Casualty notices put out by the Pentagon for Iraq and Afghanistan are a study in information contrast when it comes to the Army and the Marines.

The Pentagon dutifully reports every fallen American at www.defense link.mil under News Releases.

The Army will report if a soldier fell to a gunshot. Or if it was a roadside bomb that detonated near a vehicle. Or if it was a rocket-propelled grenade or small-arms attack.

The Marines, on the other hand, report the nebulous "while supporting combat operations" and not much more. An exception is in the case of a "non-hostile" death, which sometimes is a suicide or accident.

The Marine Corps reporting in years past sometimes provided greater detail, but that's not usually the case now.

The casualty notices allow the American public and press to monitor the sacrifices being made by U.S. troops in terms of "killed in action" and wounded.

Similarly, the manner in which a U.S. service member dies allows for an equally important understanding of trends.

About two-thirds of the 43 U.S. deaths in Afghanistan in July — the highest death toll of the eight-year-old war — were caused by "improvised explosive devices," or IEDs, officials have noted separately from the Pentagon casualty stats.

Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Les Melnyk said there is no standard reporting requirement for the Army and Marines when it comes to casualty information.

"While there is a great deal of uniformity among the various services regarding the content of casualty releases, there is no governing (Pentagon) policy delineating the level of detail which a military service must use to describe the circumstances surrounding a service member's death," Melnyk said. "Each service determines this for themselves."

Capt. Brian Block, a spokesman at Marine Corps headquarters, struggled a bit with an explanation for the reporting discrepancy.

Block said the Marine Corps reticence does not have to do with "operational security" or any belief that the Army, in providing more information, also is providing intelligence the enemy could capitalize on.

Block suggested it's up to individual Marine bases to provide the type of casualty information the Army gives out in its Pentagon releases. "There's no standard across-the-bases determination of what (information) they'll give," Block said.

Marine Corps Base Hawai'i, however, said it does not give out the type of casualty information the Army provides.