The Opinionated Bastard

In other words, there are an increasing number of deadly actions taking place, but those actions affect fewer people.

Completely guessing here (and that’s an understatement):

Could this be an indicator of less planned or deliberate attacks and more indicative of spontaneous or haphazard violence?

And from that, the insurgents or guerillas are less centralized and are acting in smaller groups on their own and in less purposeful (in a larger sense) manner?

The insurgents are more splintered and inchoate (ill formed)?

Whether that’s a good or bad sign is anyone’s guess. It could be viewed as a positive in that the opposition is less threatening to the civil government but also as a negative as it indicates a more disparate and widespread danger.

I’ll be pollyannish and says this is good news.

Lots of problems with your analysis.

1) March 2005 was the lowest death figure for that year as well.

http://icasualties.org/oif/prdDetails.aspx?hndRef=3-2005

2) April is not working out well

http://icasualties.org/oif/prdDetails.aspx?hndRef=4-2006

Still they do say that a stopped clock is right twice a day, so keep it up.

Or are insurgents falling in capabilities and general crime - the result of Sadam emptying his prison becomes the pervasive insecurity?

I saw a graph Saturday that displayed deaths, on a monthly basis, since the start of the campaign, and from what I remember the months of February, March and April are the months of lowest deaths in each year, except for the start of the campaign. So is this a new trend or just a continuation of a pattern that is extended over multiple years?

I remember the months of February, March and April

Weather related?

More religious holidays or unique customs/commemorations celebrated or observed?

< a href=”http://futurist.typepad.com/myweblog/2006/03/thewindsofwa.html”> A great article on the past and future of warfare, with perspective on how non-deadly of a war Iraq is, and some interesting predictions.

A great article on the past and future of warfare, with perspective on how non-deadly of a war Iraq is, and some interesting predictions.

Although there are those who may choose to think of the current situation as a civil war, it reminds me far more of Pottawatomie Brown’s “Bloody Kansas” updated and writ large. There too, the level of violence and body count would wax and wain while the press breathlessly reported, and frequently exaggerated, every incident calculated to advance their cause. A few years later the firebrands got their war and a half million or more young men paid the ultimate price.

How do we jive this with the relatively negative reports in the media?

It’s not ‘jive’. It’s ‘jibe’. The words mean completely different things, even though they sound similar.

In fact, you could say that the media has enough ‘jive’ already that doesn’t ‘jibe’ with the facts.

Steve, you said:

“Lots of problems with your analysis. 1) March 2005 was the lowest death figure for that year as well. 2) April is not working out well”

But you missed the most important part of his analysis; that it is a downward trend in the last five months. If you want to be a smartass, try focusing a little more on the point.

Someone else mentioned that March and April of every year see a lull. March 2004 saw an uptick, and April 2004 was one of the worst months of the war.

On the matter of Iraqi civilian casualties, the Brookings data is wrong, or at best incomplete.

The links by Sonic to Iraq Coalition Casualties tell all. March 2005 was double the monthly average, and April is running worse than March.

I think there is much to be made of weather in that part of the world. The spring affords some of the most amenable weather to operations (why do you thing the invasion started then?) and that applies to good guys and bad guys.

I do believe the situation in Iraq is improving, by anyone’s measure. Today’s bombing in Pakistan serves as a reminder that sectarian violence is the norm in these fractured communities.

Remember the Balkans? Same thing.

Oops.

March 2006 was double …

Sonic,

Of course 11 of the 26 deaths in the month of April 2006 are due to the rollover of a truck (9 dead) and two non-hostile deaths from heart attack or heat stroke implied deaths. If I take those out, then April looks like it is still a pretty low casualty month.

And why can’t Brookings break out the wounded from serious wounds to minor wounds like icasualties.org seems to be able to do. If you follow that trend, the wounded, not returned to duty within 72 hrs data is still on a downward trend. But it is pretty much down in the grass as far as injury data.

3x-4x as many troops die every year from accidents during training or on the highway or through suicide as the number who have died in combat.

When you are looking at data so far down in the grass, every time an ant pisses on you, you’ll call it a flood.

Subsunk

“If I take those out, then April looks like it is still a pretty low casualty month.”

Hate to tell you this but those guys are still dead.

Four more dead since this post was written

http://icasualties.org/oif/prdDetails.aspx?hndRef=4-2006

The important number to look at is the “NET impact” in human lives. Just as we consider the risk of flying in making our travel arrangements, rational people also consider the risk of driving. So it is important not only to look at the number of lives lost as a result of our action, but also the number of lives that would have been lost had we chosen an alternate course of action (ie. Left Saddam in power and not liberated Iraq as some liberals, Democrats, and appeasement types prefer).

It is difficult to forecast the number of lives that would have been lost. If Neville Chamberlain had attempted a similar calculation on Hitler prior to 1938, his forecast might have been underestimated by about 20,000,000 lives. Yet even without the benefit of hindsight, we can all agree that he and other appeasers miscalculated. Given what we know about the sadistic rapes, beatings, and killings enjoyed by Saddam�s sons Uday and Qusay (both currently burning in hell thanks to brave coalition forces), as well as the regime�s determination to acquire weapons of mass destruction not available in Hitler�s time, I am inclined to believe that the 880,000 casualties caused by Saddam over the last 24 years is small compared to what might have been over the next 24 years.

At any rate, I have calculate the average casualty rate per month under Saddam during his reign of terror and multiplied that by the number of months we have been in Iraq in order to calculate a NET SAVINGS of about 83,000 human lives as a result of the Iraq War.

Human rights organizations have estimated that Saddam was responsible for the following casualties. Source: �The Most Evil Dictators in History� by Shelley Klein 2004

590,000 midpoint of estimates of casualties from chemical weapons against Iranians estimates ranged from (450,000 and 730,000)

245,000 midpoint of estimates from using chemical weapons including Mustard gas, Sarin gas, Tabun, and VX Nerve agents against Iraqi Kurds (between 150,000 and 340,000)

45,000 suppression of Iraqi Shia and Kurds in 1991 (est. range 30,000 to 60,000)

This adds up to a Grand Total of 880,000.

This figure does not include casualties of invading Kuwait. Actually if you really want to get liberals to support our mission in Iraq, remind them that Saddam destroyed Iraq�s southern marshlands.

Saddam Hussein�s reign of terror lasted 24 years. It began in 1979 and ended in 2003, when brave US soldiers pulled that cowardly piece of @$%& out of a spider hole. Based on that, the kill rate under Saddam was 36,667 deaths per year (880,000/24) or 3,056 deaths per month (880,000/24/12).

The war to liberate Iraq began in March 2003. It is now April 2006 and we have made more progress rebuilding Iraq in these 37 months than we did in a decade after rebuilding democracies in Germany and Japan. Anyhow, based on Saddam�s 24 year average monthly kill rate of 3,056, we would have incurred an estimated 113,072 casualties over this 37 month period if we had left him in power. If I subtract that from the 30,000 estimate of casualties from the liberation and rebuilding of Iraq, I come up with a NEGATIVE (-83,072). This means that even the initial investment regarding the human cost of liberating Iraq is actually a NET SAVINGS. Now, how can you tell me that the cost of freedom is too high?

Who are the 30,000 lives lost? Are they mostly innocent women and children like those gassed and thrown in mass graves by Saddam? While I have no doubts that some innocent people have unfortunately been killed in the crossfire, they are not the target of coalition forces. Contrary to the image that Democratic leader John Kerry offers when he describes US soldiers as terrorists and accuses them of �terrorizing Iraqi women and children�, the fighting in Iraq is surgically targeting terrorists, Saddam loyalists and otherwise very, very bad dudes. US soldiers are NOT razing villages in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Kahn.

More importantly, who are the millions of lives saved over the next several decades as a result of this preemptive strike? If two dozen men with some box cutters can kill 3,000 Americans on 9/11 than how many more could a billionaire with the desire to reconstitute its chemical and biological weapons programs have killed right here in America?

Now 36…..

Perhaps it might be worth deleting this excuse for an article?

No, Sonic. You can rail about April all you want, but this article is about March. When April is over, I’ll look at the April data and there will be a new article.