The Truth About Iraq's Casualty Count ( MAX BOOT )

wsj.com ^ | May 3, 2008 | MAX BOOT

[kellynla]

The newspapers are predictably filled with articles about how 52 U.S. soldiers died in Iraq last month – the highest toll since September. Iraqi civilian casualties are also said to be at the highest level since August. These losses are being used to cast aspersions on claims of progress in Iraq.

Even one death is too many and 52 deaths is tragedy multiplied 52-fold. But let's keep some perspective. As the icasualties.org website makes clear, for better or worse, April was still one of the lighter-casualty months during the long war in Iraq.

More important, casualties cannot be looked at in a vacuum. A spike in casualties could be a sign that the enemy is gaining strength. Or it could be a sign that tough combat is under way that will lead to the enemy's defeat and the creation of a more peaceful environment in the future.

The latter was certainly the case with the casualty spike during the summer of 2007. (More than a hundred soldiers died each month in April, May and June.) Those losses were widely denounced as evidence that the surge wasn't working, but in fact they were proof of the opposite.

At the time, troops were engaged in hard fighting as part of Operation Phantom Thunder that eventually cleared most terrorists out of Anbar, Baghdad, Diyala, Babil and other provinces, leading to dramatic reductions in violence over the last year (more than 80% before the recent fighting).

[kellynla]

While we mourn the death of each and every one; FDR & JFK would have given their right arm to have liberated 50 million people (Iraq & Afganistan) with less than 5K KIA.

[kellynla]

You might want to ping your lists.

“All paid some, some paid all.”

Semper Fi,
Kelly

[Diogenesis]

[nuconvert]

Bump

[elfman2]

Great article!

[SandRat]

Interesting analysis from the Wall Street Journal.

[wizr]

God Bless Our Troops and their Commander in Chief, President Bush.

Thanks for the post.

[SW6906]

WOW! Great graph! I have a BUNCH of liberals I need to send that to!

[vbmoneyspender]

An April 25 article by a London Times correspondent who visited Basra finds: "Raids are continuing in a few remaining strongholds but the Iraqi commander in charge of the unprecedented operation is confident that his forces will soon achieve something that the British military could not – a city free from rogue gunmen."

Ouch.

[freema]

Bump and a ping

[MrEdd]

This is a lot like writing that the out of town team scored 7 runs on the local sports page.

If you leave out the fact that the home team scored 32 runs and the out of towners finally retired all of their pitchers and had the third baseman pitch - people get the wrong idea.

So how many casualties did our muslim foes have?

[USMCPOP]

Good article.

[freema]

‘Twas, wasn’t it.

[r-q-tek86]

ping

[Marine_Uncle]

The ill-informed masses shall stay how should we say... ill-informed.

[mjaneangels@aolcom]

WOW!!! That graph says a lot.

[tlb]

The graph doesn’t look correct. Total KIA in Iraq are a bit over 4000 for the duration, but the red Iraq graph points don’t appear to cumulatively add up much higher then the 500 level.

[MediaMole]

Neither graph is cumulative. They each present the number of US servicemembers killed in action each month.

[tlb]

Neither graph is cumulative yes, but my point was the red line for Iraq casualties seems unreasonably low. IF you did consider the losses cumulatively the red line doesn’t appear it would reach the 500 line, much less 4000.

[CPT Clay]

Great chart!