I read these once a week, here's what I see:
Fatalities for August has already passed July and April with 48. Given that we're only 11 days into the month, it looks like Operation Quick Strike is going to cause a new fatality peak this month. Though that could well be caused by the 20 marines that died near August 4th distorting the numbers, its hard to say. The Brookings report lumps Iraq and Afghanistan casualties together, which isn't particularly useful, combat casualties in Iraq is 37 by my count.
Interestingly though, the number of troops wounded in action isn't that high so far. The wounded number is a better prediction of activity then the fatality number because if a vehicle with 20 soldiers hits an IED, it generally produces 20 injuries (some minor), but only tends to produce 1 or 2 fatalities, and not even then. Events like that of August 4th where an IED will kill all the people riding in a vehicle seems to be rare.
The number of Iraqi Military and Policed killed in August is lower then expected, but I've noticed that there's a bit of a lag in that number. In the beginning of August, the July number was lower then June, but one week later it jumped up to just pass the July number.
The number of Iraqi civilians killed in July was lower then May and June, which is good. Possibly this was due to fewer car bombs. Interestingly enough, while April/May saw huge numbers of car bombs (140), June/July have seen fewer on the order of 70/60. The deaths haven't cut in half though, so fewer but more deadly bombs. Most of the bombs in April/May only killed perhaps one person. In June/July about 1/2 to 1/3rd of the bombs killed more then one person.
As far as this month goes, we're slightly behind where I might have expected for civilian car bomb deaths.
Attacks on oil infrastructure are way down so far in August.
Anyway, here's this week's graph (click to popup a larger version)
Pretty much it seems to me like the terrorists hide in their spider holes, then come out at night and plant bombs. Its rare (and becoming rarer) for them to directly attack our forces (at least with any success). So if we can get better intelligence about car bomb factories, we can cut down on fatalities quite a bit. That's all hearts and minds, which is why I'm always harping on SWET (Sewer, Water, Electricity and Trash).
From the terrorists point of view, they're doomed. They obviously don't have enough people to directly attack anyone, and if there weren't Americans driving around to blow up, they wouldn't be accomplishing anything. As long as our military keeps their head, and as long as we keep training Iraqi police, I expect that over the coming year, these IED attacks will seem more and more pointless.
I suspect that leads to our exit strategy: Train lots of Iraqi Police, then reduce our patrols over the next year. Then the terrorists can only be effective if they come out of their spider holes, and at that point they can be easily crushed; there's just too few of them. At some point, the various factions just become criminal gangs; suddenly its in the interest of the populace to cooperate, or beat feet away from there.
The terrorists may be learning the lesson of Atlas Shrugged in a couple of years: People may just leave any neighborhood with terrorists, just like people in America move away from neighborhoods with too many drug dealers.
Comments (5)
I have to disagree with your analysis that the insurgents are not directly attacking anyone —- they may be transferring some level of their attacks against heavily armed and armored US units to lightly armored and armed Iraqi units, but the pace of attacks is higher this year than last year, and their ability to inflict casualties is as high as it has been when the US is not engaged in heavy urban fighting.
As of August 15th, according to Icasualties.org, the Iraqi security forces have lost more men in August than they did in January despite the month only being half over and the January surge pace not being replicated. This month is a little slower than June or July, but the pace is higher than it was in the first four months of the year, or at any point from May 2003 to Dec. 31, 2004.
The same data suggests that the ability of the insurgents to inflict attritional casualties on US forces has not changed (even if you want to remove from the analysis the single AMTRAC attack). The big US sweeps and operations that are getting publicized are the same Marine battalions going into the same towns three times in five months finding a determined rear guard that can fight a bloody delaying action while everyone else skedaddles.
Posted by Fester 986![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.opinionatedbastard.com/nav-commenters.gif)
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August 16, 2005 8:20 AM
Posted on August 16, 2005 08:20
I actually commented on the fact that the casualties were shifting from the US troops to the Iraqi police when I first started reading the Brookings report. You can read it here. Something you’re missing by comparing Jan to August is that there are a lot more IP now in August then there were in Jan, and they are a lot more active.
However, its one thing to harass troops, its another thing to hold territory. It’s all about hearts and minds, and any guerrilla force can only survive if the populace tolerates them. We have successfully cleaned out areas of Iraq where we’ve shown that if you have insurgents, you sit in the dark with no water, while if you don’t have insurgents, you sit in your house watching satellite TV and drinking ice tea.
Just by skimming the link you sent, it seems that most of those casualties with the IP are IEDs as well, which just sort of underlines my point.
Micheal Yon has an interesting piece this week on an IED attack. (see blogroll)
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August 16, 2005 9:31 AM
Posted on August 16, 2005 09:31
Something else you’re missing is that previously, the Marines would push the insurgents out of an area, they would go to another town. The latest operation is in multiple towns at once to deny them somewhere to retreat too. So the 3 times isn’t so bad, because the third operation builds on what they learned from #1 and #2.
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August 16, 2005 9:59 AM
Posted on August 16, 2005 09:59
Man your head is so in the sand. USA has lost many soldiers in August so your graph watch should be recognized as futile by now.
Plain truth, if the bovine american nation had not chewed on Bushs lies so easily not 1 US soldier would be dead in Iraq. Gee, those anti-war protestors were right! Bush lied! So now we see who really “supports the troops”
and i see thru all the nation building spreading democracy and jesus crap.so dont even try.
Who really supports the troops? IS it yuppies? Are the republican greed techno termites signing up their kids to die in iraq?? No Not the Bush twins, it would seem that if this cause were so noble jenna and tonic would be in the national guard loading planes with baby food to give to the grateful iraqi mothers who love the US and wish those nasty foreign insurgents would leave them alone..ahhah ya right.
really, i think republicans and war supporters should sign up for this noble cause so the working class soldiers who want to be relieved of unjust stop loss policies can come home. Seriously, where are the hordes of all these right wing virtue warriors of freedom? Why arent they signing up? Is it that the same decadent class of yuppie techno termites are unwilling to send their kids to die for their horrible imperialist policies? Why dont the yuppies give up their high paying “cush” jobs to make 12k a year getting shot at in iraq? i mean if this cause is so noble, why do the poor have to go die, not for oil? Again, if this is so noble, why arent republicans signing up en masse?
Who is going to fight your wars when nobody will sign up? Let your friends know, it is time for you and them to volunteer, sign up, and volunteer personal higher taxes for yourself to help pay for this noble effort….cutting taxes and starting “a global war on terror to take decades” incompetent retardation indeed.How long will China and Japan pay for your godly peaceful warmongering?
My current research focuses on the incompetence of totalitarian techno termites and how they are destroying themselves under false ideology. The evidence is everywhere. Thanks for the case study.
ernie
Posted by ernie | August 21, 2005 11:16 AM
Posted on August 21, 2005 11:16
Actually ernie, August may not be that bad, only 11 in the week since I posted this report, so we’re up to 59 now. So August will still be high, but not the 100+ I might have expected based on the numbers through 48.
Anyways, get some perspective. Even 100 dead/month in a war is pretty miniscule. You’re on the wrong blog if you think that’s where I’m coming from. The number of soldiers killed is still less then 9/11…
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August 21, 2005 11:26 AM
Posted on August 21, 2005 11:26