US Combat Casualties in Iraq Lowest Since Beginning of War

Five.

There were, however, 11 noncombat deaths, almost all vehicle crashes.

U.S. combat casualties in Iraq fell to their lowest level last month, with most of the fatalities concentrated outside of Baghdad in the Ninawa Province along the Syrian border, according to a CNSNews.com analysis of U.S. Defense Department data. (One non-combat casualty was still under investigation as this story went to press.) Five combat deaths have been reported for November so far, the lowest total of any month going back to beginning of the war in March 2003. That total compares with 29 combat deaths in November 2007, a drop of about 83 percent. ...

If the casualty reports for November remain unchanged, they will match the historic low for U.S. combat deaths in Iraq set in July 2008, according to a CNSNews.com database on the war.

Terrorists and insurgents operating in Iraq continue to favor the use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) as way to induce casualties against better armed coalition forces, national security experts have said in U.S. congressional testimony.

But most U.S. combat casualties reported in November occurred when assailants, dressed as Iraqi army soldiers, opened fire.

Shocker: Media Doesn't Report Not-Quite-So-Grim Milestones: And the media claims it doesn't encourage attacks, huh?

They're defended by... Dick Cheney.

Some U.S. officials have suggested the media have consciously turned their attention away from the war now that President Bush’s surge strategy has met with success. This point was made by Vice President Dick Cheney at the National Press Club earlier this year. “I see just in general less reporting, less interest,” he said. “The fact is that people have got other things to worry about. And there have been a lot of other issues to cover. I mean, we're in the middle of a presidential campaign. That's big news. Gasoline prices are $4 a gallon. That's big news. So it doesn't receive as much attention. Good news never does. That's just the way our system works.” “But I do think — I think the surge has been enormously successful,” he said. “And anybody who looks objectively at where we are today in Iraq would have to conclude that we're in far better shape than we were just a couple of years ago.”

Our system works like that to some extent, Mr. Vice President. And yet I assure you that when we won WWII, it was not downplayed in newspapers as being welcome, and therefore boring, news.

A watershed changed has occurred in Iraq, but the media are not interested in reporting it.

Their interest may perk up around January 20, 2009.

posted by Ace at 03:37 PM

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