The U.S. military in Iraq doesn’t like numbers, or at least it doesn’t like to add them up. Soldiers killed in Iraq are announced, incident by incident, in terse press releases that give the scantest of details.
-snip-
Here are NEWSWEEK’s calculations:
150,000. The estimated number of all coalition forces in Iraq, of which about 124,000 are Americans and 26,000 are others. A total of 35 countries contributes forces, but most number less than 1,000. Some, like Mongolia, are in the low two digits. Only the British, with about 11,000 troops, have a significant force.
20,000. The number of U.S. troops who are being told this week that they’ll have to stay in Iraq another 90 days, even though they’ve completed their one-year “boots on the ground” deployment.
8,875 to 10,725. The minimum and maximum estimates of the number of Iraqi civilians killed in Iraq so far, according to IraqBodyCount.org, an organization of British and American academics. Other groups have even higher estimates.
3,466. The total of American soldiers wounded in action in Iraq through April 17, 2004, according to the Pentagon. There’s a lot of controversy about these figures, which do not include many minor wounds, although they do include some soldiers who are wounded and returned to duty. Other estimates of wounded American soldiers range as high as 15,000.
793. Total coalition soldiers killed in Iraq since the war began, according to the U.S. Army’s Central Command, as of April 17, 2004. Of those, 579 were killed in action. 690 of the dead are American soldiers of which 501 are officially listed as KIA or hostile action. Besides the Americans, soldiers from El Salvador, Thailand, Spain, Italy, Britain, Poland, Ukraine, Estonia, Denmark and Bulgaria have lost their lives.
600. The number of people killed during the current siege of Fallujah, according to hospital officials there. They’re estimating though, since many dead are not brought to the hospital but buried immediately according to Islamic traditions. Most of them are civilians, and the majority women and children, according to these officials, whose accounts are impossible to verify since no independent journalists have been able to visit Fallujah.
600. The number of people killed during the current siege of Falluja, according to spokesmen for the Marines’ First Division besieging that city, who say that 95 percent of the victims are military-age men, and the others are human shields used by the resistance there. Again, a number that is impossible to verify. “That just proves that the Marines are very good at what they do,” one official said.
110. The number of coalition soldiers killed in November 2003, which has so far been the war’s worst month. But those numbers were ratcheted up by four helicopter crashes, as a result of ground fire from insurgents, one of which alone killed 17 soldiers. In quiet times, an average of two American soldiers are killed every day in Iraq, so April will almost certainly top November-even if the current ceasefires in Fallujah and Najaf, troubled as they are, continue to hold.
92. The number of coalition soldiers (65 Americans and 27 Brits) killed in March 2003. That was a short month; the war began only on March 21, but a huge invasion-force was charging through enemy lines. It wasn’t supposed to get any worse than that.
91. The number of coalition soldiers killed in April 2004, making this the third deadliest month in the war so far for the coalition and the second deadliest for the Americans. And it’s only half over. Eighty-nine of the dead were Americans, all killed in action.
more at
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4766574/
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