Imperialist Watch
2006-10-08 15:52:21 UTC
U.S. Casualties in Iraq Rise Sharply
Growing American Role in Staving Off Civil War Leads to Most Wounded Since
2004
By Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 8, 2006; A01
The number of U.S troops wounded in Iraq has surged to its highest monthly
level in nearly two years as American GIs fight block-by-block in Baghdad to
try to check a spiral of sectarian violence that U.S. commanders warn could
lead to civil war.
Last month, 776 U.S. troops were wounded in action in Iraq, the highest
number since the military assault to retake the insurgent-held city of
Fallujah in November 2004, according to Defense Department data. It was the
fourth-highest monthly total since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March
2003.
The sharp increase in American wounded -- with nearly 300 more in the first
week of October -- is a grim measure of the degree to which the U.S.
military has been thrust into the lead of the effort to stave off full-scale
civil war in Iraq, military officials and experts say. Beyond Baghdad,
Marines battling Sunni insurgents in Iraq's western province of Anbar last
month also suffered their highest number of wounded in action since late
2004.
More than 20,000 U.S. troops have been wounded in combat in the Iraq war,
and about half have returned to duty. While much media reporting has focused
on the more than 2,700 killed, military experts say the number of wounded is
a more accurate gauge of the fierceness of fighting because advances in
armor and medical care today allow many service members to survive who would
have perished in past wars. The ratio of wounded to killed among U.S. forces
in Iraq is about 8 to 1, compared with 3 to 1 in Vietnam.
"These days, wounded are a much better measure of the intensity of the
operations than killed," said Anthony H. Cordesman, a military expert at the
Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
The surge in wounded comes as U.S. commanders issue increasingly dire
warnings about the threat of civil war in Iraq, all but ruling out cuts in
the current contingent of more than 140,000 U.S. troops before the spring of
2007. Last month Gen. John P. Abizaid, the top commander in the Middle East,
said "sectarian tensions, if left unchecked, could be fatal to Iraq," making
it imperative that the U.S. military now focus its "main effort" squarely on
Baghdad.
Thousands of additional U.S. troops have been ordered to Baghdad since July
to reinforce Iraqi soldiers and police who failed to halt -- or were in some
cases complicit in -- a wave of hundreds of killings of Iraqi civilians by
rival Sunni and Shiite groups.
U.S. commanders have appealed for weeks for 3,000 more Iraqi army troops to
help secure Baghdad but as of Thursday had received only a few hundred,
according to military officials in the Iraqi capital. Mistrust of Iraqi
police in Baghdad remains high, Abizaid said. Last week, an Iraqi police
brigade with hundreds of officers was removed from duty over its involvement
in sectarian killings.
"The Baghdad security plan and the general spiral of operations is driving
us to be more active than we have been in recent months," said Michael E.
O'Hanlon, a military analyst at the Brookings Institution, a
Washington-based think tank. "We have more people on patrols and out of
base, so we get more people hurt and killed in firefights," he said,
explaining that U.S. military offensives -- more than other factors such as
shifting enemy tactics -- tend to drive the number of American casualties.
In March, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said that Iraqi forces -- not
U.S. troops -- would deal with a civil war in Iraq "to the extent one were
to occur." Today's operations in Baghdad demonstrate that that goal was not
realistic, experts say.
"In a sense, the Baghdad security plan is a complete repudiation of the
earlier Rumsfeld doctrine where he said the Iraqis would prevent the civil
war," said O'Hanlon.
Despite the mounting cost in U.S. wounded and dead -- including 13 American
soldiers killed in combat in Baghdad in three days last week -- Pentagon
officials say aggressive military operations in the Iraqi capital are at
best a short-term and partial solution, buying time for political
compromise, which they call the only way to arrest Iraq's disintegration.
"The Baghdad security plan will only be a temporary fix," said a Pentagon
official who has served in Iraq. "You need to address the root causes," said
the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not
authorized to speak publicly.
The rising toll of wounded reflects ongoing heavy combat in Anbar as well as
in Baghdad, where U.S. troops face an escalation of small-arms and other
attacks as they push into the city's most violent neighborhoods to rein in
sectarian death squads, militias and insurgents, officers say.
"Attacks against the coalition have definitely increased as . . . the enemy
is trying to come in and reestablish themselves" in a dozen religiously
divided districts in east and west Baghdad, said Lt. Col. Jonathan
Withington, a spokesman for the U.S. military command in the city. "There's
a lot of weapons in Baghdad," contributing to an increase in enemy attacks
using small arms, he said.
Withington said he was not authorized to release the number of U.S. military
personnel wounded in Baghdad or the number of attacks in the city, although
the military has released such data in the past.
A survey of reports on combat deaths from August through early October,
however, shows an increase in those killed in Baghdad from small-arms fire
as well as bombs along roads. Dense urban terrain in the city of 6 million
people, where enemy fighters have many places to hide and can attack from
close quarters, reduces the advantage of the better-trained and
better-equipped U.S. forces.
"September was horrific" in terms of the toll of wounded, and if the early
October trend continues, this month could be "the worst month of the war,"
said John E. Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a Virginia-based Web site
that tracks defense issues.
The worsening violence in Baghdad has led some Pentagon officials to
criticize decisions by the U.S. military since early 2005 to transfer
responsibility for security in large swaths of Baghdad to Iraqi forces while
cutting back on American patrols.
"We made decisions to take an indirect approach, which is great if you want
low U.S. casualty rates," said the Pentagon official. However, he said:
"Passing responsibility to Iraqis does not equal defeating terrorists and
neutralizing the insurgency. Period."
© 2006 The Washington Post Company
--
"The really dangerous American fascists are not those who are hooked up
directly or indirectly with the Axis. The FBI has its finger on those. The
dangerous American fascist is the man who wants to do in the United States
in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way. The
American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison
the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how
best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to
deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more
power." - United States Vice President Henry Wallace
Growing American Role in Staving Off Civil War Leads to Most Wounded Since
2004
By Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 8, 2006; A01
The number of U.S troops wounded in Iraq has surged to its highest monthly
level in nearly two years as American GIs fight block-by-block in Baghdad to
try to check a spiral of sectarian violence that U.S. commanders warn could
lead to civil war.
Last month, 776 U.S. troops were wounded in action in Iraq, the highest
number since the military assault to retake the insurgent-held city of
Fallujah in November 2004, according to Defense Department data. It was the
fourth-highest monthly total since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March
2003.
The sharp increase in American wounded -- with nearly 300 more in the first
week of October -- is a grim measure of the degree to which the U.S.
military has been thrust into the lead of the effort to stave off full-scale
civil war in Iraq, military officials and experts say. Beyond Baghdad,
Marines battling Sunni insurgents in Iraq's western province of Anbar last
month also suffered their highest number of wounded in action since late
2004.
More than 20,000 U.S. troops have been wounded in combat in the Iraq war,
and about half have returned to duty. While much media reporting has focused
on the more than 2,700 killed, military experts say the number of wounded is
a more accurate gauge of the fierceness of fighting because advances in
armor and medical care today allow many service members to survive who would
have perished in past wars. The ratio of wounded to killed among U.S. forces
in Iraq is about 8 to 1, compared with 3 to 1 in Vietnam.
"These days, wounded are a much better measure of the intensity of the
operations than killed," said Anthony H. Cordesman, a military expert at the
Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
The surge in wounded comes as U.S. commanders issue increasingly dire
warnings about the threat of civil war in Iraq, all but ruling out cuts in
the current contingent of more than 140,000 U.S. troops before the spring of
2007. Last month Gen. John P. Abizaid, the top commander in the Middle East,
said "sectarian tensions, if left unchecked, could be fatal to Iraq," making
it imperative that the U.S. military now focus its "main effort" squarely on
Baghdad.
Thousands of additional U.S. troops have been ordered to Baghdad since July
to reinforce Iraqi soldiers and police who failed to halt -- or were in some
cases complicit in -- a wave of hundreds of killings of Iraqi civilians by
rival Sunni and Shiite groups.
U.S. commanders have appealed for weeks for 3,000 more Iraqi army troops to
help secure Baghdad but as of Thursday had received only a few hundred,
according to military officials in the Iraqi capital. Mistrust of Iraqi
police in Baghdad remains high, Abizaid said. Last week, an Iraqi police
brigade with hundreds of officers was removed from duty over its involvement
in sectarian killings.
"The Baghdad security plan and the general spiral of operations is driving
us to be more active than we have been in recent months," said Michael E.
O'Hanlon, a military analyst at the Brookings Institution, a
Washington-based think tank. "We have more people on patrols and out of
base, so we get more people hurt and killed in firefights," he said,
explaining that U.S. military offensives -- more than other factors such as
shifting enemy tactics -- tend to drive the number of American casualties.
In March, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said that Iraqi forces -- not
U.S. troops -- would deal with a civil war in Iraq "to the extent one were
to occur." Today's operations in Baghdad demonstrate that that goal was not
realistic, experts say.
"In a sense, the Baghdad security plan is a complete repudiation of the
earlier Rumsfeld doctrine where he said the Iraqis would prevent the civil
war," said O'Hanlon.
Despite the mounting cost in U.S. wounded and dead -- including 13 American
soldiers killed in combat in Baghdad in three days last week -- Pentagon
officials say aggressive military operations in the Iraqi capital are at
best a short-term and partial solution, buying time for political
compromise, which they call the only way to arrest Iraq's disintegration.
"The Baghdad security plan will only be a temporary fix," said a Pentagon
official who has served in Iraq. "You need to address the root causes," said
the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not
authorized to speak publicly.
The rising toll of wounded reflects ongoing heavy combat in Anbar as well as
in Baghdad, where U.S. troops face an escalation of small-arms and other
attacks as they push into the city's most violent neighborhoods to rein in
sectarian death squads, militias and insurgents, officers say.
"Attacks against the coalition have definitely increased as . . . the enemy
is trying to come in and reestablish themselves" in a dozen religiously
divided districts in east and west Baghdad, said Lt. Col. Jonathan
Withington, a spokesman for the U.S. military command in the city. "There's
a lot of weapons in Baghdad," contributing to an increase in enemy attacks
using small arms, he said.
Withington said he was not authorized to release the number of U.S. military
personnel wounded in Baghdad or the number of attacks in the city, although
the military has released such data in the past.
A survey of reports on combat deaths from August through early October,
however, shows an increase in those killed in Baghdad from small-arms fire
as well as bombs along roads. Dense urban terrain in the city of 6 million
people, where enemy fighters have many places to hide and can attack from
close quarters, reduces the advantage of the better-trained and
better-equipped U.S. forces.
"September was horrific" in terms of the toll of wounded, and if the early
October trend continues, this month could be "the worst month of the war,"
said John E. Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a Virginia-based Web site
that tracks defense issues.
The worsening violence in Baghdad has led some Pentagon officials to
criticize decisions by the U.S. military since early 2005 to transfer
responsibility for security in large swaths of Baghdad to Iraqi forces while
cutting back on American patrols.
"We made decisions to take an indirect approach, which is great if you want
low U.S. casualty rates," said the Pentagon official. However, he said:
"Passing responsibility to Iraqis does not equal defeating terrorists and
neutralizing the insurgency. Period."
© 2006 The Washington Post Company
--
"The really dangerous American fascists are not those who are hooked up
directly or indirectly with the Axis. The FBI has its finger on those. The
dangerous American fascist is the man who wants to do in the United States
in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way. The
American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison
the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how
best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to
deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more
power." - United States Vice President Henry Wallace