September 2005 Iraq casualties

Back to the monthly casualty report for September:

Avg. daily military fatality rate (nearly all of them Americans): 1.73. August was 2.68. July was 1.87, and September 2004 was 2.9. Overall average to date is 2.3, down 0.02.

Iraqi monthly military/police fatalities: 233. August was 281. July was 304, and no stats published for September 2004 (January 2005 is when the stats started: 109).

Comments: we should add one and one-half pieces of information to the above stats. The one piece is that Iraqi readiness has declined from 3 battalions at the highest readiness state to one. This might explain the drop in the Iraqi military casualties - they don't have anyone who can "stand up," as our idiot President would say, so they've been withdrawn. On the other hand, I thought this would mean more American involvement and more American casualties, when the reverse was the case. The one-half piece of information is anecdotal information that violence has increased in Iraq. So here's a possibility: as the Iraqis have stood down, the Americans have not filled in the gap, and the Iraqi civilians have suffered more violence as a result.

Of course, it could be that the anecdotes of increased violence are wrong - no one has good stats on civilian deaths that I know of. Your mileage may vary on the value of these interpretations. See you for next month's report.

UPDATE: Click here for a breakdown of the individual causes of deaths for Americans (includes Afghanistan casualties).


key: Iraq, monthly report