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Troops killed in Iraq approaching Vietnam levels
Published:
Monday, April 19, 2004
Drew Brown
Knight Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON -- With fighting in Iraq now at its worst, the number of U.S. troops killed by enemy fire has reached the highest level since the Vietnam War.
The first part of April has been the bloodiest period so far for U.S. troops in Iraq. There have been 98 deaths by hostile fire so far this month, more than in the opening two weeks of the invasion, when 82 Americans were killed in action.
"This has been some pretty intense fighting," said David Segal, director of the University of Maryland's Center for Research on Military Organization. "We're looking at what happened during the major battles of Vietnam."
The last time U.S. troops experienced a two-week loss such as this one in Iraq was October 1971, two years before U.S. ground involvement ended in Vietnam.
There are 135,000 U.S. troops in Iraq. Nearly 700 American troops have died since the beginning of the war. As of Sunday, 503 had been reported killed in action. At least 3,630 more have been wounded.
The Vietnam War started with a slower death rate. The United States had been involved in Vietnam for six years before total fatalities surpassed 500 in 1965, the year President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered a massive buildup of forces. There were 20,000 troops in Vietnam by the end of 1964. There were more than 200,000 a year later.
By the end of 1966, U.S. combat deaths in Vietnam had reached 3,910. By 1968, the peak of U.S. involvement, there were more than 500,000 troops in the country. During the same two-week period of April that year, 752 U.S. soldiers died, according to National Archives records.
U.S. officials say that comparisons with Vietnam are invalid and reject the idea that Iraq has become a quagmire.
But the two-front battle that U.S. troops have been waging against Sunni and Shiite insurgents for the past two weeks is the most widespread resistance U.S. forces have faced since the war in Iraq began.
Senior U.S. officials insist the current fighting is only a "spike" and not indicative of a widening war. On Thursday, Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, described the current fighting as a "symptom of the success" U.S. forces are having in Iraq. "The sole intent" of the insurgents is to stop Iraq's transition to self-governance and democracy, he said.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Thursday that the death toll was worse than he had expected a year ago.
He also announced that more than 20,000 troops, mostly from the 1st Armored Division, would remain in Iraq for three more months to deal with the insurgency instead of coming home after a year of duty.
Gunfire has been the biggest killer of U.S. troops, followed closely by improvised explosive devices. The two account for more than 250 deaths.
Those killed represent a wide range of military specialties. Truck drivers and clerks are getting killed just as often, if not more often, than infantrymen and other combat specialties.
That's an indication of the kind of battlefield environment in Iraq.
"Even Vietnam was a more conventional war than this," said Charles Moskos, a sociologist with Northwestern University who specializes in military issues and worked as a correspondent in the Vietnam War.
"Here in Iraq, there are no battle lines," he said. "It's all over."
Another striking difference is age.
The average age of a casualty in Vietnam was 20 years old. The average age of a casualty in Iraq is nearly 27. The youngest American soldier killed in Iraq was 18; the oldest was 55.
More than 12 percent of those killed have come from the Army National Guard and Army Reserve, which helps explain why the average age of the dead is higher.
"Reserve components tend to be older," Moskos said. Another reason is that a number of special operations troops were also killed in the early days of the war, and they tend to be older as well.
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