# What were the estimated U.S. casualties before the Iraq war

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-estimated-u-s-casualties-before-the-iraq-war/336001>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [December 17, 2005, 12:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-estimated-u-s-casualties-before-the-iraq-war/336001 "2005-12-17T00:53:25Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Lynwood\_Slim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/6f9a4e/32.png) [@Lynwood\_Slim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lynwood_Slim)\
**Post date:** [December 17, 2005, 12:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-estimated-u-s-casualties-before-the-iraq-war/336001/1 "2005-12-17T00:53:25Z")

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Ii asking for info, not a debate. I seem to remember before in invasion of Iraq in March 2003, many different sources estimating the range of expected U.S. military casualties. Does anyone have access to that info? What were the sources and their various numbers?

Thank you.

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**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\
**Post date:** [December 18, 2005, 12:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-estimated-u-s-casualties-before-the-iraq-war/336001/2 "2005-12-18T00:46:59Z")

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For whatever it might be worth, Pat Robertson, the televangelist, said in an October 2004 CNN interview that President Bush had told him personally that there would not be _any_ casualties in Iraq.

[http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/10/19/robertson.bush.iraq/](http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/10/19/robertson.bush.iraq/)

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**Author:** ![jimmmy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/73ab20/32.png) [@jimmmy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jimmmy)\
**Post date:** [December 18, 2005, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-estimated-u-s-casualties-before-the-iraq-war/336001/3 "2005-12-18T15:43:47Z")

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One influential Source was Michael OHanlon of the [Brookings Institution](http://www.brook.edu/dybdocroot/views/articles/ohanlon/20030122.pdf) (pdf pops) he takes you through alot of history and estimating paradigms to come up with a number of 100 to 5000 U.S. forces killed in the combat “the lower half of that range is perhaps most plausible”.

He also foresaw thousands of casulties in the US and Israel from Terrorists, focuses hugely on WMD threats and pays absolutely no attention to the end of major combat operations or even the concept of an “insurgency” as we have seen develop – Reading the document I find it is amazing what he did see and just as clearly whatt wasn’t forseen by him and – it may still be SDMB-GQ to say “few” in D.C. saw it much differently than O’Hanlon in Winter 2003.