US War Dead in Iraq Exceeds Early Vietnam Years
Reuters
Thursday 13 November 2003
PHILADELPHIA - The U.S. death toll in Iraq has surpassed the number of American soldiers killed
during the first three years of the Vietnam War, the brutal Cold War conflict that cast a shadow over
U.S. affairs for more than a generation.
A Reuters analysis of Defense Department statistics showed on Thursday that the Vietnam War,
which the Army says officially began on Dec. 11, 1961, produced a combined 392 fatal casualties from
1962 through 1964, when American troop levels in Indochina stood at just over 17,000.in Baghdad on
Wednesday brought to 397 the tally of American dead in Iraq, where U.S. forces number about
130,000 troops -- the same number reached in Vietnam by October 1965.
The casualty count for Iraq apparently surpassed the Vietnam figure last Sunday, when a U.S.
soldier killed in a rocket-propelled grenade attack south of Baghdad became the conflict's 393rd
American casualty since Operation Iraqi Freedom began on March 20.
Larger still is the number of American casualties from the broader U.S. war on terrorism, which has
produced 488 military deaths in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Philippines, Southwest Asia and other
locations.
Statistics from battle zones outside Iraq show that 91 soldiers have died since Oct. 7, 2001, as part
of Operation Enduring Freedom, which President Bush launched against Afghanistan's former Taliban
regime after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington killed 3,000 people.
The Bush administration has rejected comparisons between Iraq and Vietnam, which traumatized
Americans a generation ago with a sad procession of military body bags and television footage of grim
wartime cruelty.
Recent opinion polls show public support for the president eroding as he heads toward the 2004
election, partly because of public concern over the deadly cycle of guerrilla attacks and suicide
bombings in Iraq.
On Thursday, heavy gunfire and explosions echoed across Baghdad as U.S. troops pounded rebel
positions for a second night, and administration officials sought ways to accelerate a transfer of power
to the Iraqi people.
U.S. COMBAT POWER
Because U.S. involvement in Vietnam increased gradually after the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu in
1954, there is little consensus on when the war in Southeast Asia began.
Some date the war to the late 1950s. Others say it began on Aug. 5, 1964, when Lyndon Johnson
announced air strikes against North Vietnam in retaliation for a reported torpedo attack on a U.S.
destroyer in the Gulf of Tonkin.
However, the Army's start date for the Vietnam War has been set by its Center of Military History as
Dec. 11, 1961, when two helicopter companies consisting of 32 aircraft and 400 soldiers arrived in the
country, an Army public affairs specialist said.
``It was the first major assemblage of U.S. combat power in Vietnam,'' explained Army historian Joe
Webb.
Vietnam casualties, which amounted to 25 deaths from 1956 through 1961, climbed to 53 in 1962,
123 in 1963 and 216 in 1964, Pentagon statistics show.
At the time, the U.S. presence in Vietnam consisted mainly of military advisers. President John F.
Kennedy increased their number from about 960 in 1961 to show Washington's commitment to
containing communism.
But not until 1965, after Congress had approved the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, did Washington begin
its massive escalation of the war effort. With a huge influx of soldiers, casualties in Vietnam soared to
1,926 in 1965 and peaked at 16,869 in 1968, the year of the Tet Offensive, data show.
In a major revision of U.S. military history in 1995, former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara said
he believed the Gulf of Tonkin torpedo attack never occurred.
More than 58,000 U.S. military personnel died in Vietnam before the war ended in the mid-1970s.
In another comparison, British forces that created Iraq in the aftermath of World War One suffered
2,000 casualties from tribal reprisals, guerrilla attacks and a jihad proclaimed from the Shi'ite holy city
of Kerbala, before conditions stabilized in 1921, according to U.S. military scholars.
Reuters included military deaths both on and off the battlefield for Operation Iraqi Freedom and
Operation Enduring Freedom, for comparison with Vietnam War statistics that made no distinction
between hostile and non-hostile casualties.
On Thursday, U.S. combat deaths totaled 270 for Iraq and 28 for other battle zones, including
Afghanistan.
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