We know that At least 4,029 American soldiers have died during the war in Iraq, and another 29,600 have been wounded in action.

According to recent estimations, at least 16,500 insurgents, militia, suicide bombers, and other fighters have been killed during the war.

Usually, the ratio between KIA and WIA is 1:2. That would give us an estimated 50,000 Iraq insurgency casualties.

If we compare that with the 35,000 US casualties, the relations are surprisingly even.

To the US casualties should be added more than 10,000 KIA among the Iraq Security Forces, with probably another 20,000 WIA, for a total of 30,000 casualties.

So the insurgency appears to have inflicted 60,000 casualties on the US and Iraq Security Forces, against maybe 50,000 own casualties.

My question is how come the US forces apparently have failed to deal an enemy which is much lighter armed, probably far less well trained, and without any air support, the usual kill ratio of 5 to 10 insurgency casualties for each casualty sustained by a regular and modern army.

In the Vietnam war, there were 58,000 US troops KIA and 184,000 South Vietnamese troops KIA, against 1.1 million North Vietnamese or FNL soldiers or guerillas KIA. The ratio was nearly 1:5.

But in Iraq, the casualty ratio appears to be only 1:1 or even worse.

Whatever you may think of the war in Iraq, this represents a quite dramatic new trend, and the reasons to this deserve to be examined.

This is the source which I used:

Casualties of the Iraq War - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

It's the best source I could find. If someone else could find a better sorce, it would be welcome.

excellent post..I'll take a look at his thx.

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"The captain has turned off the `No Dubbing' sign. You are free to speak any language you choose."

its really hard to find any data to talk about this Winkpedia isnt a reliable source and most of what i have looked over , in the last 20 minutes has been opinion pieces on boards like this

Found one that speaks of the miltary releasing a number of 19 K

Counter to press - 19,000 insurgents killed in Iraq since '03

searched Army Knowledge Online and couldnt find any data that could substanitate this article


but to address those numbers, if true , which i dont agree the insurgent casualties are that low, just from talking to those who still are over there when they do get them to show their faces , they die , due believe most of the high rate of casualties are due to the obvious IED

they have to be lucky once, we have to be lucky all the time.

All those numbers leave me dazed and confused. I think what many people are overlooking is the fact that many of these "insurgents" weren't bad people before we got there and disbanded their army and took their jobs away from them. Had Japan invaded America 60 years ago and me and you were to take up arms and fight them off, wouldn't it be preposterous for them to call you and me "insurgents"?

Iraqis didn't have a claim to kill Americans until we went over there and refused to leave. We said we'd be there for a season, not for the better part of a generation.

which has nothing to do with the topic. if it did then you should be outraged that these people who are fighting off the big bad american army are killing more of their countrymen than the soldiers you want them to fight

No, that's the sectarian factions fighting their civil war which the US allowed to happen. The insurgents are concentrating, when possible, on repelling Americans.

Most interesting, Rakkasan.

Note what the source you referred to also wrote:

"There are 25,000 detainees in U.S. military custody in Iraq, according to the military. The numbers of enemy killed and detained would exceed the estimate given last year of the size of the insurgency."

So these figures appear to be a maximum of the insurgency losses.

That leaves us with the fact that the US and their allies appear to be unable to deal the lightly armed insurgency any higher casualties than they are themselves sustained through the insurgency.

And this is very, very strange. I am surprised that this has not been the subject of big discussions in the military press.

Of course the insurgency is able to deal the US and their allies significant casualties without "being there" - i.e. through IEDs. But on the other hand, the US forces are able to do the same, through air strikes and long-range artillery which the insurgency has no chance to compete with.

So it seems as though the insurgency is inflicting more casualties on the US troops and their allies than they sustain themselves. In all other similar cinflicts, the regular army is able to deal five or ten times higher casualties on the insurgency than their own rate of casualties.

This situation definitely reflects something very important in Iraq - probably something which is hidden from public attention, since there is no public debate on it.

The insurgency's overwhelming public support can't be the explanation, since no insurgency ever is able to wage such a sustained resistance against a regular army without enjoying a considerable public support. Usually, this does not save the insurgency from suffering huge losses. See SWAPO/PLAN in Namibia in the 1980s as an example.

There have to be other explanations.

I have some suggestions:

1. The insurgency could in fact be far better trained than what we have been told. Actually it probably is superior to the US troops regarding training in irregular warfare. Thus it could reflect a deficiency and obsolecency in US military training which has weakened the image of US military potency in the world.

2. One explanation to the relatively low casualties sustained by the insurgency might be that the US troops and their allies are reluctant to pursue the insurgents once these have staged an attack or an ambush. In such wars, the majority of the regular army's losses is sustained during surprise ambushes by the guerillas, while the guerillas suffer far heavier casualties during the regular army's subsequent pursuit of the force which has staged the attack. But maybe the US troops and their allies are reluctant to pursue the insurgency once they have come under attack. Has the insurgency managed to insert fear among the US troops and their allies to the point that they generally confine themselves to a defensive posture?

In any case, the present ratio of losses in the Iraq war is a most omnious sign to the US military and its Iraqi allies. Unless there is a major shift in this trend soon, it will contribute to reinforce the Iraqi insurgency.

It would be interesting to hear the inputs by Rakkasan and others on this topic.

There are three problems I can see with this comparison:

1) Statistical analyses require accurate records, which aren’t available in this case. There are no records available that detail how large the opposition is, or who the members are. In fact, it’s impossible to obtain such data, as the opposition forces don’t keep such records; and in any case the records, if they were to exist, wouldn’t necessarily tell us anything since alliances are still shifting.

2) The Iraqi forces aren’t US forces. They’re not trained our forces’ levels, and they certainly aren’t equipped like our forces. Adding them into the equation is obviously going to skew the results.

3) The goal of US and Iraqi forces is to end the insurgency, not necessarily to kill insurgents. You’d need to include the terrorists that have been imprisoned to the equation.

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“Nations have no permanent friends or allies, they only have permanent interests.” - Lord Palmerston

Could have something to do with the fact that the American military wears uniforms and the insurgents don't.

It's easy for the Iraqis to target the 6' tall, blond haired, white kid in the distinctive uniform.

It's a lot tougher for the Americans to accurately target the insurgent, who looks exactly like every other Iraqi walking down the street, and very often is the average looking Iraqi walking down the street.

I would also think that to an alarming degree Iraqi casualties are mistakenly being put in the "Iraqi civilian" casualty category instead of the "Iraqi insurgent/militant" category for the above mentioned reason.

When a dead Iraqi is found on the side of the road all you can tell is that he's a dead Iraq. Since he doesn't wear a uniform or carry "insurgent" ID or bear any other marks distinguishing him as an insurgent there's no way to reliably label him as an insurgent.

But even taking all of this into account I still think that this is a great topic and that you've presented it fairly, and that it deserves to be further looked into and discussed.

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...Old Europe, a once-dominant region now reduced to sucking at the geopolitical teat of America... they spent the better part of the last millennium conquering the world and taking the good stuff home with them... And what do they get for their troubles? Ungrateful colonies demanding their independence. And after you taught them how to play cricket!...

-Jon Stewart

A body can be checked for gunpowder or explosive residue. It seems like a good way to distinguish bystanders from combatants. Unless they've been blown up, of course.

The NVA was an uniformed army, fighting a conventional war. They attacked in waves to take advantage of their larger numbers, which is why they sustained massive casualties.

The lesson that should have been learned from Vietnam was that you don't win a war by maximizing body count.

I guess it could be done, but it doesn't seem to me like it could ever be 100% effective and it's probably cost and time prohibitive.

Do you think it would be reasonable to administer such tests to every Iraqi corpse?

Honest question, I don't know enough about the daily goings on in Iraq to give a worth-while opinion.

How much do these tests cost?
Who would pay for them?
How long do they take to administer?
Who would administer them?
Do the people who would be in the best position to administer the tests have enough time on their hands to do the testing (especially if they were medical professionals trying to clean up after a bloddy battle and still get the corpses back to the families intime for a traditional Islamic burial)?

Then we'd have to look into all of the situations where a guy could pop hot on a GSR test but it wouldn't necessarially be because he had been engaging in insurgent attacks. Maybe he had fired his rifle defending his home against robbers or militia the night before and was only an innocent victim of an American shooting. If GSR were the metric by which insurgent ties were established would a positive test on an innocent man void his family's claim on any compensation to which it would otherwise be entitled?

Maybe this kind of thing would work in a well established and generally safe area where insurgent violence and American shootings are very much the exception. But in the places where it would be the most used it would also probably be very difficult to keep up with and could have a propensity for unreliability.

__________________
...Old Europe, a once-dominant region now reduced to sucking at the geopolitical teat of America... they spent the better part of the last millennium conquering the world and taking the good stuff home with them... And what do they get for their troubles? Ungrateful colonies demanding their independence. And after you taught them how to play cricket!...

-Jon Stewart

@Soot

Well, I was only suggesting using it on cadavers, for statistical purposes. I have of course no idea of the cost, or the difficulties it might involve. What I meant to say was, if the US really cared to know, it could probably be done.

Fair enough. I'd have to agree with that. And although it wouldn't be perfect it would at least be another tool in the toolbox.

But you bring up an additional interesting point:

Does the US really care to know?

Should success be measured by a body count?

Does it matter if were seeing 1:5 or 5:1 kill ratios if those ratios aren't leading to anything?

__________________
...Old Europe, a once-dominant region now reduced to sucking at the geopolitical teat of America... they spent the better part of the last millennium conquering the world and taking the good stuff home with them... And what do they get for their troubles? Ungrateful colonies demanding their independence. And after you taught them how to play cricket!...

-Jon Stewart

Maybe not. The results of such a study could prove very damaging to the current administration. Or not, but they might not be willing to take the chance.

I don't know. I think the OP intended to discuss the military situation in Iraq, not some hard to define success or failure of the Bush foreign policy. I might be wrong, but that was my impression.

I think a higher kill ratio probably means fewer US casualties in the long run, so yes, I think it matters.