Iraq Casualties Passes 7000 Mark
By Scott Malensek
Last week yet another news story seemed to be lost in the shuffle as it came out of Iraq. It was eclipsed by the debate over plans for the future of operations in Iraq. It was left in the dust as false enemy propaganda stories of American soldiers burning Iraqi civilians alive successfully interdicted wire service reporting and made it to the mainstream media before being completely discredited by the blogosphere.
This lost news story is a simple one. The day after President Bush claimed that Al Queda is in Iraq and fomenting violence, 2007 Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi dismissed the claim, and pretended that there are no Al Queda in Iraq. She called the claim, “sad.” However, the next day Multinational Forces held another of their completely ignored weekly briefings. At this briefing, the MNF announced that despite Al Queda’s claims to have lost 4000+ Jihadi fighters in Iraq, the reality is that over 7000 have been killed/captured since October 2004.
7000 Al Queda have been killed or captured in Iraq in 26 months.
This 7000 does not include the number of suicide bombers in Iraq who are almost 100% foreign fighters (typically Al Queda and/or their affiliates). Data on the number of suicide bombings has become sketchy and is no longer being publicly tracked because there are so many. At last count there has been an average of 80 suicide bombings and/or attempts every month, and that number has been on the rise since mid 2003. According to the latest Brookings Institute Iraq Index Report, at least another 2500 Jihadis have killed themselves in Iraq-most Al Queda or Al Queda affiliates since October 2004.
9500 Al Queda have gone to Iraq to be killed, captured, or to kill themselves in the last 26 months.
Opponents of the war will quickly toss out one of three talking points upon hearing these facts:
1) The False claim that Al Queda wasn’t in Iraq until the invasion in 2003
2) A misleading statement that Al Queda is only a small number of insurgents and thus only does a small portion of the killing associated with the insurgency
3) Or, they would point to misleading body counts that have proclaimed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed in Iraq either by US forces or as a result of the invasion.
The claim that Al Queda wasn’t in Iraq before the invasion is a misleading claim. Al Queda is a conglomerate or Coalition of the Killing made up of different terrorist groups which are organized to work together by Al Queda leadership. Many of these Al Queda affiliated groups were in Iraq before the invasion (as were some of the most notorious terrorist leaders in modern history). After the invasion they formed their own smaller network called Al Queda in the Land of the Two Rivers (Iraq). This was done to act more independently from the Al Queda leadership that had-by the time of the invasion-largely cut off from directly commanding and coordinating attacks in favor of facilitating coordinated campaigns and letting local leaders run those campaigns-leaders such as Abu Musab Al Zarqawi and his dozen+ successors.
In November 2002 widely publicized reports claimed that remnants of Al Queda in Afghanistan had been scattered to the winds, and hundreds-even thousands of Al Queda had fled through Iran into Iraq. Invading US Marines and 3rd Infantry Division troops encountered foreign fighters by the thousands. Many were fought and killed at terrorist training camps in Iraq preparing for attacks around Europe and even the United States (as documented by the Iraqi Perspectives Project Report).
Personal accounts of the battles fought during the invasion have been written en masse and entire bookshelves can be filled with war stories from corporals, sergeants, young officers, embedded reporters, retired generals who accompanied the invasion, and more. All report having personally encountered, fought, and killed foreign terrorists by the thousands in Saddam’s Iraq (March 2003).
Thunder Run, by David Zucchino
(describes 5000-6000 Syrian mercenaries, foreign fighters, jihadis, and Islamofascists)
American Soldier, by Gen Tommy Franks
(describes thousands to tens of thousands of foreign fighter terrorists from all over the ME)
The March Up, by Maj Gen Ray L Smith
(describes "thousands" of foreign fighters/terrorists roughly in the neighborhood of 2000-4000 in the various training camps captured by the US Marines-some still occupied by US Marines)
War Stories, by Oliver North
(describes "thousands" of foreign fighters/terrorists roughly in the neighborhood of 2000-4000 in the various training camps captured by the US Marines-some still occupied by US Marines)
Generation Kill, by Evan Wright
(describes "thousands" of foreign fighters/terrorists)
Under Fire, by various Reuters reporters
(describes "thousands" of foreign fighters/terrorists)
Embedded, by various reporters
(describes "thousands" of foreign fighters/terrorists)
Body counts are a new thing to come out from the Multinational Forces public affairs officers, but similar statistics are nothing new to opponents of the war. They’ve been claiming that 100,000 Iraqis or more were killed in the first year of the invasion since that year (2003). Lately these reports of 650,000 have been killed since the invasion. In both cases the numbers were estimates based on polling of 1000 of the 28million Iraqis.
Specific body counts have been dramatically lower and diligently tracked by Iraq Body Count. Those statistics of bodies actually reported are about 8% of the estimated claims-roughly 50,000 at this moment. Of the 50,000 reported deaths since the invasion, 10-15,000 appear to be the result of the US invasion (a far cry from the 650,000 guesstimate), and the rest are attributed to people being killed by insurgents, by sectarian violence, and a number of criminal murders found in every country. Further, it is unclear how many of the 15,000 killed as a result of US or Coalition fire are Al Queda, but it IS clear that most of those reportedly killed as a result of US or Coalition fire are young men fitting the profile of Jihadi terrorists and/or insurgents.
When the dust on the Iraq War settles, and it will someday, a true account of the war’s effect on Al Queda will be made as well as its effect on the Iraqi people. Until then, many opponents of the war will likely continue to distort the claims of its cost while ignoring the cost/effect on the enemy. Someday, even Speaker Pelosi will recognize that Al Queda was in Iraq, is in Iraq, and is dying in Iraq. Al Queda’s leaders have labeled it The Central Front in the War, and they have lost well over 10,000 Jihadi fighters in that fight so far.
Perhaps if Speaker-to-be Pelosi were to share the daily intelligence briefings with President Bush (she is 3rd in the line of succession) she might be informed that there is in fact a war in Iraq, and Al Queda is more than an inconsequential portion of that war. Right now, she can’t even admit that the enemy is there. Only after she and other leaders of the Democratic Party recognize that the enemy is actually on the battlefield can the enemy be faced by the insurmountable power of a unified American people.
Asked by a reporter about how “President Bush today blamed the surge of violence in Iraq on al Qaeda,” incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi responded with a disjointed answer about how “the 9/11 Commission dismissed that notion a long time ago and I feel sad that the President is resorting to it again." Though al-Qaeda is clearly in Iraq and responsible for deadly bombings, and the 9/11 Commission conclusion was about links before September 11th, on Tuesday's NBC Nightly News reporter David Gregory treated Pelosi's off-base retort as credible and relevant. Without suggesting any miscue by her, Gregory segued to Pelosi's soundbite with a bewildering set up of his own about how “incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi disagreed, warning that such rhetoric about al Qaeda will make it harder for Democrats to work with the White House."
“She clearly screwed up here. The question was absolutely clear. 'President Bush today blamed the surge in violence in Iraq.' This is not -- the question is what about al Qaeda back before 9/11 or before we invaded or was there a link. The question was clear. She gave an answer that was about something else. She doesn't seem to think that al Qaeda is active there in Iraq, which it is. According to her answer. Now, if some Republican had done this, if Bush had done this at a press conference, if Newt Gingrich had said it, if John Boehner had said it, if Roy Blunt had said it, you'd have been all over it. It would be inexcusable.”