Iraq death rate defies progress

U.S. officials repeatedly have claimed progress during 31 months of war in Iraq, but the death toll of American troops has continued to rise inexorably, eroding support for the war and for the president who is so closely associated with it.

The death rate for American troops accelerated about a year-and-a-half ago, around the war’s first anniversary. The steadiness of the death rate since then, despite proclaimed political milestones and several strategies that U.S. military officials have employed to combat the insurgency, is among the most striking findings of a Los Angeles Times analysis of the fatalities. The military announced Tuesday that the death toll had reached 2,000.

The analysis compared the first 1,000 deaths –from the beginning of the war in March 2003 through early September of last year – with the fatalities since. It showed a sharp increase in the number of deaths attributed to roadside bombs, which have overtaken rockets, mortars and gunfire as the greatest threat to U.S. troops and were responsible for more than half of the combat deaths in the last year.

It also documented the growing toll that the war has taken on National Guard and reserve units. Their soldiers now account for nearly one-third of the deaths, up from one-fifth.

The analysis also showed how the death rate has accelerated since the early days of the U.S. occupation of Iraq. For the first year after the capture of Baghdad, the capital, the deaths of American soldiers accumulated slowly – roughly one a day. Then, on March 31, 2004, shortly after the anniversary of the launching of the war, four American contractors were killed in the Sunni-dominated city of Fallujah, west of Baghdad.

In America, the picture of the contractors’ charred bodies hanging from a bridge signaled to the public that the insurgency had intensified. In Iraq, the death rate for U.S. troops roughly doubled after that point. .

Since then, the military has added armor to its trucks and assaulted insurgent strongholds in Fallujah, Ramadi and the deserts of western Al Anbar province. U.S. trainers have worked to toughen Iraqi combat units, saying they hoped to get American troops off Iraq’s streets and rely more on Iraqis for security. American leaders transferred sovereignty to Iraq and pushed for elections and the drafting of a constitution, which was approved earlier this month by Iraqi voters. Saddam Hussein has gone on trial.

None of that appears to have substantially affected the U.S. death rate. Despite blips up and down, the overall trend since the Fallujah incident — an average of roughly 17 deaths a week — has continued unabated.

One hundred nineteen American troops died in the initial three-week campaign to capture Iraq. One thousand eight hundred eighty-one more Defense Department personnel, including five civilian Pentagon employees, have now died trying to hold it. Roughly 15,000 American troops have been wounded, with about half hurt too severely to return to duty.

The soldiers, Marines and sailors who died came from every state — more than 1,400 cities and towns, large and small, across the country.

Those casualties are one reason for a decline in support for both President Bush and for the war. A Gallup poll conducted for CNN and USA Today found in late September, for example, that 59 percent of those surveyed called the war a “mistake” — the highest figure since the poll began asking that question at the war’s onset.

The same poll showed Americans sharply divided on whether to withdraw or maintain the current troop level. Several polls have shown Bush’s overall popularity at a low ebb.

About 200 soldiers from countries allied with the United States also have died, just less than half of them British. Thousands of Iraqis on both sides have been killed as well, with the best “guesstimate” of civilian fatalities being between 26,000 and 30,000, according to Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.

Improvised explosive devices, as American military officials call them, “are that hidden monster you’re always aware of,” said Sgt. Chip Lilly, a 35-year-old contractor from Staunton, Va. He serves with the Army National Guard near Tall Afar, a city of roughly 200,000 in northern Iraq.

A U.S. commander recently told reporters in Tall Afar about a school for bomb makers at which local Baath Party retirees with knowledge of engineering tutored insurgents, using chalkboards and manuals to explain the craft of designing and hiding explosives. In one instance, U.S. soldiers watched from a distance as an instructor showed about 30 people gathered outside a school how to bury explosives, said Col. H. R. McMaster, commander of the Army’s 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment.

“It’s the easiest way for them to attack both Iraqi and coalition troops,” said National Guard Capt. Christopher Zimbardy, a 35-year-old truck parts salesman from Philadelphia. “I hate long rides — it’s really stressful.”

Army Lt. Col. Steven Boylan, a spokesman for U.S. forces in Iraq, said explosives “can be found on the side of the road, buried in the road, in cars; they have been found in dead animals. Almost anything can be used to hide them.”

“You’re trying to avoid every little thing in the road,” said Sgt. Trinity Uemura, 22, as she rolled out of the northern city of Mosul in a Humvee this week with other members of the 401st Civil Affairs Battalion, an Army reserve unit based in Webster, N.Y. “They always think of new ways to hide this stuff.”

At the Pentagon, officials used to talk hopefully about how improving the armor on military vehicles would solve the problem of roadside bombs. Instead, insurgents have improved their explosives — U.S. officials have suggested some sophisticated bombs are being imported from Iran — and the hope that armor would counter them largely has dissipated.

A typical military mortality is an Army enlisted man (98 percent of the dead have been male), in his 20s (the average age was 26) and white (Pentagon figures show whites, blacks, Latinos and Asian Americans dying in numbers roughly proportionate to their share of the U.S. population).