The Boston Globe January 07, 2004
US Wounded Totals Remain High In Iraq
Defense Figures Illustrate The Ongoing Dangers
By Robert Schlesinger, Globe Staff
Bryan Bender of the Globe staff contributed to this story
WASHINGTON - Nearly as many US soldiers were wounded in Iraq last month as during the entire six-week period of major combat operations, according to Defense Department statistics tracked by a research organization.
The figures illustrate the ongoing danger faced by US forces, even as the frequency of insurgent attacks appears to be declining and the number of soldiers killed has mostly held steady.
"That's a lot of pain," said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a defense-focused think tank that compiled the figures. "It suggests that the level of intensity of operations over there is a lot higher than would be suggested by the 'killed in action' numbers. . . . The 'killed in action' numbers suggest that we're winning the war and the wounded in action numbers suggest that we're losing."
According to Defense Department figures that Pike's group compiled, 530 US troops were wounded in December, only slightly fewer than the 550 wounded during combat operations last spring.
It was impossible to track month-by-month wounded statistics before December, Pike said, because the Pentagon only started in late November releasing daily tabulations of wounded. But he said that according to previous news reports of Pentagon figures, 570 US troops were wounded in combat from May through August, while from September through November, 1,052 soldiers were wounded.
Meanwhile, the number of US troops killed in action has held fairly steady each month since the end of major combat was declared on May 1, varying between 29 and 46. The exception came in November when successful attacks on US forces, especially on helicopters, resulted in 81 deaths.
US military officials and national security specialists suggested the high number of injuries could reflect December's stepped-up antiguerrilla activities.
US forces "went on a major offensive throughout December that would have in and of itself generated a lot of activity, so the potential for more contact is there," said Lieutenant Commander Nick Balice, a spokesman for US Central Command, which oversees Iraq.
Military specialists said that explanation seemed plausible given the lack of a corresponding rise in the number of troops killed, as insurgents would be more deadly in ambushes prepared against US troops than caught by surprise.
"There is some intuitive logic to the idea that if they're ambushing us they're going to to be more apt to kill us," said Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution.
O'Hanlon also noted that the number of daily attacks against US forces declined in the last few months of 2003, from 30-35 in October to 22 per day in November to fewer than 20 daily in December.
Major General Charles H. Swannack Jr., commander of the 82d Airborne Division, which is responsible for western Iraq, said that there has been a 60 percent decrease in attacks on US forces over the past month and that the attacks that have occurred are "less effective." Most attacks have come in the Sunni-dominated region north of Baghdad.
US Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was more cautious. "I see numbers that drop down, and the question is, when is it a trend and when might it turn and go up again?" he told reporters yesterday. "It's different in different parts of that country. It's not a uniform pattern in that country. It may be down in one region and up in another."
Owen Cote, of Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Security Studies Program, suggested that the US victory over Iraq's armed forces took would-be insurgents by surprise, and "the history of stability operations after the combat phase would argue that the insurgency has just been growing in effectiveness without pause."
And Jack Spencer, a defense analyst with the Heritage Foundation, argued that the figures showed the importance of US forces transferring security duties to Iraqis. "At the end of the day, that's the only way Iraq will be stabilized and pacified in the long term," Spencer said.
© Copyright 2004, Globe Newspaper Company
