Since the U.S. “shock and awe” invasion of Iraq in March 2003, almost 3,000 U.S. troops have been killed in Iraq. The number of casualties is much higher. As of Dec. 2, 2006, there have been at least 46,880 U.S. casualties, according to the Iraq Coalition Casualties’ website, icasualties.org. This number includes troops who have been wounded in combat and non-combat cases and other non-mortal casualties.
On top of that, the U.S. occupation has caused over 655,000 Iraqi deaths, according to an October 2006 study by U.S.
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The death and destruction caused by the U.S.-led imperialist war on Iraq has devastated Iraqi society. Iraq is a country of 27 million people. To put the number of Iraqi deaths under occupation in perspective: an equal percentage of the U.S. population would be 7.5 million people.
Attacks on the rise, new strategy proposed
The Bush administration and the military have not been honest about the number of casualties in Iraq. They do not even count the number of Iraqi dead.
Even the government funded and supported Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group acknowledged that the U.S. government has systematically underreported the violence in Iraq.
According to the ISG, “The standard for recoding attacks acts as a filter to keep events out of reports and databases. A murder of an Iraqi is not necessarily counted as an attack. … For example, on one day in July 2006 there were 93 attacks or significant acts of violence reported. Yet a careful review of the reports for that single day brought to light 1,100 acts of violence.”
Of course, the ISG did not make this criticism because it cares about Iraqi lives. It did so because its authors represent a sector of the U.S. ruling class that wants to shift U.S. strategy in Iraq away from the Bush administration’s approach of all out war to something different. Their ultimate goals, however, are the same—imperial control over Iraq, its natural resources and the entire region.
The ISG and its supporters want to maintain U.S. hegemony in a different and less overtly colonial way. They can see that the U.S. is being defeated militarily by the Iraqi resistance and that the people of the Middle East reject the U.S. occupation and war on Iraq. They know that sentiment inside the United States is overwhelmingly against the war.
Targeting the U.S. occupation
Over the last two years, weekly attacks on U.S. troops have risen from 423 a week to a current level of 792, according to the Pentagon’s latest quarterly report to Congress. The growing resistance against the U.S. occupation is greatly rising as more U.S. troops are either killed or wounded.
For example, Reuters reported on Dec. 1 about Iraqi resistance attacks on U.S. occupying troops and their Iraqi proxies. “A suicide car bomber targeted a U.S. patrol, killing two civilians and wounding four in the northern city of Kirkuk.”
The report continued, “A roadside bomb exploded near a police patrol, killing one civilian and wounding three in the town of Jurf al-Sakhar.” Nearly all of the attacks in Iraq on this day targeted U.S. troops, the puppet Iraqi army and Iraq’s police force. This example is not extraordinary.
The level of support for the armed resistance has risen to well over 60 percent of Iraqis. According to recent polls, more than 80 percent of Iraqis rightly blame the United States for the violence in their country.
The growing resistance around the world and here at home against the U.S. occupation is not accurately covered by the capitalist media. The ISG report openly supports the U.S. occupation of Iraq and Bush’s goal for “a governable and stable Iraq” in a new Middle East. The mass media and Pentagon make sure that news reports and investigations fulfill the interests of the capitalist state.
The true number of U.S. casualties is not mentioned in the capitalist media because they fear it would provoke justified outrage among people in the United States. With every revelation of imperialist criminality, the ruling class fears that the strong sentiment against the war will turn into deeper anger and frustration.
