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You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / War / Some Good News

Some Good News

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Last month, I noted the rapid decline in the loss of American lives in Iraq following the January elections. As previously stated:

This month, there have been 18 coalition casualties, meaning that the Coalition of the Willing has suffered an average of 1.38 casualties a day. This is the lowest average since March of last year, and dramatically lower than the casualty rate from the previous six month. For some perspective, last month we lost an average of 4.1 soldiers per day, in December 2004 we lost 2.48, and in November we were averaging 4.7 fatalities per day.

This does not tell the entire story, as the casualty rate was inflated in several of those months by deaths from non-hostile fire. For example, the numbers last month were wildly inflated due to tragic helicopter crashes. Again, those soldiers and sailors and Marines are just as dead, but if we are going to judge this, we have to be honest with ourselves, and there is a significant difference between hostile and non-hostile deaths.

At any rate, take it for what it is- a hopeful sign, but one that could literally blow up over night. I would advise people to be cautiously optimistic.

In the month of January, before the elections, the loss rate was 4.1 soldiers per day. Immediately after the election, in February, the rate dipped to 2.1 per day.

Currently, we are losing an average 1.2 soldiers per day to hostile and non-hostile casualties. The number of wounded appears to be declining as well.

Still too many, but a reason for cautious optimism. And while you are at it, you should be aware of this tribute to our fallen heroes.

Reader Interactions

8Comments

  1. 1.

    Ron Phelps

    Let me get this straight.. because the Death rate is only 1.2 soldiers per day.. then things are going right? Is that what you are saying?

    Now I am an older nam vet and in nam there were ebbs and flows. Meaning the enemy didn’t come after us every second they could manage. Sometimes they just let us Spend our money with maybe one north vietnamese costing the army tons of money on fuel and bombs and napalm. Other times they were more organized.
    We spent a lot of money there too! You know we won every battle. But we lost the war.

    Some months were good and some months were bad. But people died every month. Over 50,000 young hopeful American men. Some were my friends.

    Now in Iraq, we are spending .. what .. 4.3 billion a day. The DEATH RATE is ONLY 1.2 men a day but we still are spending 4.3 billion dollars a day.

    Now, I’ll bet that a lot of GI’s are just staying in the Green zone. It makes sense that they resistance would go after softer targets. Under equiped Iraq policeman and poorly trained iraq military men. After all.. we ARE trying to get these guys to take care of themselves .. right?

  2. 2.

    Bob

    I don’t think it’s 4.3 billion a day. More like a third of of billion, or maybe a half billion.

    Hey, now that the death rate is down to under two a day, we could stay there forever.

  5. 5.

    Ron Phelps

    My point exactly john.
    You can’t tell me.
    you can tell me how many americans have died…. to the person.
    how many iraq children.. ?
    how many innocent women?
    have we gone insane?
    I am so tired of being lied to.
    this artificial split we have come to
    me democrat
    you republican
    what the hell is that?
    as long as the people of the US are divided
    there can be no beauty.
    We have almost LOST this war
    and I am not talking about the one in iraq.
    I am talking about the one where SCARBOROUGH is a general..

    I grew up in west virginia
    went to haight street in 1968
    tripped my ass off.
    saw the universe was good.

    now I see we are divided, unable to come to any REAL progress.
    like a guy earlier who told me to stop wasting your bandwidth..
    Why are we so divided.
    we want exactly the same things?????????????
    I downloaded a song from itunes
    whats so funny about peace love and understanding.
    well?

  6. 6.

    Kimmitt

    The Lancet study was horribly unreliable and inflated.

    For the record, the people saying this are people with a strong stake in the Iraq war having caused relatively few casualties. The study itself is a rather impressive piece of good statistical analysis.

  7. 7.

    grizzle

    the terrorists have just switched to a softer target – iraqis. the country still has no stability thanks to geniuses like rumsfailed and wolfowitz.

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