Informed Speculation

You could do a full-length study on this (I can tell you right now that if I die tomorrow or live until I’m 130, my biggest complaint will be lack of time), but we can take a stab. First, remember, casualties and fatalities are two different things (casualties include the wounded). Second, let’s use two different sources, both well-respected (Iraqi Casualty Count and the Brookings Institution’s Iraq Index).

Iraqi Casualty Count helpfully includes a page with 4-week moving averages of both fatalities and wounded. I won’t regurgitate its contents verbatim, but the short version is this: U.S. fatalities, when considered with the moving average, have been remarkably flat. Sure, there are spikes, but we have averaged about 14-15 deaths a week pretty consistently since January of last year (a bad month in April has us actually spiking up a bit now, but it would be bad faith to pretend that the trend is either up or down – it is essentially steady).

The Brookings Index groups by month – no moving average here. That makes for a spikier chart, and without a trendline, it’s harder to make any definitive statements. The bad news is, as mentioned, we had a bad April after a fairly decent (if one can say such a casual thing about such a horrible thing as war fatalities) start to the year. The good news (again, with the disclaimer that I don’t mean to be flip here – God bless each and every one of the deceased and their families) is that there have been only 3 months with over 100 U.S. fatalities, and the last one was all the way back in November, 2004.

Turning to wounded, the Iraqi Casualty Count moving average paints a picture that’s slightly more positive. There is a small but perceptible downward slope to the wounded trend beginning in early 2005, with a very welcome downward swoop around late October of last year that, again, is unfortunatly marred by a bad April.

With monthly aggregates, though, the Brookings Index shows a far better picture – we can see the turning point is again around early 2005, when U.S. wounded numbers took a dramatic dive downward and have essentially stayed flat ever since.

The conclusion: we all know you can play with statistics and say just about anything. I’ll concede to unintentional exaggeration when I said coalition casualties were ‘way down’; I will insist that the trend, despite April, is mostly down, but gradual. All of that could change with a couple of good months, or even one really bad day, and I’ve intentionally left out of this discussion the Iraqi civilian deaths – I think everyone, from the most pacific progressive to the biggest war booster, can agree that situation is completely unacceptable, and it is internal, basic security (and it’s a bitter pill to still be saying this so far into the occupation) that must be the number-one priority of the U.S. – with its concurrent need for a strong government with the support and desire to take on the militias…