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February 17, 2005
Non-Hostile?
Comments
Why does it increase after November?
How do you interpret it? What’s the point to hide it now that the deaths are not especially in the public eye anyway?
Do you think there are more, unannounced deaths?
Posted by: Jérôme | Feb 17 2005 12:09 utc | 1
1. I don´t know, but somebody gave an order to do so.
2. Kepp the public calm because the defense budget and the Iran preparations need support, not “distraction”
3. Definitly:
– Green card soldiers, i.e. GIs that are not US nationals, are NOT counted.
– GIs that are wounded and flown out to Kuwait or Germany and die there are NOT counted.
– US paid mercenaries, even when killed while fulfilling military jobs (convoy duty), are NOT counted.
11 of 30 officialy dead this month died in several “vehicle accidents”. One really has to wonder what makes these “accidents” happen.
One of the last bastions of democracy in Russia is the association of the Mothers of Soldiers. (see a (not really updated) website here)
Having lost their children, they have very little left to fear from the government and have been tireless in their campaigns to bring accountability to the notoriously corrupt military and publicity to the situation of the soldiers in the horrible conditions of Chechnya and elsewhere.
When will the same happen in the US?
Posted by: Jérôme | Feb 17 2005 13:21 utc | 3
The biggest hostile casualties were April and November 04, the 2 assaults on Fallujah. I suppose they decided not to hide the causes there, or to fix the whole figures by covering up most of the non-hostile deaths.
At first sight, I would suppose non-hostile deaths are quite stable, so the proportion would be directly linked to the amount of deaths each month. It works quite a bit apparently – between 5 and 20, which is a statistically credible range. But with a big outlier in January – the helicopter that went down is listed as “non-hostile helicopter crash), which is very debatable and quite probably wrong, but admitting it would make bad PR. Take out the copter crash and you’re back to 20 non-hostile deaths.
There also was a higher number of non-hostile during the war (and even in May, weirdly), partly due to friendly fire, I suppose, and probably accidents in May03 – when there were tens of thousands of troops moving through the whole country.
February is officially far quieter so far. There has been a bit less attacks, because everyone including Sunnis and guerrillas are waiting to see the results and effects of the elections. And all in all the month isn’t over. It’s close to stupid to include it in the stats. But interestingly, they’re already at 15 non-hostile deaths, so this may well go beyond the 20 threshold without any massive accident.
Thinking of it, the very low non-hostile in April and Nov. come probably of the fact that many troops were actively involved in combat, and had far less occasions of meeting a “non-hostile” demise.
What I’d like to know is if, as B mentioned, the evacuated who die later, for instance in Landstuhl, are included at all, or not. From what I heard, they’re not.
I would also like to know what they make of suicides. Some are probably listed as unspecified, or “weapon discharge”.
Posted by: CluelessJoe | Feb 17 2005 14:32 utc | 4
There is also an interesting diary over at dKos with the same topic: New DKos Investigation into War Deaths
More to the point, however, is that in six weeks the nearly same number died per 100,000 of population of what are described as “vehicle accidents” in Iraq as in a whole year of even the high US death toll. (US troop levels being taken at 130,000 operational.)
O.K so this is a war zone, you might argue.
Right. But we are talking Humvees, trucks and armoured vehicles, not Porsches and hot rods. We are not talking about vehicles pushing 80 mph down your Inter-States. We are not talking about vehicles suffering damage from enemy fire – or, at least, the Pentagon isn’t.
Nor are we talking about John Doe in his T-shirt and jeans, driving four hundred miles home in thick traffic. We are talking about guys in heavy duty, armoured encased vehicles driven by people wearing body protection and helmets. We are talking about highly trained, top qualified drivers.
So what is going on behind these statistics that say you have eight times more chance of being killed in a vehicle accident in Iraq than you do back home?
Posted by: Fran | Feb 17 2005 14:37 utc | 5
Maybe it’s the great outpouring of love from Iraqis that’s soaking up all that misguided hostility?
Maybe it’s an increase in drugs taken by ‘coalition’ forces?
Maybe they have to drive faster and faster through areas in order to avoid hostile fire?
Maybe it’s poorly designed up-armored vehicles?
Posted by: biklett | Feb 17 2005 17:03 utc | 6
Fitting here: Bush ups the ante for putting troops at risk
Not long ago, President Bush condemned Saddam Hussein for recruiting Palestinian suicide bombers by offering to pay $25,000 to their families. Now Bush has proposed raising the death benefit for U.S. soldiers killed in Afghanistan and Iraq to half a million dollars. When I learned of this proposal, I couldn’t help but wonder if such payouts will create American martyrs?
…
These benefits offer substantial incentives for soldiers to die in two of the most dangerous places on the planet and their “reward” is the knowledge that their family will be provided for after they are gone.
It sounds like the same thing Saddam did. He paid people who were martyrs for their cause and you can bet that our soldiers’ families will be told that theirs kids died for the noble cause of ending tyranny. And while they might not be promised a spot in heaven, you can be sure this rhetoric will invoke Bush’s never-ending themes of freedom — even though Iraq will not be truly free until Bush executes a real exit strategy.
…
Soldiers killed in the line of duty deserve to know their families aren’t going to lose the house and wind up on the street because of their death. The Bush administration, however, is being very selective about who is going to receive this proposed increased death benefit and they will methodically, relentlessly and with immeasurable cunning create the myth of the American Martyr as they send out those checks. Just like Saddam did.
Congressional oversight – Defense Budget hearing:
Two dozen members of the House Armed Services Committee had not yet had their turn to question Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld at yesterday’s hearings when he decided he had had enough.
At 12:54, he announced that at 1 p.m. he would be taking a break and then going to another hearing in the Senate. “We’re going to have to get out and get lunch and get over there,” he said. When the questioning continued for four more minutes, Rumsfeld picked up his briefcase and began to pack up his papers.
originally posted at dKos:
Exhaustion from overscheduling probably means the force is overcommitted and breaking down – these casualties would be an early sign. Top down re-emphasis of driver time limits might help, but only if other troops were available to drive instead on critical missions. I bet there is no one else available. In short – our troops may well be approaching both literal and proverbial decimation.
Consequences would be lowered morale and more strung out on exhaustion or intoxicants (approved and unapproved). All of these would cause recklessness and inability to drive dangerously and safely at the same time.
One other major cause could be rising incidence of things like “bricks from roofs” as opposition to occupation approaches 99%. Imagine the morale boost to the opposed forces if the Pentagon started listing “death by brick etc. at window” as cause of death for our once invulnerable-seeming troops.
Together these explanations would mean that US troops were losing it at the same time as the other side is getting it together.
So yeah, “accidental death”.
Please investigate.
Posted by: Citizen | Feb 17 2005 18:58 utc | 9
b,
I think a plausable explanation might be the combination of retro-hillbilly armour haphazardly applied to all kinds of vehicles that are then unstable in suspension and thus steering etc. coupled with the fact that all roads are unsecure — so convoys are driving way too fast in a panic stricken frenzy to avoid imagined IEDs that then cause a disproportional number of rollovers. Whether the third vehicle after an IED explosion, that swerves to avoid rear-ending another, rolls over and kills the driver is counted as a hostile fatility is doubtful — if US insurance % at fault responsability stats are used by the military — and could account for the high number of non-hostile deaths.
Posted by: anna missed | Feb 17 2005 19:10 utc | 10
Interesting. Could also be indicative of vehicle maintenance problems; not enough parts, not enough people/time to keep everything in good repair. Broken vehicles are more accident prone.
By the way, the percentage of non-hostile/hostile deaths is NOT a very good way to analyze this data. You need to look at the absolute numbers of hostile and non-hostile deaths.
Why? Because the number of non-hostile fatalities could be staying about the same (as you’d expect if troop levels were about the same), and the fluctuation in percentages could come from a decrease in the number of hostile fatalities.
Posted by: Drew Thaler | Feb 17 2005 21:34 utc | 11
ICasualties has this graph of absolute numbers of hostile/non-hostile deaths.
There was a large spike of non-hostile fatalities in January, but that was because of the helicopter crash. February looks like it will have more than average non-hostile fatalities, but so far, nothing that looks like an actual trend.
Posted by: Drew Thaler | Feb 17 2005 21:43 utc | 12
According to the AP, attacks are about the same in February, as compared to January.
There were 1,876 from Jan 1-29
since then 1,012
why the bold ? that’s a heck of a lot of attacks we’re not hearing about.
Posted by: thesumofallparts | Feb 18 2005 8:28 utc | 13
Also from the above linked AP article:
U.S. troops in Iraq have suffered a rash of fatal vehicle accidents and other non-combat deaths in recent weeks, even as the number killed in insurgent attacks has declined.
Although details of recent accidents have not been made public, some officials believe the jump in their number can be explained in part by turbulence from the troop rotation that is now approaching its peak, with tens of thousands of troops arriving and like numbers going home.
…
Fatal accidents and other non-hostile deaths are almost inevitable in a war zone, and during 2004 the number reported each month in Iraq stayed within a fairly narrow range – from a low of five in June to a high of 19 in March. The average during the year was 11 per month.
The latest surge in accidental deaths began in mid-January and has continued well into February.
This week alone, vehicle accidents killed at least eight soldiers and Marines. That includes three crashes on Wednesday that killed two Marines, two soldiers and one Iraqi civilian and wounded two soldiers and two Iraqis. In addition, one soldier died Wednesday on an unidentified U.S. base in Iraq from what the Army described only as a “non-combat injury.”
So there is a surge in the numbers. The reason given is troop rotation. Still I am suspicious. Given the number of attacks has not declined, the increased ratio of combat/non-combat doesn´t make much sense to me.