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Politics : Support the French! Viva Democracy! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: epicure who wrote (4736)	1/17/2004 6:36:48 PM
From: epicure	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 7844

Bush Could Face Fallout Over Iraq Deaths Sat Jan 17, 1:57 PM ET By BRUCE STANLEY, Associated Press Writer BAGHDAD, Iraq - With 500 Americans dead in the Iraq (news - web sites) conflict, the mounting casualty toll that has made this the deadliest U.S. war since Vietnam could intensify criticism of the U.S. occupation and provide ammunition to Democrats seeking to take on President Bush (news - web sites) in November. AP Photo The 500 figure is mostly symbolic, yet it adds to the urgency of Bush administration efforts to seek U.N. help in sharing the burden for stabilizing and rebuilding Iraq and to extricate American troops from a deepening military and political quagmire, analysts say. "I think that the significance of the number 500 is arbitrary to everybody except the poor guy who was the 500th," said Michael Donovan of the Center for Defense Information in Washington. "That being said, I think there's an awareness in the administration that sustaining these kinds of casualties indefinitely is not possible if they're going to sustain support for the war." The number of U.S. service members who have died in Iraq since the war began last March reached 500 on Saturday after a roadside bomb exploded north of Baghdad, killing three U.S. soldiers. Two Iraqi civil defense troopers also died in the attack, which occurred when a Bradley Fighting Vehicle struck an explosive device on a road near Taji, about 20 miles north of the Iraqi capital. The U.S. death toll so far from the Iraq conflict exceeds American losses in many regional conflicts of the past several decades: Lebanon, Somalia, Panama, Grenada, Kosovo, Afghanistan (news - web sites) and the first Gulf War (news - web sites). Most of the Iraq-related deaths — both combat and non-combat — have occurred since Bush declared an end to major fighting on May 1. In the first Gulf War of 1991, 315 Americans died in the operation to drive Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s forces from Kuwait. Still, the latest war toll is small compared with the horrific bloodletting of some of America's past conflicts. About 19,000 U.S. soldiers died in one month alone in the Battle of the Bulge in World War II, whose total U.S. toll was 290,000. About 620,000 Americans died in the Civil War and more than 58,000 in Vietnam. Although Americans are widely perceived to have little stomach for bloody wars in distant lands, analysts said U.S. losses in Iraq are not yet significant enough to trigger a popular backlash against U.S. involvement here. Lawrence J. Korb, vice president of the Council on Foreign Relations, said 500 was a symbolic threshold. "Maybe a lot of people who have not paid attention in recent weeks ... will say, 'I thought that we were in much better shape than this,' and, 'What's going on?' I don't think it will lead to demands for withdrawal or anything like that," he said in a telephone interview. Donovan agreed, noting that a majority of Americans still appear to believe their compatriots are dying in Iraq for a worthwhile cause. The number 500 probably won't resonate in such a way as to cause a dramatic drop in popular support for the war, he said. U.S. military leaders in Iraq denied that the rising casualty toll might be sapping morale within the ranks. "I don't think the soldiers are looking at arbitrary figures such as casualty counts as the barometer of their morale," Army Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt told a news conference. "They know they have a nation that stands behind them. They know they have a military that stands behind them." However, some of the eight Democrats competing to become their party's nominee to challenge President Bush are highlighting the growing losses in hopes of galvanizing support. The first test in the Democrats' tightening race will come Monday during caucuses in the state of Iowa. "I think it will help mostly the candidates who were against the war," Korb said. Analysts say the Bush administration itself will respond to the worsening U.S. casualties by negotiating harder to secure the cooperation of the United Nations (news - web sites) as it seeks to transfer political power to the Iraqis and make an honorable withdrawal from the country. Korb said the 500 American dead makes it "more imperative" that Bush concede greater control to the United Nations than he was willing to do in the past. The chief U.S. administrator in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, is expected to argue Washington's case Monday in a meeting with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan (news - web sites). Some analysts say the administration has minimized the political impact of mounting U.S. losses by managing information about them. "The Pentagon (news - web sites) has been very cagey about casualties. We know how many people have died, but the Pentagon hasn't released photos of bodies coming back to the United States, and we don't have an accurate count of how many people have been wounded," Donovan said. Walid Kazziha, a political science professor at the American University in Cairo, recalled the enormous effect that TV images of dead and wounded Americans had on public sentiment during the Vietnam War. By contrast, there have been few such pictures of U.S. casualties in Iraq. Said Kazziha: "The 500 are almost faceless." ___ EDITORS: Bruce Stanley has been an international correspondent for The Associated Press for eight years.