Sept. 7, 2004, may end up being the most damaging day for President Bush out of all the days leading up to election day.
That is the day that the United States lost its 1,000th solider in Iraq.
You can’t help but notice how close that date is to the anniversary of the event used as the primary justification, directly or indirectly, for the war in Iraq.
While this number pales in comparison to those of World Wars I and II, Korea or Vietnam, this is a different war and this war has different expectations.
Most people were expecting fatalities, but most only expected a number comparable to the 148 fatalities suffered in the Persian Gulf War.
Also, the technological, numerical, tactical and training advantages over our opponents in this war far surpass any of our advantages in any of the previous mentioned wars.
Iraqi insurgents can’t fight a war like those in the World Wars. They don’t have the numbers or equipment to challenge us.
They can’t even compare to the guerilla warfare of Vietnam.
The Viet Cong were much better trained, were much better armed and were much greater in number than their Iraqi counterparts.
One question that can be asked, regardless of the actual number of fatalities or casualties we have, is “Are we winning this war?”
Let’s look at the numbers between the start of the invasion and Bush’s “mission accomplished” speech, between that speech and the formal turnover of sovereignty, and between the turnover of sovereignty and Sept. 7.
In Stage 1, the time between the start of the invasion and Bush’s “mission accomplished” speech, 139 Americans died with 542 wounded, along with 33 British fatalities. This time period was 43 days long.
This calculates to an average of 3.2 Americans killed and 12.6 Americans wounded per day.
In stage 2, the time between the formal end of the “war” and the transfer of sovereignty, lasted for 424 days. During this time period 715 Americans died, along with 27 British, and 58 “other” non-Iraqi soldiers and 5,031 American soldiers were wounded during this time period.
These numbers average to 1.7 Americans killed and 11.9 Americans wounded during this time period.
While there is an improvement in the number killed, we also weren’t facing the whole of the Iraqi Army on the march to Baghdad, which is when most of the deaths occurred in Stage 1.
The number of soldiers wounded, however, hardly decreased at all, going down by only 0.7 a day, or about 5 percent.
Stage 3 includes the time since the formal transfer of sovereignty. As of Sept. 7, this period lasted 71 days.
During this period, 147 Americans have died, along with 5 British and 8 “other” non-Iraqi soldiers while 1,343 soldiers have also been wounded, though there are no casualty numbers for September yet on http://icasualties.org/.
This averages out to 2.1 Americans killed and 18.9 Americans wounded per a day. This marks an increase in the rate Americans are being killed over Stage 2, and easily represents the fastest rate Americans are being wounded over the course of the entire conflict. This is using the number of wounded not including the first seven days of September.
Sept. 7 is setting the third fastest pace for the number of soldiers killed, with only the first month of the war and April 2004 having a faster paces.
We are on pace to hit 99 American fatalities in September, the second most in any month of the entire conflict. If that is the case, or even if we only double our current fatality totals for the month in the final three weeks, September will be in the top 10 of months with the most fatalities.
If this occurs, which it almost certainly will, seven of the top 10 deadliest months will have come in 2004. February and June are the only months in 2004 that are not in the top 10 deadliest month list.
So, we go back to the question of “Are we winning this war?”
Certainly wounded and fatality numbers and averages can’t be the only indication of progress, or lack-thereof, in a conflict but they can be an important indicator.
The numbers show that we have made negative progress in both the number of soldiers killed and number of soldiers wounded between the 2nd the 3rd stages of this conflict.
Now with 1,001 American soldiers, 1,132 total coalition soldiers dead and 6,916 soldiers wounded, can we really and truly say that we are making any progress at all in this war regardless of how you felt about going into Iraq in the first place.

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