WASHINGTON, 10 September 2004 — With the latest spike in violence in Baghdad, more US troops have died since the turnover of power to an interim Iraqi government at the end of June than were killed during the US-led invasion of the country in the spring of 2003.
A total 148 US military personnel have been killed since the partial transfer of sovereignty on June 28, compared with 138 who died in March and April of 2003, Pentagon figures show.
That trend is a grim indication that, 18 months after the invasion, the fighting appears to be intensifying rather than waning. And while attention has been focused largely on standoffs in Najaf and other well-publicized hot spots, an analysis of the figures shows the US military has taken more casualties elsewhere, including the deaths of some 44 troops in the western province of Al-Anbar and another 10 in the city of Samarra.
The wide geographic dispersion of the violence reflects the strength of a resurgent opposition and frames the challenge US commanders face in the coming months as the US seeks to hold an election to establish a new Iraqi government, said military officers and defense analysts.
“The ‘peace’ has been bloodier than the war,” said Capt. Russell Burgos, an Army Reservist who recently returned from a tour of duty with an aviation regiment in Balad, Iraq. In his view, the US experience in Iraq is coming to resemble Israel’s painful, 18-year occupation of parts of southern Lebanon.
Before the war, even predictions by the most skeptical Bush administration critics didn’t include scenarios of escalating violence this long after the invasion, or that the US military would be issuing a press release like the one it sent out Tuesday headlined “Fighting Continues in Eastern Baghdad.” In addition, several cities near Baghdad have slipped from US control in recent months and have become “no-go zones” for US troops.
“No one that I know of, to include the most pessimistic experts, predicted a full-scale insurgency would break out within a couple of months of the overthrow of the old regime,” said Steven Metz, an Army War College expert on guerrilla warfare.
Now, Metz said, “the current situation may be sustained for a very long time.”
On Tuesday, as the US military crossed the symbolic 1,000-casualty mark in Iraq, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld delivered a similarly somber assessment. “It’s a tough, difficult business,” he said at a Pentagon news conference, predicting more violence in coming months. But he also expressed confidence in the outcome, saying that “the offense (is) being effectively waged.”
The recent surge in violence has been especially surprising because in the weeks after the transfer of power there was a phase that, for Iraq, felt to some almost like a lull.
“July was significantly slower” than the violence of the spring, said Maj. Richard Gullick, an army neurosurgeon in Baghdad. But August roared back with 65 deaths and over 1,000 US troops wounded. The pace has worsened this month, with 25 fatalities so far. The nature of the fighting also has changed. In July, most of the combat losses with identifiable causes were inflicted by planted explosives — roadside bombs and land mines. But in August, deaths by gunfire and by suicide bomb attack also became a major cause, indicating more direct confrontations with enemy fighters.
“On a gut level, I’d probably agree that IED’s have played less of a role lately with respect to US casualties,” said Gullick, using the military’s acronym for “improvised explosive devices,” or bombs planted along roads.
More than a third of US deaths last month were in Al-Anbar, in Iraq’s western desert, where the Marine Corps is posted. Underscoring the intensity of the engagements there, the Marines lost more people last month — some 32 — than the army did, only the second time that has occurred since the spring 2003 invasion. The nature of the Marine deaths is harder to analyze because the Marines generally don’t release information about the specific causes.
Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on Tuesday summarized the fighting by noting a “spike in the casualties” not only of US and Iraqi government forces but also of the insurgents, even as their opposition becomes more sophisticated. “The more aggressive the tactics of the insurgency, the greater their loss of human life,” he said. Rumsfeld elaborated on that point, estimating that as many as 2,500 insurgents and criminals were killed in the August fighting.
Rumsfeld also said this week that casualties among Iraqi security forces allied with the United States are even heavier than the United States has suffered. “They’ve lost more Iraqi security people, killed or wounded, in the last two months than the coalition has lost people,” Rumsfeld said in an interview with WDAY-AM radio in Fargo, N.D., according to a transcript released by the Pentagon.
Military experts said the latest round of combat is a sign that the US military is engaged in what promises to be a protracted war. But they drew sharply different conclusions about what it means.
“Sadly, the 1,000th military death is but a bookmark on a longer and more painful road,” said retired army Lt. Col. Carlo D’Este, now a historian specializing in World War II. As in the Vietnam War, he said, “there is no visible ‘light at the end of the tunnel,’ nor has the Bush administration articulated a viable exit strategy, without which the war will continue indefinitely — that is, years.” But retired army Brig. Gen. David Grange drew a different conclusion. “We are fighting a counterinsurgency” for which there is “no short-term fix,” He said. The key to victory will be “maintaining the will of the American people.”
Spec. Joseph Roche, a 1st Armored Division soldier who recently returned from over a year in Baghdad, said the US military’s morale in Iraq is high and it is performing well. His main worry is whether the American people will stick by the mission as they see more casualties. “My concern, honestly, is the impact this is having on the American people and our ability to be strong in this war.”
