Posted on 08/02/2007 8:13:57 AM PDT by Austin Willard Wright
The number of Iraqi civilians killed in the country's brutal civil conflict rose by more than a third in July despite a five-month-old surge in US troop levels, government figures showed Wednesday.
At least 1,652 civilians were killed in Iraq in July, 33 percent more than in the previous month, according to figures compiled by the Iraqi health, defence and interior ministries and made available to AFP.
Casualties continued to mount as a massive car bomb tore through a major Baghdad intersection -- the fifth such blast to strike the city centre in the past week -- killing at least 10 people.
Meanwhile, two critical reports emerged pointing to weaknesses in American efforts to rebuild and stabilise Iraq, which has been in the grip of several overlapping civil conflicts for more than four years.
July's civilian toll was slightly higher than the number for February, when the United States began a "surge" in troops aimed at flooding Baghdad with reinforcements to stem Iraq's sectarian bloodletting.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
I know I’m sick of it. These liberal terrorist appeasing cowards will say anything to gain power. Looks like the average American is starting to see through this leftist BS.
This time, we weren't clear in what we were doing after we took out Saddam and since then we had to improvise what we are doing in Iraq which is not what we planned for.
There are two aspects that are not accounted for in any comparision of year-to-year troop fatalities:
1) we have 20% more troops in theater
2) by all accounts many more of the units are doing more aggressive missions within the ‘surge’ which could easily yield more US casualties unless/until the terrorists are pretty well quashed.
Thus, what cannot be quantified (it seems to me) is that with substantially more troops performing a much larger number of dangerous missions now, US casualties could easily have gone up a lot. Even to stay in the same ballpark, statistically, may prove to have been a remarkable positive accomplishment given the missions the troops are currently performing.
The real test will be whether the new counter-insurgency tactics prove to work, as many reports indicate they will. IF in 6 months’ time the ‘insurgency’ turns out to be much diminished, then this summer’s efforts will have accomplished a great deal at less than the casualties that might have been expected.
Make that 68% +/- 1 SD and 95% +/- 2 SD.
The figures I have are slightly different, no matter. 07 May - 126, June 101, July 80; 101/126 = .80, 80/126 = .63 (alternatively, 80/101 = .79). 06 May - 69, June - 61, July - 43; 61/69 = .88, 43/69 = .62 (alternatively, 43/61 = .70). Therefore, for 07: 1.00 - .80 - .63 (.79) vs. 06: 1.00 - .88 - .62 (.70); not much difference in the trends. Furthermore 126/69 = 1.8, 80/61 = 1.7, 80/43 = 1.9. The relative change in the numbers of casualties between surge vs. no surge is unchanged, yet the actual numbers of casualties are almost doubled.
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