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Casualty Count
Suburban Guerilla Susan amasses some pretty strong evidence that the official casualty counts out of Iraq and Afghanistan are being understated.
February 23, 2005 | Permalink
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» If this is true from Notes in Samsara
and, it is way too easy to verify this... then the Bush regime is lying about the casualty counts in Iraq and Suburban Guerilla has the next news story from the blogosphere... [Read More]
Tracked on Feb 23, 2005 7:44:44 PM
Comments
You libruls really are off the deep end. Who would EVER believe the US government would lie about casualty counts. And anyway, if they did, pointing it out is giving aid and comfort to our enemies, in times of tax cuts no less.
Posted by: epistemology | Feb 23, 2005 5:41:05 PM
some pretty strong evidence
*snicker*
You know, I think it would be helpful if she would tell us, at the very, very least, exactly what it is that is supposed to be "understated". I mean, is a link too much to ask for?
Posted by: Al | Feb 23, 2005 6:16:12 PM
It's the old "non-combat" casualties thing. First, those are reported, seperately. Second, it's impossible to really conclude anything meaningful about them unless we compare them to non-combat casualties outside Iraq.
Last I checked, we have about 1000 fatalities a year due to accidents in peacetime.
Posted by: Adam Herman | Feb 23, 2005 6:22:39 PM
Adam,
Non-combat fatalities in Iraq are almost entirely related to war. For example, because a certain road in Iraq is subject to ambush US troops must travel at 120mph, which makes it more likely they will get killed in an accident. Or, some roads are completely impassable due to IEDs so troops must travel via helicopter, even in the midst of terrible dust storms. Thus we get the 31 deaths in western Iraq last month in a helicopter crash. One may assume that of, say, 2000 non-hostile deaths about 10 of them would have died anyway in a US traffic accident (to match the rate to the overall US population). But that is still a wee bit less than the actual deaths in Iraq.
That said, I think icasualties.org has kept a pretty rigorous list of deaths, including non-hostile deaths. That doesn't include stateside suicides and marital homicides, of course. And, perhaps more to the point, it doesn't really register the severity of the wounds in Iraq. All icasualties.org counts is "wounded" and "wounded-return to action". I assume that the two are completely separate. But what does "wounded" really mean? A broken arm that couldn't get healed before the tour of duty ended? Two legs blown off? Massive brain damage leaving the soldier a vegetable at Walter Reed? If you consider the number of soldiers permanently disfigured or mentally incapacitated the rest of their lives the number is quite high. And I suspect, given the typical reaction to soldiers' families who hear people say to them "What war?", most Americans aren't aware of this larger, seriously wounded total.
Posted by: Elrod | Feb 23, 2005 6:40:30 PM
Al
Google it!
Posted by: postit | Feb 23, 2005 6:40:32 PM
On a related note, 3 members of a relatives's Minnesota National Guard unit were killed yesterday in Baghdad by an IED. When my mother in law called to tell us that xxxxx was "OK", we had no idea that anything had happened... even though I was glued to the web and various national news sites all day.
I had to go out the Minneapolis Star Tribune to find an article.
There are a few items floating around the wires that mention the deaths, but nothing prominent anywhere outside of the Minnesota media.
American Casualties in Iraq have become "Apollo 13". It's no longer news. The major media pays little if any attention to our best and brightest dying each day in a foreign land. Unless you know somebody over there, you don't even pay attention to the stories.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is completely fucked up.
Now, add to the fact that the Pentagon wants to downplay the excruciating sacrifices made by our troops..... grrrrr
Posted by: def | Feb 23, 2005 7:49:26 PM
Actually, the tendency in the media has been to report combat and non-combat fatalities as one combined total.
So, in October 2004, there was a big thing about the 1000th soldier killed, whereas the 1000th killed in *action* was back near the first of the year. The best source on this remains:
http://icasualties.org/oif/
I haven't noticed the major media depart significantly from its fatalities count. Now, injuries is another issue. Once your start count all non-combated related injuries, and particularly all noncombat evacueees, you'll inevitably bring in the certain percentage of soldiers who would have fallen ill even if they were back home on base.
Posted by: rd | Feb 23, 2005 8:05:35 PM
A relative of mine (who is not a liberal, incidentally) lives in San Diego and most of her close friends are in the military. She mentioned more than a year ago that what she'd been hearing from more than one of them is that the pentagon has been lowballing the casualty numbers - for what its worth.
Posted by: Robin the Hood | Feb 23, 2005 8:43:28 PM
Strong evidence??? One of her "sources" -
"A videotape produced and distributed by the "Majles Shora Al-Mojahideen in Fallujah," one of the most important military wings of the Iraqi resistance, showed a burial site discovered outside the Iraqi city of Samara with tens of bodies in US military body bags. The dead were dressed in US uniforms."
And we're supposed to believe a wing of the Iraqi resistance? Anyone remember the picture of the GI Joe doll that was released to the media by the insurgents under the pretense they had captured a US Soldier?
HOT Market Tip: Take all your savings, sell your house, pawn your jewelry and buy toy company stock, the insurgents are going to buy up enough GI Joe dolls to cause the stock to double.
Posted by: liberal conservative | Feb 23, 2005 9:07:36 PM
"Anyone remember the picture of the GI Joe doll that was released to the media by the insurgents under the pretense they had captured a US Soldier?"
Nope. Got a link?
Posted by: Joel | Feb 23, 2005 9:28:58 PM
Joel - Can you spell - G O O G L E ?
Type it in your address bar and press the enter key. When the next screen come up, move the little blinking thing into the square box and type: gi joe doll insurgent hoax ...
Posted by: just_say_GOOGLE | Feb 23, 2005 9:49:09 PM
Well, excuse me for posting. I didn't realize Matt had appointed a website gestapo.
Posted by: Joel | Feb 23, 2005 10:01:28 PM
I don't think that there is a grand conspiracy to deny the death of soldiers. But, I do think that spin is being spun, to the degree that spinning is possible. I wrote this in July 2003 in response to casualty figures then being published:
I've found Department of Defense statistics ("Mortality Trends Among Active Duty Personnel, 1992-2001," MSMR Volume 09, Number 01, January 2003) which cite a peacetime mortality rate of 57.38 soldiers per 100,000 per year, all services. Fifty-three percent of all deaths were "attributable to accidents," while twenty percent were suicides, and eighteen percent disease deaths. None were combat-related. (This is a peacetime survey.) So, given the Iraq deployment of approximately 150,000 American soldiers, sailors, and airmen, and taking the first two months since Mr. Bush declared the end of major combat operations -- if you do the math you would expect 7.6 fatalities in peacetime. But the number of stated accidental deaths among American military personnel in Iraq approximates 60 for that period. An army at war is much more accident-prone than one at peace these days, but is it more than eight times more so? Or is reporting "combat deaths" (i.e., deaths directly caused by an enemy combatant) as distinctly different than "accidental deaths" making a facile distinction? Shouldn't the cause of these deaths be examined and reported more fully, and categorized by the press according to a more subtle, independent standard, and not one that parrots the monochrome one of the Pentagon? As a second matter, today's combat evacuation and care system is the very best, and saves the lives of soldiers who would have surely died from their wounds if they had sustained them in World War II or even Vietnam. That is an improvement that should be applauded, but it conceals the level of violence in modern American warfare generally, and in Iraq, specifically, when comparing it with past American conflicts.
If there is fudging of numbers, it's in such things as counting a soldier killed in a Humvee rollover as his squad rushes to the site of an ambush as an "accidental death". However, I entirely support a grassroots monitoring, because an Administration that bases its Social Security solvency plan on repudiating the debt held in the SSA Trust Fund while ignoring the fate of all other outstanding Treasuries will, indeed, try anything. Having dodged Florida in 2000 and actually won the 2004 election in spite of blinding incomptence, hubris is the watchword in the White House. If it turns out to be a waste of time, well, it's still part and parcel of what makes a republic a republic.
Posted by: Brian C.B. | Feb 23, 2005 10:07:07 PM
OK. I googled it. Nope. Still don't remember it. Must have been a trivial sideshow, or I would have remembered it.
Sorry I upset you so; you obviously attach more importance to this than I do.
Posted by: Joel | Feb 23, 2005 10:07:56 PM
liberal conservative:
we're supposed to believe a wing of the Iraqi resistance?
No, you're not supposed to believe them. They're probably untrustworthy -- perhaps even as untrustworthy as the government of the United States.
Still, you also shouldn't dismiss everything they say out of hand, just as you shouldn't with the U.S. government.
Posted by: grh | Feb 23, 2005 10:11:12 PM
Hmm... It looks a bit methodologically sketchy, especially in the characterizations of "mercenaries" and in the understanding of exactly how the system of foreign nationals enlisting for a green card works. A foreign national who has joined the U.S. military is inducted into the military in exactly the same manner as a native born American: boot camp, MOS training, and then going to his unit. Such people *are* going to be on the Pentagon's official lists of casualties.
There's a lot of confusion about "mercenaries" and "contracters" as well. Contracters hired to perform security will be doing things like guarding installations, people, etc. They're not (except for extreme circumstances like last April's uprising) going to actually be going into combat on the front lines with the U.S. military.
Call me skeptical as well on reliance on a source dealing with two levels of mediation, both of which are highly unreliable (indymedia and jihadist websites).
Posted by: Andrew Reeves | Feb 23, 2005 10:31:49 PM
grh - I can't argue that. The only point I was trying to make is that the suburbanguerrilla seems to be using some pretty unrealiable sources in her post.
Posted by: liberal conservative | Feb 23, 2005 10:34:51 PM
grh,
Your point is well taken that all sides engage in propaganda. The US has been on the short side of the truth stick many times so we should take Pentagon releases with a grain of salt. But the Iraqi insurgency employs a very different kind of propaganda program. On one level it is similar to the US: exaggerate opponent casualties and lowball your own. But because the insurgency doesn't have to worry about "verification" and claims of "objectivity" it can pontificate at will. The GI Joe doll thing looked ridiculous but its discovery doesn't really hurt the insurgents too much. There is simply no burden for the insurgents to prove that their statements about casualties are honest because nobody really knows who they are or what their stated goals are, outside bombastic rhetoric about ridding Iraq of infidels. That doesn't mean everything the insurgents say is wrong. Some of the best reporters, like Anthony Shadid, have figured out how to "read" insurgent statements properly. Most have no idea. Either way, the US has a much higher burden of accuracy because it has people who openly take responsibility for US policy in Iraq, and has several well-stated goals and objectives there. If the US is caught bullshitting then one can easily challenge the rest of the US message. If the insurgency is caught bullshitting then, well, it doesn't really cost them much of anything.
Posted by: Elrod | Feb 23, 2005 10:39:45 PM
Here is the thing with a casualty: it is not important "how" a soldier becomes a casualty. Whether its from an Iraqi IED, an Iraqi RPG, and auto accident, a heart attack, or a meteor from the sky. It doesn't matter (in a cold, military planning sense) whether the casualty is an injury or a fatality.
A casualty is a troop that is removed from his unit, never to return. It is that number that tells us whether this war is sustainable. When you are accurate about what the term casualty means, and realize the fact that the number is somewhere between 10,000 and 40,000, and factor in the rather limited number of combat troops available for deployment, it is at that point that you begin to see the crisis that is on the horizon in the US Armed forces. We need a miracle, pretty quick, or we hit the point in a few months where the casualties begin to become unsustainable.
Posted by: Timothy Klein | Feb 23, 2005 10:52:32 PM
liberal conservative:
grh - I can't argue that. The only point I was trying to make is that the suburbanguerrilla seems to be using some pretty unrealiable sources in her post.
Yes, she is. But again, you could say that about almost every story in every news outlet in America every day, since they usually rely to some degree on the U.S. government. We're probably the most and best propagandized country that's ever existed.
It's just very, very hard to get solid information about anything. But I don't see that blog post as any worse than front page stories in the New York Times every day.
Elrod:
...But because the insurgency doesn't have to worry about "verification" and claims of "objectivity" it can pontificate at will. The GI Joe doll thing looked ridiculous but its discovery doesn't really hurt the insurgents too much... If the US is caught bullshitting then one can easily challenge the rest of the US message. If the insurgency is caught bullshitting then, well, it doesn't really cost them much of anything.
To be honest, I don't see that the U.S. government -- which has promulgated some of the most brazen bullshit in history regarding Iraq -- has paid any price for it.
Or to put it differently: I don't see much difference between the GI Joe doll and the cartoons Colin Powell showed at the UN. We just have slightly higher production values.
Posted by: grh | Feb 23, 2005 10:53:43 PM
They're not (except for extreme circumstances like last April's uprising) going to actually be going into combat on the front lines with the U.S. military.
I agree with that Andrew Reeves, but there isn't much of a "front line" in Iraq. Some of these security contractors are certainly being targeted and killed by insurgents, as the entire Sunni triangle and most major cities in Iraq are effectively the front line. So unless all these private guys are way out in the desert, they are targets. How many has it been that have been killed? 4? 400? Who knows? It's just something to consider.
Posted by: Timothy Klein | Feb 23, 2005 10:55:56 PM
"And we're supposed to believe a wing of the Iraqi resistance? Anyone remember the picture of the GI Joe doll that was released to the media by the insurgents under the pretense they had captured a US Soldier?"
I believe it turned out to be a prank by an Iraqi with too much time on his hands, not actually produced by the insurgents.
Posted by: Glaivester | Feb 23, 2005 11:05:12 PM
grh,
I don't agree. US support for the war is still too high. But it is a fraction of the level it was right after Powell's cartoon show.
But still, people tend to lose support for a war not because of high casualty figures, or because the original cause of war is proven moot, but because the war seems unwinnable.
Posted by: Elrod | Feb 23, 2005 11:29:40 PM
Erlod,
I don't think you're right about support being a fraction of what it was at the time of Powell's speech. For instance, see this from February 14, 2003:
With major decisions of war and peace still pending, 59 percent of Americans said they believed the president should give the United Nations more time. Sixty-three percent said Washington should not act without the support of its allies, and 56 percent said Mr. Bush should wait for United Nations approval.
Once the war began, of course, support for it shot way up.
I agree with you that people lose support for a war because it seems unwinnable. That's the problem for the Bush administration -- not the fact that they lied about everything.
Posted by: grh | Feb 23, 2005 11:48:23 PM
Depending on whom you believe, you are right about the GI Joe doll picture. The current reporting on the Jihadist message boards is that the post was not made by the insurgency but by an Iraqi playing a prank. However, I personally believe that after the farce was brought to light, the insurgents had to save face and made the later posting that it was a prank. After all, they wouldn’t want to “demoralize” members of their “freedom fighters.”
Posted by: Consipracy_Theorist | Feb 23, 2005 11:58:49 PM
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