US military death toll in Iraq approaches 1,500

The US military death toll is nearing 1,500 in the 23-month Iraq war, with casualties easing in the weeks since the historic January 30 elections but with little evidence the insurgency has been crippled. The Pentagon tally of military fatalities in Iraq released on Friday listed 1,480 US deaths, including 1,130 killed in combat and 350 in non-hostile incidents such as vehicle and aircraft crashes. A further 11,069 US troops have been wounded in combat.
US military leaders said rebel attacks had declined since the parliamentary election, touted by the United States as a milestone of progress in Iraq. US deaths have since slipped to about 60 percent of the rate for the three previous months. February, with at least 51 troops killed so far, is on track for the lightest monthly US death toll since last July. But experts said it was premature to say the situation had improved unalterably for the 150,000 US troops in Iraq.
"The war is basically stalemated as a military contest," said retired Army Colonel Andrew Bacevich, a Boston University international relations professor. Bacevich said the Pentagon still had not figured out the composition and organisation of the insurgency, much less how to defeat it. The rebels cannot beat US forces militarily although they can undermine their strength and cohesion, he added.
Cato Institute defence analyst Ted Carpenter said the recent level of US casualties in Iraq resembled Soviet losses in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Both wars pitted forces of an invading superpower against tenacious Muslim insurgents.
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan began in December 1979 and ended when the last Soviet troops were withdrawn in February 1989 after more than nine costly years fighting rebels aided by the CIA. The Soviet occupation force numbered roughly 115,000.
About 15,000 Soviet troops were killed in the war, with a monthly average of about 135 deaths and a yearly average of 1,622 deaths. A further 37,000 were wounded.
In the Iraq war, the US military has suffered about 65 deaths per month - about half the Soviet rate in Afghanistan - with a yearly average of 774 deaths. Carpenter noted improvements in medical treatment and body armour had suppressed the number of US deaths in Iraq, with many troops surviving wounds that may have been fatal in previous wars.