August 01, 2007
U.S. Casualties Shrink, Iraqi Deaths Rise In July
After a spike in military casualties this spring, the U.S. death toll in Iraq for July fell to its lowest level for the year. This morning, the New York Times reported that 74 U.S. soldiers died in Iraq last month, but as of press time, its source -- a Web site called Iraq Coalition Casualty Count -- had upped the number to 78.
The U.S. toll hovered just above 80 in the first quarter of the year and then rose dramatically from April through June, when a total of 331 U.S. soldiers died in Iraq.
Military commanders and President Bush acknowledged the second-quarter spike in combat deaths and attributed it to the influx of troops in the most dangerous areas of the country. "We're going to expect heavy fighting in the weeks and months," Bush said back in May. "We can expect more American and Iraqi casualties."
Indeed, just as American fatalities rose in the earliest months of the surge, so too have Iraqi deaths. But while U.S. casualties declined last month, Agence France Presse reports that the number of fallen civilian Iraqis actually rose by one-third to at least 1,652 in July, "according to figures compiled by the Iraqi health, defense, and interior ministries."
As the American people and members of Congress grow increasingly restless about the situation on the ground and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government shows more signs of crumbling, the news that U.S. casualties are declining could be a boon to the president and his staunchest supporters. Two GOP congressional delegations recently returned from Iraq and said they were encouraged by what they had witnessed. And yesterday, Vice President Dick Cheney went so far as to predict that the September progress report that military and diplomatic leaders are expected to deliver in Washington next month will show "significant progress" from the surge.
But military officials have been careful not to treat the latest statistics as a definitive turnaround. "We had said over the summer it's going to get harder before it gets easier," Lieutenant Colonel Christopher Garver, a military spokesman in Baghdad, said in response to the latest figures. "We're hoping that we're in the easier part, but we still obviously have a long way to go."
Increasingly, commanders are stressing that "a long way to go" probably means years, not months. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times in Iraq this week, Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno predicted that, "based on the campaign plan" currently under way, "we need forces here for a few more years."
