org. Here is the most recent "Month-to-date Airpower Overview"

Close Air Support Sorties OIF 473; OEF 502
Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance OIF 185; OEF 78
Nontraditional ISR OIF 4; OEF 0
Shows of Force OIF 77; OEF 68
Weapons Expenditures OIF 13; OEF 205

See the last category? 205 month-to-date "weapon expenditures" in OEF, i.e. Afghanistan versus 13 in Iraq. Any idea what that might is about? An even bigger chain saw?

How many were killed in those expenditures in Afghanistan, how may terrorists were killed and/or created by them?

Sorry to "mock the naivete" of one U.S. blogger here, but thanks to the – by law demanded – relative transparency of the U.S. combat actions, these numbers are available to all.

But it is the media, major bloggers as well as the MSM, who fail to ask the questions.

Two hundred and five "weapon expenditures", i.e. bombings in Afghanistan, within half a month should catch some attraction.

But maybe they just do not attract enough clicks, page views or other ad-sales measures to bother about them.