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Rising death toll iraq spurs concerns { June 20 2003 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14499-2003Jun19.htmlhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14499-2003Jun19.html
Rising U.S. Death Toll In Iraq Spurs Concern
9 Soldiers Killed in Attacks This Month
By Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 20, 2003; Page A16
Inside the Bush administration, where top officials resolutely emphasize postwar progress in Iraq while playing down the setbacks, the rising American death toll and the increasing number of attacks on U.S. troops are causing increasing worry.
The death of a U.S. soldier yesterday near Baghdad brought to nine the number of troops killed in Iraq this month in a string of sporadic rocket and sniper attacks. Fifty-four Americans have died in accidents or military action since President Bush declared the war ended on May 1, equal to more than one-third of the 139 wartime deaths.
Bush and his top military and foreign policy officials define the casualties as a necessary cost of a successful military occupation. They say the deaths, while painful, are secondary to recent progress on economic and security issues. As one said yesterday, "Are we better off today than we were a month ago? Yes."
Yet senior aides and members of Congress are talking warily of the dangers ahead, as well as the potential political and diplomatic fallout, amid evidence that Iraqi renegades are determined to fight. Indeed, the commanding general of the U.S. Army's 4th Infantry Division charged this week that anti-American forces are paying Iraqis to kill troops. The perils are significant. It has become clear that U.S. troops will form the majority of the international force in Iraq for many months. Some voices on Capitol Hill, describing the casualties and the extent of the armed Iraqi opposition, have begun to argue that the Bush administration must send more troops or recruit others.
"American troops are being killed daily. Some American family awakens to the news as I did this morning, to find that another American has been killed, and that family that day will have its hearts broken," Rep. Ike Skelton (Mo.), the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said during a Wednesday hearing.
"There are significant hostile forces," Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) told a National Press Club audience yesterday. "There are forces we can't see. There are competitions between power groups vying for power. There's retribution, there's retaliation. And I don't think we do have enough manpower in there."
In one acknowledgement of the troubles, White House press secretary Ari Fleischer and other Bush aides have recently put a greater emphasis on the risks. Bush, however, did not mention U.S. casualties when speaking in Minnesota yesterday. Aides said Bush intends to accentuate the positive while speaking about "the challenges and the dangers as we continue to fight the war on terrorism."
Asked why there has been so little public discussion by the Bush defense and foreign policy team about the continuing attacks, one official said other issues have dominated the agenda, including the administration's efforts at Middle East peacemaking and the dispute over evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
"Part of it," the official said, "is that everybody is dealing with the WMD story."
The domestic political fallout remains muted, but analysts and pollsters said it could become significant if the attacks continue and the death toll climbs.
"It hasn't reached much of a decibel level yet," said Ohio State University professor John Mueller, a specialist on the politics of combat casualties, "but it seems very likely it will in due course."
Opinion research companies are only now beginning to seek reactions to postwar casualties, but majorities of people polled before the war said 1,000 or more U.S. combat deaths would be acceptable if Iraq were disarmed and Saddam Hussein toppled. Gallup Poll editor Frank Newport said the context of U.S. deaths will be important.
"It's not so much the casualties themselves -- we've seen the American public has shown a willingness to tolerate casualties -- but what it says about the success of the larger objectives," Newport said. If conditions improve and Iraqis demonstrate general support for the U.S. presence, he added, isolated attacks are likely to be viewed as just that.
U.S. military commanders attribute the attacks that have killed 16 American troops since May 1 to "rogue" elements and "remnants" of Hussein's forces -- part of what Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld calls the "untidy" aftermath of regime change.
Maj. Gen. Ray Odierno, commander of the Army's 4th Infantry Division, said his troops battle "almost daily" with Baath Party loyalists, militant Islamic fundamentalists and Iraqis "who are poor and are being paid to attack U.S. forces." Interrogations of Iraqis who have tried to kill Americans have revealed payments to anti-American mercenaries, he said.
Aggressive U.S. tactics have forced Iraqis to attack more often, Odierno told reporters by teleconference from Baghdad. Yet he believes the capture of Iraqi suspects and seizure of millions of dollars has weakened the opposition groups, which he called increasingly desperate.
The attacks so far, Odierno said, are "militarily insignificant." He described them as "very small" and "very random." He said they are having "no impact on the way we conduct business on a day-to-day basis in Iraq" and asserted that the attackers themselves are becoming less organized.
The most recent attack occurred yesterday south of Baghdad. A rocket-propelled grenade hit a U.S. military ambulance, killing one American and wounding two others. Earlier in Samarra, north of Baghdad, a rocket-propelled grenade struck a U.S. tank, but no one was hurt.
In Congress, Rep. Martin T. Meehan (D-Mass.), spoke this week of "losing an American a day" in maintaining that more troops from around the world should be dispatched to Iraq to keep the peace and relieve U.S. forces. Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii) said the current situation reminds him of the time when he first began to have doubts about the Vietnam War.
Rumsfeld said Wednesday that Americans will be patient and will tolerate the U.S. casualties.
"I believe that they feel that this is a worthwhile effort on our part," Rumsfeld said at a Pentagon briefing, "that it is something that reflects the American spirit, and they recognize the difficulty of the task."
Staff writer Mike Allen and researcher Madonna Lebling contributed to this report.
© 2003 The Washington Post Company
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