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That's marginally interesting, but it's not like we can leave anytime soon.
I would like to know what the tangible goals for Iraqi self-sufficiency are though, or if the occupation is going to be more or less permanent.
MORE: Ascribe.orgCLINTON, N.Y., Oct. 24 (AScribe Newswire) -- "The nearly 2,000 Americans killed in combat (1,998 on October 24, 2005) in Iraq since 2003 are more than were lost in Vietnam combat in the first four years of U.S. combat (1961-1965, when just over 1800 died). This total is more than were lost in the last two years of combat (1971-1972, when just over 1600 died)," recounts Maurice Isserman, co-author of "America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s."
"Today public opinion polls show that the percentage of Americans who believe that it was a mistake for the U.S. to go to war in Iraq is roughly comparable to the number of Americans who believed it was a mistake for the U.S. to go to war in Vietnam in the aftermath of the Tet Offensive in 1968. The principal difference between the anti-war opposition of 2005, and that of 1968, is that in the Vietnam war a significant group of Democratic Party leaders - starting with Senators Morse and Gruening in 1964 and eventually including such figures as Senators Fulbright, McCarthy, Kennedy (Robert and Ted), and McGovern - joined the opposition to the war. This lent legitimacy and influence to the opposition. Today, the Democratic party, with a few brave exceptions, mostly in the House of Representatives, is supportive of or silent about the war," observes Isserman.
58,249 troops are known to have died in Vietnam, but we have lost more troops in 2.5 years in Iraq than in the first four years of Nam.
That's marginally interesting, but it's not like we can leave anytime soon.
I would like to know what the tangible goals for Iraqi self-sufficiency are though, or if the occupation is going to be more or less permanent.
dan and his selective statistics... too funny.
Difference is, major combat ops are over and, oh yeah, the US actually knocked out their target.
1965? How about '73?
"The nearly 2,000 Americans killed in combat (1,998 on October 24, 2005) in Iraq since 2003 are more than were lost in Vietnam combat in the first four years of U.S. combat (1961-1965, when just over 1800 died).),"
The first combat troops did not arrive until March 8, 1965. Between '61 and '64 the U.S. only had a few thousand military advisors in Viet Nam. Sounds like you've found another deceitful source to quote.
I don't know how many Americans died between '61 and March 65, but even if it was anywhere near 1800, than you are basically comparing wartime casualties to pre-wartime casualties, which makes the Iraq situation seem fairly tame.
Not to make light of any who have died, but you know that 500 of the 2000 were not killed in combat, right?
The 500 were killed how? accidents? friendly fire?
Anybody counting the enemy dead?
No?
Why not? It's the only fact that's even remotely relevant to even bringing up the number of American dead.
"Anybody counting the enemy dead?"
Enemy body counts are back. They were meaningless in Viet Nam as a measure of "progress" in "winning" that war, who expects them to be useful now?
dubya's SOB's are desparate to show ANYTHING positive coming out of Iraq, so body counts are back.
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washingtonpost.com
Enemy Body Counts Revived
U.S. Is Citing Tolls to Show Success in Iraq
By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 24, 2005; A01
Eager to demonstrate success in Iraq, the U.S. military has abandoned its previous refusal to publicize enemy body counts and now cites such numbers periodically to show the impact of some counterinsurgency operations.
The revival of body counts, a practice discredited during the Vietnam War, has apparently come without formal guidance from the Pentagon's leadership. Military spokesmen in Washington and Baghdad said they knew of no written directive detailing the cir stances under which such figures should be released or the steps that should be taken to ensure accuracy.
Instead, they described an ad hoc process that has emerged over the past year, with authority to issue death tolls pushed out to the field and down to the level of division staffs.
So far, the releases have tended to be associated either with major attacks that netted significant numbers of enemy fighters or with lengthy operations that have spanned days or weeks. On Saturday, for instance, the U.S. military reported 20 insurgents killed and one captured in raids on five houses suspected of sheltering foreign fighters in a town near the Syrian border. Six days earlier, the 2nd Marine Division issued a statement saying an estimated 70 suspected insurgents had died in the Ramadi area as a result of three separate airstrikes by fighter jets and helicopters.
That Oct. 16 statement reflected some of the pitfalls associated with releasing such statistics. The number was immediately challenged by witnesses, who said many of those killed were not insurgents but civilians, including women and children.
Privately, several uniformed military and civilian defense officials expressed concern that the pendulum may have swung too far, with body counts now creeping into too many news releases from Iraq and Afghanistan. They also questioned the effectiveness of citing such figures in conflicts where the enemy has shown itself capable of rapidly replacing dead fighters and where commanders acknowledge great uncertainty about the total size of the enemy force.
Nevertheless, no formal review of the practice has been ordered, according to spokesmen at the Pentagon and in Baghdad. Several senior officers and Pentagon officials involved in shaping communications strategies argued that the occasional release of body counts has important value, particularly when used to convey the scale of individual operations.
"Specific numbers are used to periodically provide context and help frame particular engagements," said Brig. Gen. Donald Alston, director of communications for the U.S. military command in Baghdad. He added, however, that there is no plan "to issue such numbers on a regular basis to score progress."
During the Vietnam War, enemy body counts became a regular feature in military statements intended to demonstrate progress. But the statistics ended up proving poor indicators of the war's course. Pressure on U.S. units to produce high death tolls led to inflated tallies, which tore at Pentagon credibility.
"In Vietnam, we were pursuing a strategy of attrition, so body counts became the measure of performance for military units," said Conrad C. Crane, director of the military history ins ute at the U.S. Army War College. "But the numbers got so wrapped up with career aspirations that they were sometimes falsified."
The Vietnam experience led U.S. commanders to shun issuing enemy death tallies in later conflicts, through the initial stages of the Iraq war. "We don't do body counts on other people," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said in November 2003, when asked on "Fox News Sunday" whether the number of enemy dead exceeded the U.S. toll.
That policy appeared to shift with the assault on the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah in November, an operation considered crucial at the time to denying safe havens to enemy fighters. U.S. military officials reported 1,200 to 1,600 enemy fighters killed, although reporters on the scene noted far fewer corpses were found by Marines after the fighting.
A surge in enemy activity this year has generated a corresponding increase in offensives by U.S. and Iraqi forces -- and a rise in the number of U.S. military statements containing numbers of enemy killed.
High-ranking commanders also have contributed to the trend. In January, Army Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. officer in Iraq, said U.S. and Iraqi forces had killed or captured 15,000 people last year. In May, Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, mentioned the killing of 250 of insurgent leader Abu Musab Zarqawi's "closest lieutenants" as evidence of progress in Iraq.
The Pentagon says its policy is still to try to avoid publicizing enemy body counts. But the U.S. military command in Baghdad does keep a running tally of enemy dead that is classified, and field commanders now have authority to release death tolls for isolated engagements in the interest, officials said, of countering enemy propaganda and conveying the size and presumed effectiveness of some U.S. military operations.
"For a discrete operation, it's a metric that can help convey magnitude and context," said Bryan Whitman, a senior Pentagon spokesman.
The release of such figures also can serve to boost the morale of U.S. forces and bolster confidence "that their plans and weapons work effectively," said Marine Lt. Col. David Lapan, spokesman for the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force, which operates in western Iraq.
Lapan said in an e-mail message that no "threshold" exists for deciding when to release an enemy death toll, adding that such decisions are made "on a case-by-case basis."
He indicated that the numbers are frequently derived from advance estimates of how many enemy fighters are at a targeted site, which explains why the death counts can sometimes get released so soon after an attack. Lapan said improvements in surveillance and targeting techniques allow for "greater certainty about the numbers of casualties we inflict in some situations."
In the case of the disputed Oct. 16 tally in Ramadi, Lapan stood by the figure of 70 enemy dead, saying the Marines "had information from a variety of sources that gave us confidence in the number of enemy fighters killed in the engagements."
Still, defense specialists such as Crane cautioned that enemy body counts in Iraq and Afghanistan are prone to inaccuracy and are of questionable significance. The murky nature of the conflicts, they said, make it difficult to know at times who is an insurgent, a criminal or an innocent civilian.
"There still are problems in identifying who is who, just as there were in Vietnam," Crane said.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
================================
Transcript
Enemy Body Counts Used
U.S. Once Again Publicly Acknowledges Numbers
Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 24, 2005; 1:00 PM
Washington Post staff writer Bradley Graham was online Monday, Oct. 24, at 1 p.m. ET to discuss his story on the U.S.'s use of body counts, a practice abandoned after the Vietnam War but now unofficially reinstated to demonstrate success against the insurgency in Iraq.
Enemy Body Counts Revived. ( By Bradley Graham, Oct. 24, 2005
The transcript follows.
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Washington, D.C.: Bradley,
Given how much the Pentagon strove to avoid Iraq/Vietnam comparisons, why would they reinstate enemy body counts as part of the daily news cycle? If anything, those counts were part of what ended up souring so much of the public on Vietnam, as they seemed to become a symbol of the administration's detachment from reality.
Bradley Graham: There's no plan that I found to make the enemy body counts part of any daily cycle. The trend lately has been to release such figures only occasionally, when the estimated numbers of enemy killed are particularly significant. As for why they are releasing any at all, they say it has to do mostly with an attempt to counter enemy propaganda and also convey to the public the scale and significance of certain operations.
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Alexandria, Va.: Has the death of the 18 children been confirmed in the death of 70 "insurgencies" last week. That brings up the question of how are targets confirmed to be insurgence before an attack is made.
Bradley Graham: I'm not aware of any military confirmation of the 18 number. And the Marines are standing by their initial estimate of 70 insurgents. They're saying they had multiple confirmations of that figure, but they haven't specified who or what those confirming sources were.
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Toronto, Canada: One of the most shocking aspects of the U.S. occupation of Iraq has been the American unwillingness to acknowledge the number of civilians killed by U.S. forces. But, at least, they weren't putting forward "body counts" of suspected enemies killed, as they did in Vietnam.
Now that the policy has changed to report the number of suspected enemies killed, will DoD spokesmen to report the number of innocent civilians killed?
Bradley Graham: I'm not aware of any plan to start reporting on the number of innocent civilians killed. One of the questionable gaps in the U.S. military's approach to targeting, as I've pointed out to senior officials many times, is the lack of effort that goes into determining just how many civilians were killed in an air strike. This contrasts with the meticulous pre-strike planning that the military says is done to reduce the likelihood of civilian casualties.
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Alexandria, Va.: How can they count bodies of enemies when the enemies don't wear a uniform or identifying clothes? Since many civilians are apparently killed in the course of killing these enemies, won't they get counted too? I don't think it'll show how successful we are to be counting dead civilians. How will they differentiate?
Bradley Graham: Military officials say they have ways of differentiating. But in the field, soldiers talk about the difficulty of knowing who all the bad guys are and distinguishing them from the rest. This is the point that Conrad Crane, the military historian, makes in the story.
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Falls Church, Va.: Any fear of 'My Lai II' in an effort to 'pad the numbers'????
Bradley Graham: Sure, some worry about such falsification creeping into the process again. And it's not clear to me what steps are being taken to guard against that.
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Pacifica, Calif.: So the failed policy from Vietnam of reporting on the number of enemy killed has returned.
I haven't seen corresponding reporting by the Pentagon of the number of civilians, mostly women and children, killed during military engagements. I suppose the U.S. "precision" strikes rarely involve civilians.
Please explain how the Pentagon counts the number of insurgents killed from a jet traveling near supersonic speed at an al ude of 25 to 30,000 feet. At times, these numbers seem to come out of thin air, literally.
When reports on the ground clearly contradict the claims that civilians are not killed in these attacks it throws into question all that we are told. How can a mere observer of events (i.e. your readers) make heads or tails of what is really going on?
Bradley Graham: For air strikes by high-flying, fast-moving jets, the casualty counts appear to be derived from advance estimates of how many bad guys were suspected of being at or in the targeted site just before it was struck. Military officials say a lot of work goes into determining this number, using various surveillance and reconnaissance methods. The estimate, they say, weighs heavily in the decision to hit the target in the first place. As for sorting out differing accounts after a particular incident, there's often nothing a reader can do at first except to keep an open mind and wait for further reporting to determine the truth.
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San Francisco, Calif.: The attack on Fallujah in April, 2004 by the Marines was apparently cut short by the Pentagon when reports of mass civilian casualties (600 or more) were released by reporters on the ground there. The soccer stadium was actually turned into a burial ground.
I believe the release of enemy body counts became more common in this general time frame. Do you think reports from events like Fallujah helped lead the Pentagon and military leaders in Iraq to counter the "on the ground" reporting of "collateral damage" with their own numbers?
Bradley Graham: My impression is that at least part of the impetus for the revival of enemy body counts has come from the military's desire to counter reports of collateral damage, which are indeed played up by Zarqawi's network and others.
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Vienna, Va.: I was a bit surprised and disturbed by the prominence of your article about enemy body counts in Iraq on the Post's front page.
I follow war news as closely as anybody and have not gotten the impression at all that the military or administration is trying to make their case through tallies of enemy dead a la McNamara and Vietnam. In fact, it's been the opposite -- they repeatedly emphasize that Iraq will not - and cannot - be won by conventional military means.
The examples cited in the article are from official counts of engagements where it would have made little sense to NOT give the estimated enemy casualties (along with the American and Iraqi dead and wounded). And if the military hadn't announced the enemy dead, wouldn't journalists like yourself pressed them for an estimate?
Aside from what's in the article itself (and this is directed at The Post's editors, not you) the placement and headline suggests what many in the military suspect about the elite media --- that as a cultural and political matter their instinct is to turn Iraq into the Vietnam narrative, regardless of what's actually happening on the ground.
Bradley Graham: The purpose of the article wasn't to argue that the selective release of body counts is a good or bad thing. Simply that it had started up again. It may be, as you suggest, a sensible thing to try to do. But the fact is, it wasn't being done for years. And there are risks associated with doing so, which the story points out.
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Washington, D.C.: Thanks for your columns and chat. Do you know why we don't have independent reporting on the Iraq war as we used to have for Vietnam?
Bradley Graham: I think we have a lot of excellent independent reporting, with a number of journalists putting their own lives at risk to deliver it.
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Philadelphia, Pa.: On the question of whether civilians would be counted towards the death count, will there be a distinction between civilian terrorists killed and professional combatants killed, and how will they make such a determination as to how fits into a category that is counted?
Bradley Graham: So far, no such distinction is being made in the numbers being released. And I doubt there'll be an attempt to differentiate between hardcore insurgents and others drawn into the fight.
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Winthrop, Mass.: Are you sure that the military is not putting the effort into real civilian body and damage counts? That would be a serious betrayal of future military efforts to not gather this vital data. It's made even worst by the uniqueness of the current military effort combined with its likelihood of being repeated else where time and time again. Does the military give a reason for not gathering the data? Perhaps they are simply suppressing the information.
Bradley Graham: The military does do extensive bomb-damage assessments, looking at how close a munition came to hitting where it was supposed to hit. But it doesn't try to determine exactly how many innocent victims actually died in an attack. The reason I've been given is that this would be too time consuming and require too many resources to do so. But I agree that gathering such information would seem essential to ensuring that targeting methods improve and that even more is done in the future to avoid civilian casualties.
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Raleigh, N.C.: Since the military seems to have so much information about the Iraqis and other "insurgents" before they call in those precision strikes, can they give estimates on approximately how many people they will have to kill in Iraq to win the war?
Bradley Graham: Seems they're having a hard enough time just trying to figure out how big the insurgency is. Such estimates vary widely and often are caveated with statements from military officials saying no one really knows.
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Montgomery, Ala.: Wouldn't you agree that releasing the enemy body count could boost the morale of our soldiers and their families.?
Bradley Graham: I think that's certainly part of the rationale for releasing some of the numbers.
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Belmond, Iowa: Does the U.S. military of 2005 have a policy on what to do with corpses after a battle? I know in WWII they had a "Graves Registration" detail to handle the bodies of both American and Axis dead after a battle. What are they doing in Iraq after the fighting has stopped in a particular area?
Bradley Graham: Normal practice, I'm told, is either to bury enemy bodies or hand them over to local representatives for burial. You may have noticed the recent story from Afghanistan alleging that some U.S. troops there burned and desecrated two Taliban corpses. That purported incident is now under criminal investigation.
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Washington, D.C.: Has there been much discussion about the reasonableness of continued prominent reporting of deaths and "body count" from enemy strikes in the media? In other words, is it not a bit misleading -- and not a very helpful exercise in understanding the progress of the war -- to have newspaper headlines (like in today's Washington Post Express) on the death tally from enemy terrorist attacks in Iraq?
Bradley Graham: I hope we never get to the point in the Iraq conflict, or any other conflict in which U.S. soldiers are dying, where we fail to give appropriate prominence to the sacrifices those troops are making.
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Richmond, Va.: The problem with body counts has always been that the objective of war is to defeat your enemy, not just kill people. Does the Pentagon have any figures on what parts of the country are under the control of, or endangered by, the insurgency? That's the only meaningful measure.
Bradley Graham: The Pentagon doesn't provide that kind of statistic. What it likes to point out is that most of the fighting is concentrated in 4 of Iraq's 18 provinces, although those 4 include some of the most populous. Commanders in Iraq will acknowledge that some parts of those provinces--which tend to be where U.S. or Iraqi military presence is lightest--do have insurgent groups moving around relatively unchallenged and effectively controlling some towns and villages.
_______________________
Bradley Graham: Regretfully, I need to sign off now. Apologies to those whose queries I haven't been able to answer. Thanks to everyone for participating.
According to the website that tracks these things, the count it 2199 coalition soldiers killed with 493 killed in accidents. The largest non-hostile fire cause of death is traffic accidents at 180, with helicopter crashes a distant second at 67, and a mul ude of other causes comprising the rest. (heart attacks, illness, suicide, etc)
US casualties have hit exactly 2000, pending current confirmation of 3 current deaths.
The interesting thing about this whole thing is that an estimated 36% of Iraqi civilian deaths are attributed to Post-invasion criminal violence accounted for 36% of all Iraqi civilian deaths.
That translates into over 10000 deaths in two years.
Hardly a case for the Iraqis being "better off" under Bush Administration rule.
Really? I thought 50,000 children were starving each year and that Saddam killed about 300,000 Shi'ites in the South - between 1991 and the invasion.
And, who's responsible for the criminal deaths? The insurgents and terrorists, that's who. I say blame them.
Actually the formal insurgency is listed as causing about 9% of the deaths.
You say blame the insurgency because any other conclusion points to the uncomfortable fact that post-invastion security by the Bush Administration has been... less than stellar.
Well, ! pre-invasion security by the Hussein Administration wasn't all that hot either...THEY GOT ING INVADED!
Actually the formal insurgency is listed as causing about 9% of the deaths.
You say blame the insurgency because any other conclusion points to the uncomfortable fact that post-invastion security by the Bush Administration has been... less than stellar.
Um, yeah.
I am talking about security as in being able to walk down the street without getting bombed by one side or another, not security as in military terms.
Keep spinning.
I guess that would have depended on whether or not you were a friend of the Ba'athis regime, now wouldn't it?
Um, yeah.
I am talking about security as in being able to walk down the street without getting bombed by one side or another, not security as in military terms.
Keep spinning.
I guess you've forgotten the rape rooms and plastics shredders.
"who's responsible for the criminal deaths?"
Who's responsible for guaranteeing the public safety in Iraq?
The Repubs failure to establish public safety and lawfulness after the invasion "broke Iraq" is the second most glariing failure of the war. As many in the public can see now, as many insiders pointed out, the Repubs rushed into war, with the priority of the 2004 elections, with not enough soldiers, and obviously no planning for the post-invasion phase. rummy shrug his shoulders "stuff happens". lying bas . He said he had enough troops, he didn't, but he destroyed Shinsheki's career for telling the truth about realistic troop levels.
The failure of the Repubs to assure public safety, to "police" Iraq, has hampered reconstruction of infrastructure, made nearly impossible the reliable provision of basic services like water, electricity, sewage, has hindered democratization, has greatly lengthened the entire occupation (where occupation = death to US and Iraqis).
Sadams' has been exchanged for the Repub , where the second is directly the responsibility and due to the incompetence of the Repubs to execute the war they so lovingly desired.
have they?? Why are people still getting killed then?
That would be from the people who were detained without trial?
and from the people that were tortured?
You see the hypocrisy there, right? Then again, probably not.
I know what good the US is capable of, and that is why when we do less than moral things, it drives me crazy. Conservatives in general are unable to admit the other side of the coin, that when we act anything less than 100% morally, we lose that irreplacable commodity: moral authority.
It is images such as those above that make the terrorists case for them. Thanks, GW, I feel a lot safer now that our enemies have ready made propaganda pictures to recruit with.
Losing that moral authority is one of those "intangible" costs/issues of this war that our administration seems incapable of grasping, among so many others.
Enemy combatants aren't due due process...and, the United States of America is vigorously prosecuting those, in the military, that are engaging in criminal acts against detainees, prisoners, and suspected terrorists.That would be from the people who were detained without trial?
and from the people that were tortured?
You see the hypocrisy there, right? Then again, probably not.
I know what good the US is capable of, and that is why when we do less than moral things, it drives me crazy. Conservatives in general are unable to admit the other side of the coin, that when we act anything less than 100% morally, we lose that irreplacable commodity: moral authority.
It is images such as those above that make the terrorists case for them. Thanks, GW, I feel a lot safer now that our enemies have ready made propaganda pictures to recruit with.
Losing that moral authority is one of those "intangible" costs/issues of this war that our administration seems incapable of grasping, among so many others.
So, what's your point?
There are several hundred thousand military personnel involved in the Iraqi and Afghani operations, painting our entire military and its administration with the brush of a few idiots is irresponsible. Idiots, I hasten to add, that have been held accountable for their actions and are now suffering the consequences.
Yeah Random Guy! the COns utiuon and lets finger our clits and masturbate European international dictates so that we can give terrorist a chance at federal courts, which the cons ution strictly allows to deny.
They are enemy combatants because a government has waved it's hand and said they don't deserve trials. Is this any different logically than what you were just criticizing Saddam for doing?
I understand your point about Abu Gharaib and the "bad apples" thing and agree with it.
It was not OK for Saddam to torture people that he thought were dangerous to the Iraqi state, but our administration has been advocating shipping people to countries where they DO torture people, and to do loosen the prohibitions that restrain our military from doing similar things. Again, how is that logically different?
Torture is OK or it isn't. Denying people trials is OK or it isn't.
Pick one and stick with it. Double standards make us hypocrites and make us into the monsters we are fighting. I wish people who think detaining people forever without a trial were morally developed enough to see the inherent immorality of such, but as such I can only pray for people to see evil for what it is.
Question... If Iraq was in the state it is currently in, and it were not a cause of any US Military action, would we be justified in taking action to try to bring stability? Would the UN?
I don't really have an opinion on this but I'm curious to hear some of your opinions.
I was willing to die for the cons ution as a member of the armed forces and still am.
It doesn't make us any less strong to give even those who want to kill us trials. It is the moral thing to do.
If you lack enough moral sense to realize that, I geniunely feel sorry for you. It always saddens me to see spiritually stunted people screaming for blood, and denying God-given humanity to people.
Men like Ghandi, Jesus, or Martin Luther King Jr. were no less "strong" because they chose a higher path. On the contrary, it made the force of their arguments and causes much stronger, and they eventually won over physically more powerful foes.
THAT is the power of moral authority.
It is also a "long run" solution. Our culture tends to focus on the short term too much, and that focus costs us more in the long run sometimes, as does some of our current policies.
Acts of War and Criminal Acts are different and, therein lies the fundamental difference...
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