Demosophia

Coalition Combat Deaths

[Took me awhile to figure out how to post this graph, but finally had to convert it to a gif image. The graph basically demonstrates that there were peaks of deaths in Iraq in March '03, November '03 and April '04 that are very similar, indicating essentially that we are in an intermittent war.]

It may be a little hard to see the legend, but the bottom scale runs from March '03 to April '04 and is the total number of coalition deaths.

So far the largest number of coalition combat deaths is still back in November of 2003, but it's very likely that April will surpass it. Even with that, the rate of combat deaths is only a miniscule fraction of those in the Vietnam War. The other thing is that the current upsurge was launched from the lowest rate of combat deaths since the operation began, back in February. That decline from November '03 to February '04 tells an interesting, if incomplete, story. It reflects or mirrors the reason for the note of urgency in Farqawi's strategy communique. (Source
Lunaville Summary of Casualties)

[Update: After looking at the detailed data on the source site it appears that the stats are for all deaths in theater, not merely combat deaths. For instance, a young 23 year-old soldier who lived about five miles from me died recently of a heart attack.]

Posted by Demosophist at April 18, 2004 12:07 PM | TrackBack