Month 48 of the War By the Numers

A U.S. soldier examines a captured Al Qaeda weapons cache

March was notable for being the onset of the fifth year of the Mess in Mesopotamia and the first full month of President Bush's so-called surge strategy.

As noted here ad nauseum, the keys to the success of this do-or-die strategy are ending the orgy of sectarian violence while bringing the government of Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki to heel.

In that regard, March was a horrific month with Iraqi casualties increasing by nearly 300 over February. While there were days when sectarian violence ebbed, there were other days when it was in full roar. A series of indicents last week in the northern city of Tal Afar is a bloody microcosm of why the strategy is in trouble:

Tal Afar, which is roughly half Sunni and half Shiite, had been cites as an example of how a war-torn city could be pacified.

But last Tuesday, a Sunni truck bombing in a poor Shiite neighborhood killed 152 people -- the highest death toll from a single incident in the war -- and wounded 347. Then a reprisal massacre of Sunnis by Shiite police officers left 47 more dead.

While casualty figures can be misleading (mostly because they end up being understated), most of the following numbers show increases from February.

As number cruncher extraordinaire Charles Amico notes at We the People, the number of U.S. troop fatalities in March represented a 158 percent increase over March 2006, while the four-month average is a 64 percent increase over the comparable period in 2006.

Herewith our monthly numbers roundup. (March totals are in orange; February totals are in black):

MARCH 2007 ROUNDUP

1,808 -- (1,511) Iraqis killed (*)
84 (80) -- U.S. troops killed
0 (0) -- Military funerals attended by President Bush

U.S. WAR-TO-DATE ROUNDUP
3,246 (3,162) -- Total killed to date

(The following statistics are through 3/24/07)
604 (576) -- Died of wounds
7 (7) -- Died while missing in action
2 (2) -- Died while captured
398 (390) -- Died in accidents
59 (57) -- Died from illness
13 (12) -- Died in homicides
100 (99) -- Died of self-inflicted wounds
8 (6) -- Undetermined
43 (42) -- Pending classification
xxx (23,417) -- Total wounded

COST
(As of 3/31/07)
$413,025,000,000 ($404,484,000,000)

(*) Includes Iraqi Army personnel, security forces, national police and civilians. Sources: National Priorities Project, Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, Defense Manpower Data Center.