According to U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, the Iraq War will end by 2009. “The level of activity that we see today from a military standpoint, I think, will clearly decline. I think they’re in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency.”
It takes guts to call the end of the Iraq War. For an updated report on the coalition dead and wounded, see here. If the insurgency is in its “last throes,” it certainly doesn’t reflect well in the records of the dead and wounded.
In the past five months, 303 coalition military members died. This is down from 447 in the five months before (a difference of 144). This is a 32% reduction. Looking only at the military wounded, the DoD reports that 1,951 servicemembers were wounded since January 2005, down from 4,215 in the five months before (a difference of 2,264). This is a 54% reduction. The website I got the data from has an alternative list to the DoD and I’m not sure where they got the numbers. Anyway, they delineate between the wounded who did not return to action within 72 hours from those that did. Of those that did not return to action, 911 were from the last 5 months, compared to 1,964 the previous five months (a difference of 1,053). This also is a 54% reduction.
In the past 10 months, 120 contractors died (they don’t list the wounded contractors). Forty-five died since January 2005, and 75 died in the previous five months. This is a 40% reduction. Of contractors, 241 have died since April 2003.
According to Iraq Body Count, 2,849 Iraqis died in the last five months, down from 4,317 the five months before (a difference of 1,474). This is a 34% reduction.
In sum, the number of people who died in the last five months as a result of the Iraq War is 3,197, down from 4,839 dead the previous five months. The difference in total deaths is 1,642, a 34% reduction.
Looking at the last couple five months intervals, it’s clear that there has been significant reduction in the dead and wounded. Of course, we’re still talking about thousands of deaths and thousands of wounded. A 34% reduction does not seem indicative of the “last throes” of a dying insurgency. I imagine that “last throes” is more substantial than that, probably around an 80-90% reduction in total deaths. Cheney seems optimistic, but the numbers of this kind of “military activity” does not leave room for predictions of the end of the war.
While I myself wouldn’t use the rabidly partisan and inaccurate Iraq Body Count website as an indicator of anything other than anti-war sentiment, I must admit that I find Vice President Cheney’s optimism to be, well, too optimistic. I would like for him to be right.
It’s also worth noting that the War on Militant Islam will likely be fought for decades longer, and that Iraq is one battle in it. As long as there is militant Islam, the west will be at war with it.
Iraq Body Count is as credible a source as you’ll find on this issue. Their methodology is clearly stated:
http://www.iraqbodycount.net/background.htm#methods
In sum, they compile reports from news organizations to get two lists; a maximum count and a minimum count. My numbers are from the minimum count.
I am not aware of any other organization that maintains a count of the Iraqi dead as a result of the War. I think it’s clear that they are against the war, but their methodology is set up so as to minimize ideological bias. Their data is far from perfect. However, it is the best we have.
No, it’s the only one out there ostensibly measuring civilian casualties, and they’ve shown their ideological bias many many times in their numbers. That only makes them present, it doesn’t make them the best. Throwing a hungry man a clot of dog shit to eat doesn’t make dog shit the best source of nutrition he has.
I guess what I’m saying is that the methodology is sound. The source of bias doesn’t come from Iraq Body Count, but from the media sources they use to cull the data. If the media sources are all biased, then the data is biased, and is the feces of which you speak. I think the media data is a valid source and the overall bias is probably minimal. Therefore, I put more faith in the numbers than those who suspect Iraq Body Count of being nothing more than a political machine.
The methodology of collecting the figures is itself biased toward gathering the highest numbers possible. Whenever anyone in the media reports casualty numbers, they’re added to the minimum and maximum columns no matter what, even if the numbers haven’t been confirmed by any science or evidence available. In the early stages of the war, the website also took everything Saddam’s government said at face value, no matter how likely it was that they were lying. To undermine support for the war, it’s extremely likely that the Baathists made up casualty figures. Taking the former Iraqi government’s word on civilian casualty figures is on par with believing Baghdad Bob’s ranting accounts of how the Iraqi Republican Army was grilling the stomachs of the infidels at the gates of Baghdad, or whatever silly disinformation he was spewing out.
I don’t know if there’s any evidence that the Iraq Body Count website corrects earlier posted figures when new (credible) information is made available. I’m guessing not.
With all the talk of how President Bush “rushed” to war without credible intelligence, it’s remarkable what many of us will believe. If Iraq Body Count dot org is considered credible among reputable statisticians, then Mark Twain was dead on when he said, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”
Whether the Vice President’s prediction of the insurgency’s defeat is accurate or not remains to be seen. However, I must point out that casualty rates are generally not an indicator of success or failure in war. In fact, more often than not the opposite is true. If I may offer just a few historical examples, the last year of the American Civil War from the spring of 1864 until the spring of 1865 was by far the bloodiest year of the war for both sides with the fiercest fighting and the most wanton destruction of property. Yet, the Confederate cause was dying throughout that period with little hope of victory for the boys in gray. During the single month of April 1945 as the Third Reich was in its death throws, more Americans were killed in combat in Europe than have been killed in all military operations since the end of the Vietnam War. If you want to talk about insurgencies, the last year of the Philippine Insurrection and of the Anglo-Boer War witnessed the heaviest losses for both sides as those very effective insurgencies were suppressed by professional volunteer armies of the kind that we are employing in Iraq.
Declining military and political fortunes tends to make the losing side, especially one with a passionate nationalist, ideological or religious foundation, fight with a desperate fervor that will lead to a greater loss of life among both civilians and the military. This has historically always been true. The last hope of any country or movement facing defeat is to wear the enemy down to the point where they will no longer believe that victory, however attainable, is worth the cost. In 1864, that was the last desperate hope of a dying Confederacy, to bleed the North to such an extent that they would reject Abraham Lincoln in the November election of that year and instead elect a peace candidate. In the summer of 1945, the Japanese war lords were staking everything on the forlorn hope that catastrophic casualties from suicide attacks during the Allied invasion of the Japanese home islands would compel the Americans to agree to a compromise peace. They never had a chance to test that strategy because of events then taking place in the deserts of New Mexico.
It is therefore more than likely that in its final months and years, the Iraqi insurgency will prove even more deadly and cost more lives, Iraqi as well as American. And I can promise you that those losses will convince many people here at home that we are losing the war or that it was not worth the cost in the first place. Only history ten or twenty years down the road can really answer that question. I am inclined to believe that President Bush will be vindicated by posterity for the establishment of a democratic or at least mildly authoritarian Iraq and the positive example that will serve in the region. Of course, another legacy of the conflict will probably be a permanent U.S. military presence in Mesopotamia and the Gulf, a kind of imperial presence that our British colleagues maintained before they withdrew from that commitment in 1967. It is, I regret, an unavoidable responsibility since there is no one else who can do it and no one else that we would want doing it.
I very much agree with Ray. I am currently re-reading a book “The End of the Line.” It is about the Vietnam war. I first read it 18 years ago and thought it very good. In re-reading I have found many coralations with todays events in Iraq. If I were to rename the book it would be “How America loses wars”. I won’t elaborate just recommend reading it.
Well, if increasing body count occurs at the end of wars, then Cheney was definitely off in his assessment. I’m not sure what other activities they are looking at from a military standpoint to make the claim that the insurgency is in its “last throes.” If death counts are not the best measure, are incidents of car bombings? Kidnappings? I’m not sure what. I think death count is an accurate reflection of military activity. It’s possible that it’s misleading, but I’m not sure what the better measure is.
As for Iraq Body Count, once again, the methodology speaks for itself. An example of the methodology used elsewhere is instructive. Social scientists examine social protest movements, among other things. Since social protest occurs in multiple forms and are not officially collected (except, maybe, by the FBI), the best way to track the level of social protest is through newspaper accounts. It’s been demonstrated that newspaper accounts are frequently wrong in how they count the number of protestors. There are various ways of collecting that number, but most frequently the media relies on police reports. Police reports frequently differ, usually by under-counting, from scientifically informed methods such as examining detailed photographs taken at appropriate angles, counting numbers per square foot, etc. Since Iraq Body Count uses the media reports, which are most likely the official reports coming out of the region, then the number is most likely low-balled. If Iraq Body Count fronted a pure political agenda, then they would probably take only Al Jazeera and other Arab media which would most likely inflate the numbers. Instead, they take numbers from American media sources, too, and report the lowest possible number along with the highest and allow the reader to make up their minds about it.
None of these assertions change the fundamentally flawed nature of the data being collected, nor do they excuse the inherent bias. I refuse to take Baghdad Bob’s word for anything.