December 1st month Without US Combat Death In Iraq

BAGHDAD — December was the first month since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq nearly seven years ago in which no U.S. forces died in combat in the country.

Gen. Ray Odierno called it a significant milestone and said it speaks to how the violence in Iraq has diminished. Odierno is the commanding general in Iraq.

There were three U.S. troops who died in December as a result of non-combat related incidents.

According to an Associated Press count, 149 U.S. troops died in Iraq in 2009. That includes combat-related deaths and those not related to fighting.

That's the lowest number of U.S. deaths for a year since the Iraq war began in 2003.

Comments

[NCAV2]

02:32 PM on 01/03/2010

Yeah no Americans died, but how many Iraqis died?

Oh yeah, their deaths don't count right?

[hippie4ever]

12:41 PM on 01/02/2010

The first Crusades brought lots of goodies home, including spices, silks, coffee, tea, medicines, food.

This Crusade only brings death and destruction, and all for a vanishing resource, oil. We'll lose this Crusade as well so standing down is our best option. Time to bring the troops on home.

Peace.

[SuperV]

05:01 PM on 01/02/2010

the crusades also gave europe the black death.

[nopilikia]

10:58 PM on 01/02/2010

Actually it was China. Trade ships brought it to europe.

[eweqo]

07:02 AM on 01/02/2010

obamao's cut and run strategy is working. Iran will soon be in control of Iraq.

[Abraxas79]

01:40 AM on 01/02/2010

Source: http://icasualties.org/oef/

[Abraxas79]

01:39 AM on 01/02/2010

The losses in Afghanistan have been the worst December since the 2001 invasion by five fold ! Not a good omen.

[FHTB]

03:10 AM on 01/02/2010

Yes, we trade one disaster for another...and now Yemen is joining the party, and Somalia is more than ready to step up to the plate also...not to mention the disaster that has befallen Pakistan...the Taliban and Al Queda are calling the shots, not vice versa.

[truthbringer]

01:25 AM on 01/02/2010

100,000 troops still in iraq- no casualties for a month..... thats pretty good. we won the war-- both of them against saddam and against the insurgency don't deny it- harry reid was wrong

[FHTB]

03:11 AM on 01/02/2010

Another one who has been drinking some seriously halluncinatory juice...

[WilliamL]

01:20 AM on 01/02/2010

Good,

time to pack and leave that fkn hole.

Enough, done, end it, and plenty of money left to do something else with beside that b.s.

[FHTB]

03:15 AM on 01/02/2010

The money that has been poured into all the places we have managed to inject ourselves into has been staggering, and the results are anything but wonderful, despite this statistic about combat deaths...one can trot out the false hope that Iraq is stable and calm, but the reality on the ground is anything but....with the stupendous verdict on Blackwater and Iraqi deaths, the chance of building up any good will among Iraqis just flew out the window...

[WilliamL]

10:57 PM on 01/02/2010

yup.

is safe to call it all horeshit at this point and be done with the political circle jerks.

Pelosi and Reid and other members of congress sd. have to write the death notices to families and perhaps hand deliver them to military families.

had any of them spent any time on military bases,, perhaps they wd understand my exhausted patience.

they just go about their business, they have not experienced the pain of having ones father or mother killed.

it is all just numbers,and polling, and turnout, and on down the road.........................

[bascombe]

11:47 PM on 01/01/2010

can we bring th troops home now?

Or should I ask: "What is going to be the next excuse we conjure up to stay there?"

[duxguts]

04:19 AM on 01/03/2010

An Iraqi might try to hijack a plane heading for Denver with a bomb in his ear.

[danielet]

11:40 PM on 01/01/2010

Odierno has made a career of drawing ONE line through ONE point and absurdly insist that it is the EXCLUSIVE answer. Iraqi insurgents know that we are losing in Afghanistan and are spread so thin that we can no longer add to Iraq but must subtract fast to reinforce fast Afghanistan. Afterall, many of these are alQaeda that traveled back and forth between the two fronts. For seven years the Iraqis have seen what mediocre generals we throw up against them and how intel blind, language deaf and culture dumb-- thus totally disoriented-- are our soldiers. Now Iraqis deem preparing for the inter-Iraqi war more important than to die killing Americans in revenge for the murderous brutality of the last seven years. They managed to kill almost 5000 of our “kinetic” supermen and now have other priorities. But, like Petraeus who made the same linear case for his surge, Odierno cannot recall the first class in high school geometry where kids learn that the number of lines you can draw through one point is infinite. That we went one month of 82 without any casualties is no tribute to our forces but rather a testament to their irrelevance to Iraq's future. It's nothing to brag about but rather a sad commentary on how in vain were our losses there to date

[truthbringer]

01:26 AM on 01/02/2010

yea well our troops killed all more insurgents.... 50,000 died but it was 58,000 in vietnam around the same time frame

[truthbringer]

01:27 AM on 01/02/2010

correction 5000 vs 58,000 in vietnam. our troops did a great job

[danielet]

05:07 PM on 01/02/2010

What we lost in Vietnam was due to triple canopy jungle and safe bases next door in Laos and Cambodia for PAVN. Soviet ships from Vodivostok to Haiphong and train from Haiphong to Hanoi and truck routes from Hanoi to Mu Gia Pass into Laos went unmolested. From then on it was pot luck for we couldn't even see the roadways through Laos and Cambodia. It was all blind bombing. In Iraq we had not even a Viet Cong like insurgency to speak of until we so abused Iraqis because we didn't have enough boots on the ground. Our military may or may not have been war criminals but they sure were intel blind, language deaf and cuture dumb moms and dads scared to death. They only fought to live so they could get back to their families while the shahids fought driven by hate to die killing us. That's a very uneven table. So I think the "stop-loss" scheme by which volunteers are repeatedly sent to combat involuntarily is outrageous. Bring them home to protect the homelenad and raise their kids right.

[lafayette2009]

11:27 PM on 01/01/2010

That is good news - obviously - but 560 US and Allied Troops and Personnel died in Afghanistan in 2009 and Iraqi citizens continue to be killed so all is not good.

[KarateKid]

10:07 PM on 01/01/2010

Yeah, after Blackwater got away with _murder, let's see what happens.

[bascombe]

11:51 PM on 01/01/2010

who knows what will happen, but you can bet if anything happens at all, it will bring out the reichers/wingnuts to blame it on Obama. CNN will probably trot out Mary Chainey and McCan't. FuxNoise will go ballistic.... but you know that already. I look for more CIA/blackwater activity in Iraq to keep it a MIC cash cow.

[scrzbill]

09:08 PM on 01/01/2010

WOW. This make President Obama THE GREATEST WAR PRESIDENT EVER. Eat your heart outs neo cons. It was right to elect the most liberal president ever. Now lets get it on for the rest of his and our liberal agenda. Bring home all the troops from Japan. Korea, Germany, England, Canada, Philippines and so on. Spend the money on Americans at home. Infrastructure, bridges, housing, food, safety for all. Get rid of the bloated defense budget.

[scrzbill]

09:12 PM on 01/01/2010

hearts out

[bascombe]

11:52 PM on 01/01/2010

that will still leave 154 countries with US military presence.

[Ergon]

08:12 PM on 01/01/2010

"In 2009 304 US soldiers were killed in Afghanistan, over double the number killed in 2008, which was itself the previous high since the war began. Britain also lost 107 soldiers, the most it has seen killed since the Falkland Islands War"
Iraqi civilian deaths since 2003: 1,336,350
http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/iraq
How many deaths in Afghanistan? We don't know.
http://cursor.org/stories/civilian_deaths.htm

[Norak]

07:45 PM on 01/01/2010

No combat deaths and that's good news. However, our troops are training Iraqi troops, not engaging in combat, so it's not unexpected, barring accidents.

[ibsteve2u]

06:52 PM on 01/01/2010

"There were three U.S. troops who died in December as a result of non-combat related incidents."

If you die because you are somewhere supporting a war, your death is combat-related.

To say otherwise is to infer that the dead were on vacation or something, rather than serving their country in a land far away.

People who insist on making that distinction are, to my mind, amoral. At best.

[trollslayer69]

07:00 PM on 01/01/2010

i agree that they are all the same under one umbrella i think the point of the story was there were no soldiers kill3d by enemy forces.

[ibsteve2u]

07:20 PM on 01/01/2010

Curiously, we have generals who wish to court martial both the prospective father and the pregnant soldier with the argument that such...activities...remove a soldier from thus force and thus affect combat readiness.

Yet generals shove aside those who die from something other than metal moving ballistically as "non-combat related" and thus name them inconsequential....

But I wager that a pregnant soldier put rounds downrange far more accurately than a dead one.

Every soldier's death - no matter its cause - in war is a victory for the enemy, and thus is combat-related. The only meaningful statistic is "Zero American Deaths".

[bascombe]

11:54 PM on 01/01/2010

rumsfeld changed the rules. you need a refresher.

recycling wounded
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1231-05.htm