U.S. War Dead in Iraq Exceed Early Vietnam Years

Thursday, November 13, 2003 5:23 p.m. ET
By David Morgan

http://news.lycos.com/news/story.asp?section=MyLycos&storyId=798648

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - The U.S. death toll in Iraq has surpassed the number of American soldiers killed during the first three years of the Vietnam War, the brutal Cold War conflict that cast a shadow over U.S. affairs for more than a generation.

A Reuters analysis of Defense Department statistics showed on Thursday that the Vietnam War, which the Army says officially began on Dec. 11, 1961, produced a combined 392 fatal casualties from 1962 through 1964, when American troop levels in Indochina stood at just over 17,000.

By comparison, a roadside bomb attack that killed a soldier in Baghdad on Wednesday brought to 397 the tally of American dead in Iraq, where U.S. forces currently number about 130,000 troops -- the same number reached in Vietnam by October 1965.

The casualty count for Iraq apparently surpassed the Vietnam figure last Sunday, when a U.S. soldier killed in a rocket-propelled grenade attack south of Baghdad became the conflict's 393rd American casualty since Operation Iraqi Freedom began on March 20.

(more)

But if the attacks continue to escalate that number could grow considerably. We, the voters, can put this to a stop next November.

Until we reach thousands and everyone who knows someone who got zapped,--- the Horseshit will continue.

Many of us have been watching and waiting and crying as this escalates. For comparison purposes:

Year/Number of US Dead

1956-1960 -- 9 US deaths
1961 16 -- US deaths
1962 52 -- US deaths
1963 118 -- US deaths
1964 206 -- US deaths
1965 1,863 -- US deaths

The future is not difficult to predict, is it. :(

I'd love it for my files.

Eloriel

CACCF Record Counts by Year of Death or Declaration of Death (as of 12/98)
<http://www.archives.gov/research_room/research_topics/vietnam_war_casualty_lists/statistics.html#year>

If you scroll up the page, you can see how the data has been sorted. This is the most extensive piece of research I've seen on this subject.

http://www.archives.gov/research_room/research_topics/vietnam_war_casualty_lists/statistics.html

My Greg is there - 1971 :cry:

the mainstream in the last day or two, the TOTAL number of soldiers killed. They have always split them up into pre and post. The latter being the number you have seen in the news for months, or what I have read/seen anyway.

I don't understand the sudden shift of reporting all the deaths in one number. Don't get me wrong I think it is a good thing. I just don't understand why now, all of a sudden.

...this administration's outright distain for the press (despite the free ride given the administration by the media, up until now), along with reports of Western reporters being assaulted by coalition troops.

...once that happened it appears that the press was given the green light to report ANYTHING negative about the Bushies.

How are they connected? Read a little information on Operation Mockingbird: <http://www.prisonplanet.com/analysis_louise_01_03_03_mockingbird.html>

...and you'll begin to realize that the CIA currently has assets working for every single news media organization in the country.

It also ties in with the fact that the media is owned by major corporations that are politically very consrvative. I'm sensing that they feel that the Bushies aren't delivering on the economy, and they "only" received one-third of the tax cuts they originally wanted. Add to that the twin economic anchors of Afghanistan and Iraq, and you have some seriously concerned corporate execs. They've turned the media loose.

...of the Washington Post:

Bob Woodward
by Lisa Pease
<http://www.webcom.com/ctka/pr196-woodward.html>

Excerpts:

The staunchly conservative Bob Woodward grew up in Wheaton, Illinois. A good student at Yale, he was ultimately one of fifteen seniors "tapped" for one of that university's secret societies, Book and Snake, a cut below the more infamous Skull and Bones, but the top of the second-tier fraternities.

...snip...

Certainly, with the CIA encouraged to recruit on the Yale campus, particularly among history majors and secret societies, it is more than reasonable to assume Bob may have been one of those approached by the agency, or by a military intelligence unit, especially after four years of naval ROTC training....It would also explain the comments of Pulitzer Prize-winning author J. Anthony Lukas, when he wrote in 1989 that Bob Woodward was "temperamentally secretive, loathe to volunteer information about himself," or the Washingtonian's remarks in 1987: "He is secretive about everything." As Esquire magazine put it, summing up in its 1992 article on Bob, "What is he hiding?"

...snip...

Three days after graduating from Yale, Woodward was sent by the U.S. Navy to Norfolk, Virginia, where he was commissioned as an ensign by none other than U.S. Senator George Smathers from Florida. Bob's assignment was to a very special ship, called a "floating Pentagon," the U.S.S. Wright. The ship was a National Emergency Command Ship-a place where a President and cabinet could preside from in the event of a nuclear war. It had elaborate and sophisticated communications and data processing capabilities. It had a smaller replica of the war room at the Pentagon. It ran under what was called SIOP-Single Integrated Operation Plan. For example, in the event of nuclear war, the Wright was third in line to take full command if the two ahead of it, the Strategic Air Command in Omaha (SAC) and NORAD, were rendered incommunicado. Woodward-straightfacedly-told authors Colodny and Gettlin (Silent Coup) that he guessed he was picked for the ship because he had been a radio ham as a kid.

-snip-

And then the article discusses Woddward's role in Watergate...interesting read and well worth the time to do so.




EDITED BY ADMIN FOR COPYRIGHT REASONS

at the time, so the percentage is still higher for Vietnam.
However, I don't want to see those percentages matched and want our troops out and the UN in.

.

Iraqis will work with the UN where they will not work at all with the US. The US has destroyed any credibility it ever had throughout the world while the UN has remained steadfast. I has serious doubts whether the UN would even undertake such a mission after the US created so much illwill.

...don't care who they kill as long as ALL foreigners leave Iraq. And I also believe their numbers are growing as civilian casualties mount at the hands of "coalition" troops.

This has become Jihad for them, and they are in the same killing rage in which we found the Afghanis when they were fighting the Soviets and now while fighting us.

As you stated so well, the UN would be wise to stay out of Iraq.

after 9/11. you kill ours, we kill your's. iraq didn't attack us on 9/11, but they are paying the price for those who did. but, our presence there is THEIR 9/11. Our 9/11 lasted a day. Their's is lasting 8 months so far. We aren't winning hearts and minds, we're creating terrorists.



but i know i'm preaching to the choir. i'm just pissed.

"When the number of attacks on U.S. servicemen increased in 1964, President Johnson decided to begin bombing North Vietnam which helped the Vietcong with weapons and supplies. The bombing, in turn, led the Vietcong to attack more American troops. The U.S. responded by sending more troops to Vietnam. From December 1964 to June 1965, the number of American ground forces in Vietnam more than tripled, from 23,500 to 75,000." link

What is it this reminds me of... :cry:

They are actually a news organization at times, which I can't say for too many of these corporate outfits today.

It's on ATT's home page as a top story...:shrug:

From my europeen point of view, the comparsion with Vietnam is false. It's more like the Sowjet-Afghanistan war. Like in Afghanistan itself, the USA is able to win every battle, but you can't win the war. These guys are fanatics, and they believe in god. They have no stoppages to make suicide attacs. I don't think, that's possible to beat them without killing them all.
Read the articles of Robert Fisk from the UK Independent or the german-french journalist Peter Scholl-Latour.
I really wish you luck with this difficult situation, because it's an international problem now and it's not appropriate to say, we told you before.

Some DUers brought it up earlier that there is at least 7500 wounded being treated for various causes in medical facilities. And roughly 400 dead. The ratio is 18.75 to 1. This is either unbelievable or the surgeons are magicians or the soldiers are resurrecting each day.

No matter how advanced the battle medicine became these days, this ratio of 18.75 to 1 wounded vs. killed is impossible, so I would take official KIA figures with a spoon of salt.