I was checking on the body count and saw at:
http://www.antiwar.com/casualties/
that they have the number of U.S. dead at 1,001. Is that true? Has anyone else reported that? I would’ve assumed there would be a bigger noise about it.
I heard it on BBC News this morning.
[nitpick] Actually, we passed 1,000 casualties quite a while ago. You mean to ask if we’ve passed 1,000 deaths. [/nitpick]
As to the answer - yes.
Global Security has slightly different numbers.
Centcom reports casualties in a way that makes it hard to figure a running total.
The
Washington Post has it on page one. The opening paragraph even has the warning: “Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld declared that the insurgency is likely to turn even more violent in coming months…”
USA Today also has it on the front page.
Some counts include civilian contractors. Some count soldiers. Some count both.
It is right around 1,000 soldiers and a handful of contractors.
It’s on the front page of USA Today, the Washington Post, CNN.com…you name it.
FWIW, Iraq Coalition Casualties gets its info directly from CENTCOM’s press releases (and has links to each one); for all I know, your link may do the same. ICC updates their site multiple times daily, and breaks down the casualties in a number of ways: US/UK/other coalition; combat/noncombat; by month; before/after end of the combat phase; before/after the theoretical handover of power; and so forth. It’s also got injury totals, and an admittedly incomplete list of contractor deaths in Iraq.
As of this morning, the count stands at 1002. Plus ~50 U.S. contractors.
Plus an estimated 12-14,000 Iraqis killed.
You remember the Iraqis - they’re the folks we came to rescue from Saddam’s evil clutches.
Thanks, folks. It’s now on the Yahoo! news brief, natch.
This is weird because I would have sworn I heard Ted Koppel saying we passed the 1000 mark a few months ago. Maybe he meant civian Americans and soldiers. Maybe I was dreaming. It’s hard to tell.
Nobody else remembers this report?
That was probably the death toll for the whole US-led coalition:
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/07/09/iraq.main/
He probably meant American troops plus troops from other countries. That total passed one thousand some time ago. Not, of course, counting Iraqi soldiers fighting for the coalition - they don’t count.
The total number of soldier’s families ripped apart is 1134 as of today, if you count all coalition countries.
This includes the families of 65 Brits, 11 Spaniards, 10 Poles, 19 Italians, 8 Ukrainians, 6 Bulgarians, 2 Thai, 2 Dutchmen and 3 Slovaks. And 1003 American families, not counting the families of contractors.