Why American casualties in Iraq are so LOW

international | anti-war / imperialism | opinion/analysis Wednesday May 05, 2004 00:58 by David C.

The success of American 'casualty-management' techniques and propaganda have reduced the 'official' US casualty rate in Iraq from about 3,000 dead to about 750 dead.

Approximately 757 American military personal have been killed in Iraq since the U.S. invaded that country one year ago. This casualty count is interpreted by the American government and by the majority of the world's media as being unacceptably high, and a major media-management campaign has been implemented by the Americans to diminish its impact. Photographs of caskets and dead soldiers are banned, President Bush refuses to attend military funerals, and the U.S. military release the bare minimum of information about casualties.

These casualty figures are, however, artificially low. They are held low by a combination of factors, many of which are intentionally intended to minimize the effect of American casualties in public opinion in the U.S. These factors are outlined below:

THE PROPORTION OF WOUNDED WHO DIE HAS BEEN REDUCED. Improvements in body armour, field medical care and evacuation have collectively reduced the proportion of injured soldiers who are killed to about 1 in 6, which is much lower than the 1 in 3 ratio experienced in all previous American wars, including the first gulf war. This allows many extremely maimed people to be excluded from the casualty figures. Had the wounded-to-dead ratio remained at the historical level, the US would have experienced about 1,600 to 2,000 dead by this point. An inadvertent leak by a mid-level American military official in March revealed that there were 18,000 medical evacuations from Iraq at that point, illustrating the extent of injuries. Those numbers, and the 'official' number of wounded (about 4000) are undoubtedly far higher following April's uprising.

MANY OF THE DEAD ARE CONTRACTORS. Haliburton/KBR - a major military contractor working for US forces in Iraq, has lost about 40 of its people to deadly violence in Iraq. Titan Corp., another contractor, has lost about 20. Many dozens of other companies, including many non-US and non-western companies, have also lost personnel. There are no 'official' numbers available of contractors killed in Iraq, however it likely exceeds 200 and might even be has high as 400. These are casualties among those who perform military roles and which therefore should be counted as US military dead. They are, in fact, ignored.

MANY OF THE DEAD ARE FOREIGN TROOPS. The relatively tiny non-US portion of the so-called 'coalition' have been losing troops at a faster rate than the US military. About 107 of the 22,000 non-US coalition troops in Iraq have died, a proportion that is slightly higher than for US troops. But the deaths of Salvadorian or Ukrainian or even British troops rarely generate media interest in the US, and have almost no impact on US public opinion.

MANY OF THE DEAD ARE IRAQI. The US has rapidly handed over the most dangerous and challenging military roles to teams of under-trained, under-equipped Iraqi 'troops', who are attracted by salaries and by a genuine desire to help their homeland. A recent photograph in the New York times showed a joint US-Iraqi patrol, in which patrol dogs used by the Americans wore body armour while the Iraq forces wore none. This use of Iraqis approaches the 'human shield' policies of the Baathist regime and is used to minimize American casualties. You can imagine how much the American public cares about Iraqi dead. As many as 1200 Iraqis have died performing US military missions in Iraq.

American casualty management has therefore successfully reduced the 'official' number of American casualties from as many as 3,000 to about 750. This campaign, combined with an extensive ongoing media campaign against effectively reporting even the 'official' casualties', has been partially responsible for Americans disinterest in the truth about the reasons for the Iraq war, about the low level of support for the Americans within Iraq and internationally and about the lack of any realistic US plan for withdrawal. When US public opinion finally wakes up then the US will withdraw from Iraq. Unfortunately, American propaganda about casualties will delay that withdrawal, and will therefore contribute to the number of Americans and Iraqis who will die in the coming year.