The numbers of US servicemen killed, wounded and missing on the Iraqi battlefield are mounting steadily, and military experts warn that Americans may soon be confronting military carnage they have not seen since the end of the Vietnam war. About 30 US servicemen have been publicly reported killed in a week of combat along with 20 British soldiers and marines(USAF photo)...

Friday, March 28, 2003

By Jonathan Weisman, The Washington Post

WASHINGTON -- The numbers of U.S. servicemen killed, wounded and missing on the Iraqi battlefield are mounting steadily, and military experts warn that Americans may soon be confronting military carnage they have not seen since the end of the Vietnam war.

About 30 U.S. servicemen have been publicly reported killed in a week of combat along with 20 British soldiers and marines. But that total could be considerably higher, since news from the battlefront has been slow to be tallied. The number of wounded appears to be soaring.

Officials at Camp Lejeune, N.C., released a curt tally yesterday morning, listing 11 Marines from the 2nd Expeditionary Force as missing within the past 24 hours and 14 as wounded in action in fighting near Nasiriyah. Defense Department officials quickly informed the Camp Lejeune public affairs office that the release was a violation of Pentagon policy, said Marine Maj. Michele Flynn, a base spokeswoman. Casualty totals are supposed to come from Washington, and the Pentagon has released those numbers reluctantly.

Battlefield reports tell of violence not reflected in the upbeat assessments issued at press briefings at the Pentagon and Central Command in Doha, Qatar. More than half of a contingent of 120 Marines were wounded Wednesday when hit with gunfire and rocket-propelled grenades on the approach to a bridge at Nasiriyah.

More Americans have already died in Iraq than have been killed in the military's war on terrorism since it was launched after Sept. 11, 2001. The Defense Department lists 20 deaths by hostile action in Afghanistan, the Philippines and the Persian Gulf.

In the 1999 Kosovo air war, the United States didn't suffer a single battlefield death.

The Persian Gulf War 12 years ago saw 147 deaths on the battlefield, and 235 in all. But that conflict stretched over nearly six weeks. At the rate that Operation Iraqi Freedom is going, the United States could expect 180 deaths over a time frame of that length -- but extrapolating from the opening week may be pointless.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld warned yesterday that the hardest fighting is yet to come, when allied troops confront Saddam's Republican Guards and Special Republican Guard troops ringing Baghdad and his hometown of Tikrit, than try to capture the capital.

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