Home > U.S. War Dead in Iraq Exceed Early Vietnam Years
By David Morgan
PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - 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.
By comparison, a roadside bomb attack that killed a
soldier 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.