US is losing the Iraq war by body count

[HamdenRice]

I was listening to NPR's weekend news report and interview with an Iraqi cabinet minister, and at the end of the report, they summed up the casualties for May.

The news media tends to report US casualties and then estimated Iraqi insurgent casualties. For example this latest operation on the Syrian border is supposed to have killed about 100 insurgents, while the US forces suffered 9 dead. The US government always focuses on lopsided body counts to give the impression that US forces are invincible.

But then the NPR reporter tagged on the number of Iraqi security forces killed in May: about 400.

I found this staggering. This means that combined US-Iraqi forces are actually being killed and wounded at a rate far in excess of Iraqi insurgent forces -- by this estimate, they are winning the body count by a ratio of 4 to 1.

Besides being criminal, illegal and immoral, we can now conclude that the war is also unwinnable, even in conventional military terms.

[mike_c]

1. with all due resepect....

Some of us have been saying that the war against Iraq is unwinnable since before the invasion! Too few people seem to listen.

[HamdenRice]

2. I understand your point and share it ...

But I always assumed the war was unwinnable in political terms. That is, war is (unfortunately) as the cliche goes, the continuation of politics by other means. I always assumed that no matter how much fire power the US deployed, it could not create a compliant oil producing government. In other words, it could wreak military havoc but not achieve its political goals.

What I found shocking about the simple maneuver of adding US and Iraqi security force casualties, is that the US is losing even on conventional military terms.

[DrDebug]

4. The war is unwinnable in military terms as well

Even though they don't count US civilians, suicides, Iraqi security etc. the costs in human lives are enormous. And even though the number of Iraqis killed is many times higher, the costs for a replacement are not that high, because those people have nothing to lose and - even worse - are taught that martyrdom will sent them to heaven so they don't fear death that much as we do.

And as the situation becomes ever more volatile the population is becoming more polarized and the resistence will grow. We have seen that the new government didn't bring a decrease in violence, the violence flared up and intensified to even higher levels. As time progresses this will only increase. A fire has started and the fire is burning out of control...

[Botany]

3. More on the war and the #s

From One Thousand Reasons

http://www.thousandreasons.org/get_article.php?article_id=54

a little piece I wrote ..... 130,000 US troops trying to keep order in
a country of 26,000,000.

[HamdenRice]

8. Thanks for the link ... this sentence was frightening

"So not unless our troops behave like the Nazis did in occupied Europe in WW II, we are in a no-win situation. "

According to Seymour Hersh, the policy in Iraq now is simply to terrorize the Iraqis into submission by making them more afraid of the US than they are of the insurgency.

That's Iraqi "freedom," I suppose.

[Solly Mack]

5. Now factor in how many new people pick up a gun everyday

Because they've seen their family blown to bits.

Every single day America creates another "insurgent"

[bennywhale]

6. I don't know why you found the figures staggering. The US has

been using badly trained ill equipped Iraqis as sandbags for quite a while now. They've taken over much patrolling and guarding of key sites and many are in police cars armed with pistols.

After every car bomb or attack you always hear the reporter barely murmuring at the end of the peice about "several" of Iraq's security services were killed. This is daily. So several, sometimes a dozen sometimes more killed every day. This is a pretty serious conflict, which appears not to be so cos the media don't give a fuck about anyone who dies who isn't an American. Probably cos they know that most Americans don't give a fuck either.

Bush and his cronies know this and have calculated and manipulated the political cost to be lower as the actual conflict intensifies. Quite clever really if it wasn't so sick.

[HamdenRice]

7. I'm just surprised that my perception was so manipulated ...

by the admin always pairing insurgent and US casualties, instead of combined US and Iraqi security force casualties vs. insurgent casualties.

[bennywhale]

9. Its aided so much by the media which is the

problem. Its a vicious cycle. Foriegners being killed don't make the news as much in any country so its bound to be of less interest to the media.

Then they can quote US casualties and it seems as if its gradually being won.

I saw a report the other day saying attacks were now back up to 70 a day. Even though i knew they were playing it down i was shocked by this. Obviously they're not all successful, and i imagine ones which don't cause serious injury are kept quiet by the military.

Also people warn about the danger of civil war. Wel the way i see it it IS civil war. Instigated by the US, Iraqi insurgents are at war with Iraqi security and police and they are killing dozens of eachother every week. I would call that a civil war.