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Iraq War US and Coalition Casualties |
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| Iraq War Casualties (Sources) |
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These graphs do not show all fatalities, but only those killed in hostile action. This makes it a better indicator of the intensity of conflict than can be found elsewhere.
Hostile fatalities in the fifth year were 678, which is 20% below the highest (851), in year four. There is no discernible continuing downward trend within the fifth year.
Rumsfeld expected five weeks—five months at most. So when things looked good after six weeks, Bush really believed major combat was over. Cheney and his neoconservatives had been actively campaigning for this war since 1997, and Bush had little idea of what he’d gotten into.
Now we know where bin Laden is but can’t go after him, partly because we are tied down in Iraq. Richard Clarke was right, going into Iraq actually side-tracked the war on terrorism.
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Hostile fatalities of coalition partners
Hostile fatalities measure the extent of real commitment. In the first year, our allies suffered 16% of hostile fatalities, leaving the US with only 84%. In the third year, the US was left with 98%, but in the 4th year allied fatalities are up. Iraqi fatalities have increased dramatically but are uncounted.
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US Wounded.
Estimated: 100,000 excess Iraqi deaths since start of war.
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These graphs do not count the many private contractors who have died defending the reconstruction effort in place of regular military personal. Were they included, the deterioration would appear more severe.
Because of their increasingly hazardous assignments, the proportion of civilian deaths from hostile fire has been increasing relative to the number of military deaths from hostile fire. Although the State Department keeps track of them, it refuses to release the figures. The four deaths in Fallujah on April 1, 2004 are an example of the uncounted increase in civilian deaths from hostile fire. These were security contractors for Blackwater, a US company that protected the US governor in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer. Eight Blackwater contractors, all ex-military personnel, repulsed an "attack by hundreds of Iraqi militia members on the US government's headquarters in Najaf" on April 4 according to the Washington Post, calling in their own helicopter for resupply and evacuation.
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http://zfacts.com/p/642.html | 01/18/12 07:20 GMT
Modified: Fri, 10 Sep 2010 18:50:25 GMT
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Amazon
Details the preventable blunders and missed opportunities, from Bush's giving the Pentagon the lead managing postwar Iraq to our inability to work with Iraqi leaders such as Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. Diamond expresses admiration for US Administrator L. Paul Bremer, who sincerely wanted to bring democracy to Iraq, but was wholly unprepared and unrealistic, resulting in "one of the major overseas blunders in U.S. history."
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