The number of soldiers and Pentagon civilians who have died in Iraq topped the 1,000 mark yesterday, and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld declared that the insurgency is likely to turn even more violent in coming months as the fledgling nation heads toward democratic elections.
By last night, military officials said, the death tally included 998 troops and three civilian employees of the Defense Department. The milestone came after a spate of deadly attacks over the past week by insurgents.
Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Richard B. Myers and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld put enemy deaths at 1,500 to 2,500 last month.
(Lawrence Jackson -- AP)
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Graphic U.S. military casualties in Iraq have reached 1,001, including three Defense Department civilians.
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At a Pentagon news conference, Rumsfeld and Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said suicide bombings and coordinated attacks were claiming more lives and displaying the insurgency's ability to frustrate the coalition with increasingly sophisticated tactics.
While offering that sober assessment, Rumsfeld was resolute when asked about reaching the 1,000-casualty mark, emphasizing the need to continue the fight against terrorism despite the sacrifices.
"When combined with U.S. losses in other theaters in the global war on terror, we have lost well more than a thousand already," Rumsfeld said. "And we certainly honor the courage and sacrifice of every man and woman in uniform who has served in Iraq and who is currently serving there."
The attacks over the past week reflect a determined opposition to U.S. and coalition forces that threatens to extend a war that U.S. officials once estimated would long be over by now. As U.S. forces work to build Iraqi security forces and support a new government, they find themselves still targets of an elusive and adaptive enemy.
"The enemy is becoming more sophisticated in its efforts to destabilize the country," Myers said.
Rumsfeld took the unusual step yesterday of saying that U.S. and coalition forces "probably" had killed between 1,500 and 2,500 former regime elements, criminals and terrorists last month. Pentagon officials generally have not been revealing enemy body counts, only occasionally offering estimates of enemy dead in specific incidents.
Rumsfeld's decision yesterday to provide an estimate for a full month was interpreted by some military analysts as a Bush administration effort to try to offset recent bad news from Iraq.
"They're grasping for good news," said Michael E. O'Hanlon, an expert on military affairs with the Brookings Institution. "They're in the situation where they needed something positive to say."
One reason Pentagon officials had avoided announcing body counts was concern that the figures were not reliable. They also have worried that people would focus on the numbers and compare them to estimates U.S. military authorities have given of insurgent forces. Last November, Gen. John P. Abizaid, who as head of the U.S. Central Command oversees American forces in the Persian Gulf region, pegged the size of the insurgency at about 5,000 fighters.
"The real issue is the fact that this enemy we have out there has the capacity to regenerate itself," said retired Army Gen. John Keane, who stepped down last year as the Army's vice chief of staff and recently visited Iraq. "It's doing so because of the disenfranchisement of a certain number of Muslims, the despair they feel in lack of quality of life improvement, and the sense of nationalism they also feel."
"The military can only provide a partial answer to that," Keane added. "The other answer has to be economic development and jobs."
According to the Pentagon's official tally, the 1,001 military and civilian casualties included 755 who were killed in action and 246 who died in such "non-hostile" situations as accidents and suicides. The number of wounded has totaled 6,916, including 3,076 who returned to duty.
