The Iraq situation may have deteriorated for Iraqis, but not for the Americans fighting there. Perhaps the latter is indirectly connected to the former, perhaps not. U.S. fatalities have decreased for five straight months. Last month, just 31 Americans deployed in Iraq lost their lives. That's the lowest total since February 2004. Body counts can be morbid, obtuse, and reductionistic, but if they are to be highlighted when the counts are higher then notice should be taken when the counts are lower.
While I am sure that Iraqis focusing on killing each other instead of Americans probably plays some kind of role, I would submit that the increasing level of incorporation of Iraqi Security Forces also plays a large one. For example, in the fighting that broke out after the Samarra Mosque bombing, it was the Iraqi Security Forces, not the US, that managed to get order back in place.
Somehow I doubt that if American troops, of a different ethnicity, culture, and language than the Iraqis in question had been deployed, the violence would have been stopped as quickly.
Exhibit A: The uprising of Summer 2004, when America essentially totally failed to stop Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army from consuming the south in warfare. It was the intervention of Ali Al-Sistani's Badr Brigade, not the US military, that put a stop to the uprising.
Looking at fatalities alone doesn't give a clear picture. We are able to patch up some pretty severe wounds, guys who if they were wounded as much in any previous war would certainly be dead. It looks like the wounded charts on that site are not as up to date as the fatality charts, but what data they have doesn't show as sharp a decrease as the fatality chart.
You could really cut those numbers if the troops were pulled out of Iraq and used to protest our border with Mexico.
Apparently Iraqis desire to kill each other has not been shooting skyward.
Averaged out over his 21 year reign, civilians in Iraq died at an average rate of between 70 and 125 a day. Over the course of the Iraq War, they die at an average rate of 13 a day.
http://www.gbn.com/ArticleDisplayServlet.srv?aid=2400&msp=1242
thats 70 to 125*
Woops, only gave one of the pertinent links.
http://www.qando.net/details.aspx?Entry=3652
Sorry about all that.
Ben, how do we define the course of the Iraq War?
Seems to have been fairly continuous since the start of the Gulf War.
Ben, how do we define the course of the Iraq War?
Seems to have been fairly continuous since the start of the Gulf War.
Generally the Iraq war is defined in terms of two seperate wars, the First and Second Persian Gulf Wars, referring to Operation Desert Storm and the Iraq War, specifically.
The low level conflict centering around Operation Desert Fox is generally considered not to be part of the "Iraq War" which generally refers to the time from when coalition forces crossed the Kuwaiti border into Iraq during the spring of 2003, till the present.
