We hear a lot about how we have to "Stay the course" in
Iraq. Plenty of people crying out, "we're there so, we MUST win", etc. So, I
decided to take a look at what we could predict this much lauded "course" is all
about in terms of U.S. casualties. The results of the number crunching excise were very interesting. I used this morning's latest count from http://icasualties.org/oif / and worked out some averages per month and year.
Per month (on average over 28 months) we have lost 62 officially reported American service people in Iraq (1737 casualties/28 months). That works out to 744 per year (1737 casualties/2.3333333 years so far).
So, that brings us to "The Course". Since the Republicans were all chanting "4 More years", it seemed like that would be a good period to estimate out.
If we assume that things will pretty much go along as they have on average since the war started, here is what we can expect:
Average U.S. Casualties Per Year as of 6/25/05 744
Projected Total 6/25/06 = 2481
Projected Total 6/25/07 = 3225
Projected Total 6/25/08 = 3969
Projected Total 6/25/09 = 4713
In March of 2007, we hit an estimated 3,039 Americans killed in Iraq, thereby surpassing the number that were killed on September 11th 2001 (NOT THAT TWO WERE IN ANY WAY RELATED OUTSIDE OF THE ADMINISTRATION'S PR BS).
Additional Sad Milestones:
2000 KIA expected Nov. 2005
3000 KIA expected Mar. 2007
4000 KIA expected Jul. 2008
5000 KIA expected shortly after the "4 more years" mark
Some may argue that compared to previous conflicts, that this rate of casualties is somewhat low and they would certainly be correct with regard to something like WWII. However, compared to other conflicts in the post Vietnam era, this rate of losses is quite substantial.