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KABUL, Afghanistan, Sept. 17, 2008 – Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates today offered Afghan President Hamid Karzai condolences and his personal regrets for the recent loss of innocent lives as a result of coalition air strikes. "While no military has ever done more to prevent civilian casualties, it is clear that we have to work even harder," the secretary said during a news conference at the American embassy here. The secretary met with Karzai and other defense leaders at the Rose Palace. An air strike in Sindand, a town in Herat province, allegedly killed large numbers of innocent Afghans. U.S....

Forgotten But Not Gone by: Rachel Paulk, June 12, 2008 Afghanistan remains a country of significant U.S. involvement without receiving the critical coverage typical of American action in the Middle East. In actuality, the fledgling nation is transforming into arguably the only successful example of a democratizing country attributable to the Bush administration. Due to the 9/11 backlash, the war with Afghanistan began with relatively strong public support in October of 2001. Kabul fell by November 2001, effectively destroying the Taliban base of operations, though not eliminating the group in its entirety. By January of 2004, Afghanistan’s first constitution was...

The Iraq war American KIA are the lowest since the war began. 19 so far this month. Bear in mind that we still have 3 days left in the month. But the only month that even comes close is February, 2004 when there were 20 American KIA.

Details sketchy but massive tornadoes have it towns in IA this are reports from scanners and spotters..no link yet also north suburbs of Min-ST paul MN has taken tornado hits with lots of damage MN MIN| Washington County (Hugo)| Search & Rescue| | US-61 IAO 159th St|U/D: MSP on Fenway St w/2 kids full code, many other reports of entrapment, 5 city blocks wiped out| ILL113| 17:26 MIN| Washington County (Hugo)| Search & Rescue| | 170th St @ Manning Trail|Multiple houses struck by tornado, searches in progress, FD O/S| ILL113| 17:10 QUOTE MIN| Washington County (Hugo)| Search & Rescue| |...

Four thousand American soldiers have died in Iraq. This is the true story of how one of them came home.

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 mid-2006, the media was obsessed with the fact that the number of U.S. casualties in Iraq had reached 2,500, a number repeatedly referred to as a “grim milestone” and a “tragic benchmark.” By the end of that year, the casualty count had reached 3,000 and the headlines were once again full of catchphrases about the mounting cost in blood and treasure. Now, just about a quarter of the way through 2008, we have suffered our 4,000th casualty in Iraq. As expected, the media seized the opportunity to run headlines expressing shock and anger at the death toll, and some...

WASHINGTON, March 24, 2008 – The U.S. military passed a sad milestone today: the 4,000th U.S. death in operations in Iraq. “Every single loss of a soldier, sailor, airman or Marine is keenly felt by us in the department, by military commanders, by families and friends both in theater and at home,” Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said during an informal news conference today. Whitman stressed that no casualty is more significant than another. “Each soldier, Marine, sailor or airmen is equally precious, and each loss of life is equally tragic,” he said. Whitman called attention to the sacrifices by coalition...

WASHINGTON, March 23, 2008 – Afghan national security forces, assisted by coalition forces, killed more than a dozen insurgents March 21 when the combined force foiled a Taliban ambush in Afghanistan’s Oruzgan province, military officials said. “The combined force was conducting a security patrol north of the Deh Rahwood district to demonstrate the government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan’s commitment to secure remote areas in the province,” said Army Maj. Chris Belcher, coalition forces spokesman. Insurgents in concealed fighting positions attacked the patrol with rocket-propelled grenades and small-arms fire, officials said. Afghan national security forces and coalition forces returned...

I asked Col. Bruce T Smith for a legal opinion on what restrictions or laws Israel is subject to in its self defense and included the opinion in my post Bomb Gaza. Win the War.In sum: Israel is free to employ ALL munitions, tactics, equipment and personnel in her arsenal to defend herself against the outlaw Hamas terrorist organization. Short of the intentional targeting and murder of truly uninvolved and innocent civilians, Israel can (and should) operate as freely as she desires to protect her territorial sovereignty and the lives of her citizens. What could be clearer. Just the other...

In case someone tells you our casualties in Iraq are still high, because 2007 was the worst year, I put together the following two graphs. The first show US losses by month in terms of average lost per day. The second shows a rolling three-month average, smoothing out the variations somewhat. The three-month average is now lower than at any other time since the war began.

WASHINGTON - The U.S. death toll in Iraq increased in January, ending a four-month drop in casualties, and most of the deaths occurred outside Baghdad or the once-restive Al-Anbar province, according to military statistics. In all, 38 American service members had been reported killed in January by Thursday evening, compared with 23 in December. Of those, 33 died from hostile action, but only nine of them in Baghdad or Al-Anbar. A total of 3,942 American service members have been killed in Iraq as of Thursday, according to icasualties.org, an independent Web site that tracks the statistics. U.S. officials in Iraq...

BAGHDAD, Feb. 3, 2008 – Civilians and servicemembers gathered at Al Faw Palace here Feb. 1 to reflect on the cost of war and pay their last respects to fallen warriors during a Multinational Corps Iraq end-of-tour memorial ceremony. The ceremony honored those killed and wounded while the U.S. Army’s 3rd Corps was the maneuver command element from December 2006 to February 2008. Multinational Corps Iraq Commander Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno said the ceremony was a time to reflect on the bravery and selfless service of men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice in Iraq. “These individuals are...

Further survey work undertaken by ORB, in association with its research partner IIACSS, confirms our earlier estimate that over 1,000,000 Iraqi citizens have died as a result of the conflict which started in 2003. Following responses to ORB’s earlier work, which was based on survey work undertaken in primarily urban locations, we have conducted almost 600 additional interviews in rural communities. By and large the results are in line with the ‘urban results’ and we now estimate that the death toll between March 2003 and August 2007 is likely to have been of the order of 1,033,000. If one takes...

U.S. losses and breakdown are from the ICCC. Enemy losses are provided by MNF-I, as in the format provided to the USA Today. The only mistake most of the blogs and the media are making is to include non-hostile deaths in their totals. I don’t.

WASHINGTON, Dec. 31 (UPI) -- U.S. military deaths in Iraq declined for the seventh consecutive month in December, USA Today reported Monday. While 2007 has been the deadliest since the invasion in March 2003 with nearly 900 U.S. troops killed, the pace has slowed month by month since a peak in May, Pentagon statistics showed. As of Sunday, 14 U.S. troops were killed in combat this month and six died in non-combat-related incidents, the report said. U.S. Army Col. Steven Boylan, a spokesman for the U.S.-led forces in Iraq, said attacks and deaths were down 60 percent overall in the...

- Civilian deaths Iraq caused by war-related violence have dropped for a third straight month, according to November data compiled by Iraq's Interior Ministry. Last month, 538 Iraqi civilians were killed in the violence across the country, including 131 bodies recovered by Iraqi security forces in Baghdad, according to the ministry's figures. It is the lowest monthly civilian death toll since sectarian tensions heightened across Iraq, after the February 2006 bombing of the Askariya mosque in Samarra. The figure compares with 758 Iraqi civilians killed in October and 844 in September, according to the ministry. Prior to the last three...

The American military said Sunday that the weekly number of attacks in Iraq had fallen to the lowest level since just before the February 2006 bombing of the Shiite shrine in Samarra, an event commonly used as a benchmark for the country’s worst spasm of bloodletting after the American invasion nearly five years ago. Data released at a news conference in Baghdad showed that attacks had declined to the lowest level since January 2006. It is the third week in a row that attacks have been at this reduced level. The statistics on attack trends have long been a standard...

It would appear some at the major news networks are trying to play both sides of the fence, yet again. They want to appear to be "supporting the troops", yet their anti-war agenda keeps oozing through. I say this because I've always found the whole American-servicemember-bodycount thing repulsive. I find it repulsive because we hear about our casualties, that of the Iraqi citizens in the middle, but we never hear of the number of enemy dead. Why is that? Could it be that giving that number in contrast to our casualties may give an entirely different impression of how the...

Six American soldiers were killed in three separate attacks in Iraq on Monday, the military said Tuesday, taking the number of deaths this year to 852. The toll makes 2007 the deadliest year of the war for United States troops. Faces of the Dead Military officials announced the discovery of a mass grave holding 22 bodies in a rural area north of Falluja. They also said that nine Iranians being held in Iraq would soon be released, including two of the five who were detained during a January raid of a consulate office in Erbil. Five of the American soldiers...

IT is whispered about at the margins of meetings, and discussed in Washington parties where rumour is passed around with the wine and canapes. It even appears, fleetingly, to be fact. "The day nobody died from violence in Iraq"

WASHINGTON, Oct. 24, 2007 – The U.S. troop surge in Iraq continues to have positive effects, as violence and casualties are decreasing in many areas of the country, the Joint Staff’s director for operational planning said today. Army Maj. Gen. Richard Sherlock, Joint Staff director for operational planning, conducts a news conference at the Pentagon, Oct. 24, 2007. Photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Molly A. Burgess, USN   (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. In and around Baghdad, terrorist operations are down by 59 percent; operations targeting Iraqi forces are down more than 60 percent; car bombs are...

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Violence in Iraq has dropped by 70 percent since the end of June, when U.S. forces completed their build-up of 30,000 extra troops to stabilize the war-torn country, the Interior Ministry said on Monday.

-- snip --Nevertheless, it's looking more and more as though those in and outside of Congress who last month were assailing Gen. Petraeus's credibility and insisting that there was no letup in Iraq's bloodshed were -- to put it simply -- wrong.

BAGHDAD - This year's U.S. troop buildup has succeeded in bringing violence in Baghdad down from peak levels, but the death toll from sectarian attacks around the country is running nearly double the pace from a year ago. -snip- Iraq is suffering about double the number of war-related deaths throughout the country compared with last year - an average daily toll of 33 in 2006, and 62 so far this year. -snip- So far this year, about 14,800 people have died in war-related attacks and sectarian murders. AP reporting accounted for 13,811 deaths in 2006.

KABUL, Afghanistan, July 18, 2007 – Reports of civilian casualties in Afghanistan often are exaggerated, and this can be due to the fog of war or because of deliberate deception to incite Afghans against NATO, the commander of NATO forces in the country said today. The coalition has caused civilian casualties, U.S. Army Gen. Dan K. McNeill, commander of NATO’s International Security Assistance Force here, said during an interview today. But, he added, the scale of casualties has been blown out of proportion, and the Taliban, al Qaeda and other groups are exploiting the issue by issuing false claims. “There...

In the popular mind, the American Revolution was mostly about liberty and the pursuit of happiness -- and the war that followed the Declaration of Independence wasn't much of a war. We imagine toy soldiers in red coats chasing picturesque rebels. Actually, the War of Independence was horrific, according to John Ferling, a leading historian of early America. It was a grinding conflict that rivaled, and in some ways exceeded, the Civil War in its toll on American fighters when looked at on a per-capita basis. Ferling chronicles the suffering in his new book, "Almost a Miracle: The American Victory...

There are two kinds of war, when you get right down to it, and the USA has had a little of both. First is the idealistic kind, evinced in that of the American Revolution and WWII, which were both fights to free a continent from despotism. Even Korea and Vietnam can be fitted into the idealistic category because the main goal with each was to stop the evils of communism from spreading further. Then there is the pessimistic kind, like ours with Mexico in the 1840s and most of our various Indian wars from Andrew Jackson's Seminole excursions in Georgia...

May's spike in the American death toll in Iraq is the result of the administration's new approach in Iraq – as much as it is the enemy's own "surge" of attacks against US forces. In strategic terms, it's called taking it to the enemy. But analysts warn that if the number of US casualties continues at their current high level through the summer, that could raise questions about whether the strategy is actually working. May has already been difficult – the third-deadliest month since the Iraq war began. In a candid briefing Thursday, Army Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, commander of...

GREENSBURG, Kan. — Rescue teams searching the rubble that was once Greensburg found two more victims and a survivor, raising the death toll from a powerful tornado that largely obliterated the small town to at least 10, authorities said Monday. The massive tornado, an enhanced F-5 with wind estimated at 205 mph, was part of a weekend of violent storms that tore across the Plains and were also blamed for two other deaths in Kansas. [Snip] One of the latest victims was found under debris in the middle of town, city administrator Steve Hewitt said. The other body was pulled...

A few weeks ago in a column, I threw out a hypothetical. In war, the traditional way of gauging who is winning or not is, unfortunately, a count of battlefield casualties. It seems logical, the last man standing wins. But as I’ve always had problems with the media and their portrayal of things in the Middle East, I asked one simple question: how many of the enemy have we killed? We have everyone from activists to actors to congressmen and women to pundits all telling us how many of our servicemen and women have died in Iraq and Afghanistan. People...

Freepers, I was just cc'ed on a very disturbing e-mail, one that I can't quite make sense of. The e-mail is from the father of a son (the father works for my company) who has, in the last 24 hours, been seriously wounded in combat. The e-mail does not say where the combat occurred. I won't go into the nature of the wounds, but they are heartbreaking. The e-mail also reported that, in the engagement, "..out of the remaining 19 in the platoon, 7 men died alongside my son that day. 10 men were injured next to my son. ...[my...

http://www.nysun.com/article/48926

United States War Casualties                 War  Killed From To Days KIA/Day American Revolution 25,324 04/19/1775 09/03/1783 3059 8.3 War of 1812 2,260 06/18/1812 02/18/1815 975 2.3 Mexican War 13,283 05/13/1846 02/02/1848 630 21.1 Civil War 863,153 04/12/1861 04/09/1865 1458 592.0             Union 498,332     1458 341.8 Confederacy 364,821     1458 250.2 Spanish-American War 2,446 04/25/1898 08/12/1898 109 22.4 World War I 116,516 4/6/1917 11/11/1918 584 199.5 World War II 405,399 12/7/1941 9/2/1945 1365 297.0 Korean War 54,246 6/25/1950 7/27/1953 1128 48.1 Vietnam War 56,244 8/7/1964...

Thought for the day... If you consider that there has been an average of 160,000 troops in the Iraq theatre of operations during the last 22 months, and a total of 2,112 deaths, that gives a firearm death rate of 60 per 100,000 soldiers. The firearm death rate in Washington D.C. is 80.6 per 100,000 for the same period. That means that you are about 25% more likely to be shot and killed in the U.S. Capitol, which has some of the strictest gun control laws in the nation, than you are in Iraq. Conclusion: The U.S. should pull out...

A New Zealand academic who has challenged a widely quoted estimate of the death toll in Iraq has been invited to go to Washington and advise the United States military on ways of predicting attacks. Dr Sean Gourley, 27, a research fellow at Britain's Oxford University, created a stir in scientific circles when he and a colleague dismissed a claim by other researchers that the American-led invasion of Iraq had led to the deaths of nearly 655,000 Iraqis. Dr Gourley and his colleague Professor Neil Johnson believe the figure is much lower – at about 218,000 Iraqi deaths. The New...

January 3, 2007: Nearly 14,000 Iraqis were killed by criminal or political violence in 2006. The violence is not quite a war, but it is very violent, especially when you consider that nearly all of it is taking place in only a third of the country. While the Iraqi dead amount to about twelve times the murder rate in the United States, it's about two thirds the death rate in the United States during a year (1944) in World War II. The fighting is more and more Iraqis versus Iraqis, with some 95 percent of the dead in 2005 being...

January 2, 2007: Casualties in Iraq were down this year, about four percent less than the 6,793 dead and wounded in 2005. That's not the impression you get from the mass media, but that's because bad news leads, and good news gets buried. But Iraq is most definitely still a combat zone. Some U.S. troops sent there in 2006 became casualties, and about one in 200 was killed. Very much a dangerous undertaking. And those are just the physical, combat casualties. Even more troops got sick from disease, or were injured in non-combat accidents. Also, about one in 500 troops...

Christopher Torchia of the Associated Press wrote a seemingly innocuous and factual account of the continuing warfare occurring in Iraq; 26 December 2006. However, the article title, U.S. Deaths in Iraq Exceed 9-11 Count, provides a classic example of subtle advocacy that has made it off the editorial page, and into the news sections of our daily papers. Newspaper article titles require verve in order to make the reader with a time constraint choose a particular article off a given page of the paper. Thus, I fully expect any good headline writer to jazz it up a bit and make...

Two more soldiers with the 1st Armored Division based in Giessen, Germany, were identified Saturday as having died Dec. 6 of injuries suffered during operations in Ramadi, Iraq. Capt. Travis L. Patriquin, 32, of Texas, and Spc. Vincent J. Pomante III, 22, of Westerville, Ohio, died of injuries from a bomb that went off near their vehicle during combat operations, according to the Department of Defense. They were with the 2nd Battalion, 3rd Field Artillery Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division.

US casualties cut by half as Baghdad tears itself apart By Aqeel Hussein and Gethin Chamberlain (Filed: 17/09/2006) The sectarian violence that has brought Iraq to the verge of civil war has had one unexpected benefit: a marked fall in the number of United States military casualties in Baghdad. American combat deaths in the capital are down 50 per cent on this time last year and some terrorists say the US has succeeded in deflecting attention from its own troops. American deaths are down 50pc "Now we are fighting each other," said one insurgent. "That is what the Americans wanted...

Has Israel used unnecessary force to cripple or destroy Hezbollah? About 1,000 Lebanese have been killed. Many have been civilians placed in harm's way by Hezbollah guerrillas. More than 3,000 have been injured, and tens of thousands have been displaced. Hezbollah has fired approximately 3,650 rockets at Israeli civilians, killing 51 and injuring 430. At present, it remains a viable fighting force, and civilian casualties on both sides are not diminishing. Israel's critics insist it is employing more military might than necessary to achieve legitimate war objectives. They point to the obligation under international law of a nation at war...

Lebanon says up to 600 killed in Israel's attacks Lebanese Health Minister Mohammad Khalifeh says hospitals have received 401 bodies of people killed since fighting began; 'on top of those victims, there are 150 to 200 bodies still under the rubble,' he adds Israeli warplanes and artillery hammered Lebanon again on Thursday and the Beirut government said up to 600 people may have been killed in Israel's 16-day-old campaign against Hizbullah terrorists. Israel's inner cabinet chose to pursue a strategy of air strikes and limited ground incursions, rather than a full-scale invasion of Lebanon, to halt Hizbullah rocket fire on...

Fuzzy Moral Math Editor's Note: The fiction of 100,000 Iraqi civilian casualties has survived to this day in part because of the tantalizing propaganda value of such a large number. How many lightly informed people have tossed this number at you in debate without even realizing that the Lancet study doesn’t measure casualties at all? Now the number of 100,000 Iraqi civilians has new relevance, as the Iraqi Survival Count has surpassed the Lancet tally of "excess deaths." While I am not hopeful that the Iraqi Survival Count will enjoy the same exposure in the media as the Lancet death...

The stories behind the faces By TOVAH LAZAROFF, HILARY LEILA KRIEGER AND JPOST.COM STAFF Yaniv Bar-On As a child, Yaniv Bar-On could recite by heart information on all of Israel's wars. On Wednesday he became a casualty of one. Yaniv's father Asher immigrated from South Africa and his mother came from Canada. The couple then met, fell in love, married and raised their three children. Yaniv came from a family of devoted Zionists, and would not even hear of skipping the army and leaving the country to live a different life abroad, according to his neighbor, Yaakov Schlissel. Yaniv, 20,...

BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan, July 2, 2006 – News reports published June 30 that claimed coalition forces fired rockets in Afghanistan's Kunar province, allegedly killing a school headmaster and injuring two others, are false, military officials here said today. A Combined Forces Command Afghanistan statement said the three people noted in news articles are, in fact, Taliban extremists responsible for conducting attacks against Afghan and coalition forces. According to the statement, three extremists attacked a coalition patrol on a road in the province's Pech district June 29, and the soldiers responded with small-arms and mortar fire, all positively observed by...

BAGHDAD, June 29 (KUNA) -- The US-led multinational forces in Iraq have observed a remarkable decline in its losses and that 74 percent of terrorist attacks have its focus on innocent civilians, said on Thursday the spokesman of the forces, Maj.Gen. Willian B. Caldwell IV. Addressing a news conference, Caldwell said at least 60 to 70 foreign terrorists are killed in Iraq every month. He noted that 57 foreign fighters were killed at the hands of American and Iraqi forces since early June. At least 587 terrorist suspects have been detained in the week ending June 28, the spokesman said,...

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. military has cut the number of Iraqi civilians killed at U.S. checkpoints or shot by U.S. convoys to about one a week today from about seven a week in July, according to U.S. defense officials in Iraq. The reduction in civilian casualties shows that months before the killing of 24 Iraqis in the western Iraqi town of Haditha came to light, the military was pushing to reduce the number of Iraqi civilians killed or wounded at the hands of U.S. forces. The drop since July, however, suggests that hundreds of Iraqi civilians were killed at U.S....

CHAPEL HILL - A man charged with trying to kill students at the University of North Carolina by driving through a popular campus gathering spot says in a series of letters he does not deserve punishment. He also talks about his youth in Charlotte, referring at one point to a school fight he said he started at Myers Park Traditional Elementary School. And he refers to Mohammed Atta, ringleader of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States, aqs "one of my role models." Mohammed Taheri-azar is accused of driving a Jeep Cherokee into a crowd of students gathered at...

just wondering if any one has a link to what his casualty projections were in his plan for Iraq. Any one know? Seems that it might be a way to challenge his version of things.