Nobody knows if Ukraine will fight. If they do, and go after Russian units in the east and south, it will be interesting to see what Russian body counts are. These are the numbers (of GI dead) from Iraq:
| Year | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2003 | 0 | 0 | 92 | 80 | 42 | 36 | 49 | 43 | 33 | 47 | 110 | 48 | 580 |
| 2004 | 52 | 23 | 52 | 140 | 84 | 50 | 58 | 75 | 87 | 68 | 141 | 76 | 906 |
| 2005 | 127 | 60 | 39 | 52 | 88 | 83 | 58 | 85 | 52 | 99 | 86 | 68 | 897 |
| 2006 | 64 | 58 | 34 | 82 | 79 | 63 | 46 | 66 | 77 | 111 | 78 | 115 | 873 |
| 2007 | 86 | 85 | 82 | 117 | 131 | 108 | 89 | 88 | 70 | 40 | 40 | 25 | 961 |
| 2008 | 40 | 30 | 40 | 52 | 21 | 31 | 13 | 23 | 25 | 14 | 17 | 16 | 322 |
| 2009 | 16 | 18 | 9 | 19 | 25 | 15 | 8 | 7 | 10 | 9 | 11 | 3 | 150 |
| 2010 | 6 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 6 | 8 | 4 | 3 | 7 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 60 |
| 2011 | 6 | 3 | 2 | 11 | 2 | 15 | 5 | 0 | 4 | 4 | 2 | 0 | 54 |
| 2012 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
We were losing dozens of men a month pretty much right after "Mission Accomplished". And these numbers were from an adversary (Sunni Arabs) that was at most, 20% of the Iraqi population (~25m in 2003).
No one else seems to remember this, but I remember when the Iraq war took a terrible turn. It was right after a The Swimmer’s “quagmire” speech.
Big problem with the comparison is that we were and are hamstrung by absurd ROE. The Russians, on the other hand, kidnap and murder people for saying something bad about Czar Putin. Genocide does wonders against rebels.