Iraqis Mixed On Grim Milestone
Some Iraqis sympathized with U.S. forces on Wednesday after hearing the American death toll in the Iraq war had reached 2,000. But others noted that many more Iraqis had died in the conflict and said they hope the U.S. "occupiers" will soon go home.
The U.S. Senate on Tuesday observed a moment of silence in honor of the fallen Americans.
"We owe them a deep debt of gratitude for their courage, for their valor, for their strength, for their commitment to our country," said Republican Majority Leader Bill Frist.
According to the most recent statistics, one-quarter of the soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan are from rural America, CBS News National Security correspondent David Martin reports, even though only one-fifth of the military-age population lives there.
In other words, Martin says,
more than its fair share of sacrifice.CBS News producer Larry Doyle notes that among the 2,000 deaths, 299 soldiers died in non-hostile situations, such as car accidents and friendly fire. Forty-eight soldiers committed suicide.
The milestone came amid growing doubts among the U.S. public about the Iraq conflict, launched in March 2003 to destroy Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction. None was ever found.
In an e-mail statement to Baghdad-based journalists, command spokesman Lt. Col. Steve Boylan said media attention on the 2,000 figure was misguided and "set by individuals or groups with specific agendas and ulterior motives."
He described the grim statistic as an "artificial mark on the wall" and urged news organizations to focus more on the accomplishments of the U.S. military mission in Iraq.
The numbers also bring to mind another conflict, according to CBS News Military Analyst and retired Army Colonel Mitch Mitchell.
"In the Vietnam War, we had many more people over there, but we're taking about one quarter the number of casualties that the Vietnam War was experiencing in each month," Mitchell said. "When you figure out the differences in the numbers deployed, it comes out to just about the same number of casualties each month that we took in Vietnam. That's an appalling statistic."
In other developments:
In Iraq, many people heard of the 2,000 figure on Arab satellite TV channels such as Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya.
Some Iraqis complained that the attention was misguided because far more Iraqis have died in the conflict than Americans. No one knows an exact number of Iraqi deaths, but there is some consensus — including from a U.S. military spokesman and outside experts — that an independent count of roughly 30,000 is a relatively credible tally of Iraqi civilian deaths.
"I hope the number of Americans who die goes even higher," said Omar Ahmed, 36, the Sunni Arab owner of an electricity shop in Dora, one of the most violent parts of Baghdad.
Nearby, Ali al-Obeidi, a 28-year-old Sunni Arab, said he hoped the U.S. losses would prompt the United States to leave Iraq.
"It makes me happy," he said about the grim 2,000 dead soldiers milestone. "They're an occupation force."
Al-Obeidi said the number pales in comparison to the thousands of dead Iraqis. "The Iraqis are my brothers. We saw nothing good from the Americans. They hurt us and their presence in Iraq is to blame for all the Iraqi deaths."
Such feelings are not shared by many of Iraq's majority Shiites, who were freed from the oppression and discrimination that they suffered under Saddam.
"Remnants of Saddam's regime are cooperating with al Qaeda in Iraq. And this, the killing of the Americans, will affect the stability and rebuilding of Iraq," said Hamid al-Sumaysim, 54, a Shiite shop owner in Najaf, 100 miles south of Baghdad. "The Americans liberated us and they will help us to rebuild our country."
Abdul Jabar Hassan, 48, a Shiite government electricity worker in the southern city of Basra, said the growing U.S. death toll could be the result of poor planning by the Bush administration about rebuilding Iraq after the war.
"I'm not surprised by this number," he said. "I expect it to go even higher because America did not plan for the postwar situation in Iraq or really understand its people."
Iraq Body Count, a British research group that compiles its figures from reports by the major news agencies and British and U.S. newspapers, has said that as many as 30,051 Iraqis have been killed since the start of the war. Other estimates range as high as 100,000.
U.S. and coalition authorities say they have not kept a count of such deaths, and Iraqi government accounting has proven to be haphazard.
In Washington, President Bush warned on Tuesday the U.S. public to brace for more casualties in the fight against "as brutal an enemy as we have ever faced, unconstrained by any notion of common humanity and by the rules of warfare."
"No one should underestimate the difficulties ahead," Bush said in a speech Tuesday before the Joint Armed Forces Officers' Wives' luncheon in Washington.