Guardsmen, reservists bear growing share of America's death toll in Iraq

[Judi Lynn]

Guardsmen, reservists bear growing share of America's death toll in Iraq

ROBERT BURNS, AP Military Writer Wednesday, December 31, 2003



(12-31) 22:17 PST WASHINGTON (AP) --

As they prepare to increase their role in Iraq, including more combat duty, soldiers with the Army National Guard and Army Reserve already are experiencing a bigger share of U.S. military deaths there.

Of the 39 deaths in December in Iraq for which the Pentagon has released the victim's names, 10 were citizen soldiers, according to an Associated Press review of the Pentagon reports. That is up from 14 percent in November, the deadliest month of the war with 81 American deaths. There actually were 40 reported deaths in December, but one soldier's name and affiliation have not been released.

Overall, since the start of hostilities last March, 14 percent of all U.S. military deaths have been members of the Army Guard or Reserve. The Army says it has had 68 reservists killed so far, compared with nine reservists among the Marines, two in the Navy and one in the Air Force.

It's too early to know whether December's proportional increase in deaths among citizen soldiers was the start of a trend, but some analysts say the jump is both politically and militarily troublesome, even if it proves temporary.
(snip/...)

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2003/12/31/national1438EST0572.DTL

[LWFred]

1. God bless those men and women who gave their lives...

nt

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

2. And God Damn the men who sent them.

[Judi Lynn]

3. Tsk, tsk.

He's no longer with us. Gone in under 2 hrs!

Good luck sign for the New Year?

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

4. Thank god... I alerted on several of his posts....

Another new years present from the mods! :party:

[NickB79]

5. Anyone care to predict what will happen when troop rotations begin?

And the most highly trained and battle-hardened men and women who went into Iraq first are replaced by inexperienced, one-weekend-a-month soldiers who've never even imagined being in a war, much less being fired upon? If you think casualty rates are bad now, you haven't seen nothing yet. And of course, the relatively inexperienced troops will more than likely fire randomly into the crowds of civilians at unseen enemies (hell, even the experienced troops do that occassionally), killing civilians and turning even more Iraqis to the resistance. Ugh, when will this nightmare end?