U.S. Death Toll in Iraq Shows No Sign of Slowing

By Will Dunham

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. death toll in Iraq is showing no sign of slowing, with attacks on American troops by insurgents becoming more sporadic but often more lethal, analysts said on Tuesday.

Despite proclamations by commanders about progress against the resistance -- Army Maj. Gen. Raymond Odierno said the insurgents had been "brought to their knees" -- analysts said there was little reason to believe U.S. casualties will decline any time soon during this U.S. presidential election year.

"I would expect that the overall rate of U.S. casualties will probably remain about the same barring a massive deterioration in the overall security environment, for instance if Shi'ites and Sunnis begin to go at it or Kurds and Iraqi Arabs begin to go at it, and U.S. forces get caught in the middle," said Cato Institute defense analyst Ted Carpenter.

Army Gen. John Abizaid, head of U.S. Central Command, has forecast increased violence in Iraq as the United States aims to return sovereignty by the end of June.

"There's more casualties ahead. There's more fighting ahead," Abizaid, who commands U.S. troops in the region, said last week. "But there's nothing out there that I see militarily that we can't handle."

There has been an upturn in U.S. fatalities in the past 2-1/2 weeks, bringing to 526 the American death toll in Iraq since the invasion to topple President Saddam Hussein was launched last March.

Analysts noted that the U.S. death toll is relatively low compared to previous wars.

'PAINFUL EXPERIENCE'

"From the American standpoint, I suppose, it's better to be bled slowly than rapidly, but even being bled slowly is a very painful experience, and that's what's happening," Carpenter said.

Army Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said there were an average of 23 attacks per day against U.S. troops over the past week, down from more than 50 per day in November. A week ago, Kimmitt put the figure at 18 per day.

Analysts said the U.S. death toll has climbed steadily even as the number of attacks has fallen because successful strikes by insurgents now often cause more fatalities than those staged months ago.

"The nature of the casualties has tended to shift from low-level incidents in consistent patterns to high-level incidents which are much more erratic," said defense analyst Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Cordesman noted the difficulty in predicting future trends for U.S. casualties.

"We really are wandering off into unexplored territory in every political and military sense of the term," Cordesman said. "And we're going to watch month by month an evolution between now and 2005 which is either going to create the basis for a new and far more pluralistic Iraqi government or we're going to see a drift toward civil war and possibly far higher levels of hostility to the United States."

Pentagon spokesman Jim Turner said 54 U.S. troops were killed in Iraq in January.

That was the second-highest monthly death toll for U.S. forces since May 1, when President Bush declared major combat operations over, and compared to the average of about 43 Americans killed per month since then.

November was the deadliest month for U.S. troops in the entire war, with 81 Americans killed amid an offensive by insurgents coinciding with the Islamic holy month Ramadan.

Kimmitt acknowledged the stubborn steadiness of the monthly U.S. death counts, saying "the numbers in December and January weren't dramatically different ... from the months prior to November. November is where we had a spike in casualties."