“Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know,” said Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in a defense news briefing last Feb. 12. “We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – – the ones we don’t know we don’t know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones.”
Confused yet? Just wait until you realize that one thing that no one seems to know is just how many people have died in Iraq this year.
The U.S. Department of Defense gives a press release each time a soldier is killed in Iraq, but unlike the British, they do not publish a running tally. While the Pentagon does keep track of this number, it is for internal use only. Therefore the responsibility falls to civilian and media watch groups to keep track of the numbers.
The coalition casualty estimates change based on two variables. First, some people only speak about U.S. casualties. Second, some people talk about the casualties since the official end of the invasion, April 16. The coalition’s casualty numbers do not include any coalition civilians, like the 16 journalists who died or went missing this year in Iraq.
In addition, some left-wing organizations, like www.truthout.org, accuse the U.S. government of not reporting suicide deaths and accidental deaths in their official press releases.
The number of wounded varies on whether you take into account wounds received in non-hostile incidents. Hostile incidents generally involve combat. Non-hostile incidents are accidents and friendly fire. The wounded statistics do not include sick soldiers or routine check-ups. Were these hospital visits taken into account, the numbers would rise dramatically. Though there is no official tally, military newspaper Stars and Stripes reported on Nov. 12 that a German hospital in Landstuhl has treated more than 7,000 injured and ill service members from the Iraq war.
The Pentagon does not tally the number of Iraqi casualties – civilian or military, so these numbers are even harder to come by. Even if the number killed were reported each time, U.S. bombing tactics, over-worked hospitals, and cells of anti-American forces caring for their own wounded would render these tallies highly problematic.
“No one is able to keep accurate statistics of the admitted and transferred war wounded any longer as one emergency arrival follows the other in the hospitals of Baghdad,” said a spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross on April 6, 2003.
The Associated Press reported 3,240 civilian Iraqi deaths between March 20 and April 20, 2003. However, this figure was based on only half the hospitals in Baghdad, so estimates are thought to be much higher.
Some civilian watch groups have tried totaling the number of civilian deaths reported each day by the various newspapers. Media sources will often report a range of possible casualties for any given incident, so these civilian groups estimate between 7863 and 9693 casualties.
All of this assumes that the reports are even accurate. On December 1, Iraqi police said they could only confirm eight deaths in an engagement in which the coalition spokesman Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said 54 Iraqis were killed.
Kimmitt said the casualty reports were “visual battlefield reports … from soldiers involved in the engagement.”
“That’s why we have said all of these are estimated,” he said.
Coalition Casualties since March 20: 526

U.S.: 441
U.K.: 53
Polish: 1
Danish: 1
Spanish: 10
Ukrainian: 3
Italian: 17

Coalition Casualties In November: 109

U.S.: 81
U.K.: 1
Ukrainian: 3
Italian: 17
Spanish: 8

U.S. Troops Wounded since March 20: 2472

In hostile incidents: 2122
In non-hostile incidents: 350