Casualties of the Iraq War

File:IraqiKilledApr2003ByMarinesDefendingBridge.jpg

Casualties of the conflict in Iraq since 2003 (beginning with the 2003 invasion of Iraq and continuing with the ensuing 2003 occupation of Iraq and continuing coalition presence) have come in many forms, and the accuracy of the information available on different types of casualties varies greatly.

For troops in the U.S.-led Multinational coalition, the death toll is carefully tracked and updated daily, and the names and photographs of those killed in action as well as in accidents have been published widely. Regarding the Iraqis, however, information on both military and civilian casualties is both less accurate and less reliable, and given the political significance of these figures and the varied agendas of all parties, no source can be considered free of bias. Estimates of casualty levels are available from reporters on the scene, from officials of involved organizations, and from groups that summarize information on incidents reported in the news media.

The word "casualties" in its most general sense includes the injured as well as the dead. Accounts of the number of coalition wounded vary widely, partly because it is not obvious what should be counted: should only those injuries serious enough to put a soldier out of commission be included? Do illnesses or injuries caused by accidents count, or should the focus be restricted to wounds caused by hostile engagement? Sources using different definitions may arrive at very different numbers, and sometimes the precise definition is not clearly specified. As for the Iraqis, where even the death toll has only been very roughly estimated, it appears that no one has attempted to count the wounded.

File:IraqiKilledApr2003ByMarinesDefendingBridge.jpg

Casualties of the conflict in Iraq since 2003 (beginning with the 2003 invasion of Iraq and continuing with the ensuing 2003 occupation of Iraq and continuing coalition presence) have come in many forms, and the accuracy of the information available on different types of casualties varies greatly.

For troops in the U.S.-led Multinational coalition, the death toll is carefully tracked and updated daily, and the names and photographs of those killed in action as well as in accidents have been published widely. Regarding the Iraqis, however, information on both military and civilian casualties is both less accurate and less reliable, and given the political significance of these figures and the varied agendas of all parties, no source can be considered free of bias. Estimates of casualty levels are available from reporters on the scene, from officials of involved organizations, and from groups that summarize information on incidents reported in the news media.

The word "casualties" in its most general sense includes the injured as well as the dead. Accounts of the number of coalition wounded vary widely, partly because it is not obvious what should be counted: should only those injuries serious enough to put a soldier out of commission be included? Do illnesses or injuries caused by accidents count, or should the focus be restricted to wounds caused by hostile engagement? Sources using different definitions may arrive at very different numbers, and sometimes the precise definition is not clearly specified. As for the Iraqis, where even the death toll has only been very roughly estimated, it appears that no one has attempted to count the wounded.

Template loop detected: Template:Summary of casualties of the 2003 invasion of Iraq

Although there are no accurate counts of dead Iraqi soldiers, and U.S. Central Command has made few statements on the subject, U.S. General Tommy Franks reportedly estimated soon after the invasion that there had been 30,000 Iraqi troops killed as of April 9, 2003 [14]. (He later said "we don't do body counts.") Officials did estimate that 2,000-3,000 Iraqi troops were killed in one day alone during a blitz into Baghdad on April 5, 2003, suggesting that a total in the tens of thousands is not unlikely for the entire six-week period of major combat. (Following that period, the Iraqi military was effectively disbanded.)

In late May 2003, one reporter for The Guardian estimated that between 13,500 and 45,000 Iraqi soldiers were killed by American and British troops during six weeks of war [15].

A later, more frequently quoted study published in October, 2003 estimated that there were between 4,895 and 6,370 Iraqi military deaths [16]. The study explained that to arrive at this number, they had adjusted the underlying incident reports from the field by reducing each count by anywhere from 20% to 60%, based on their own reliability assessments, in order to "control for casualty inflation — a prevalent form of bias." Thus, the actual reports they were summarizing totalled between 6,119 and 15,925 deaths.

Iraqi civilians have suffered the bulk of fatalities in this conflict. Estimates of the number of civilian deaths are better documented than the estimates of Iraqi military casualties, but they still reveal significant uncertainty. (Note that the groups making these estimates all define the word civilian to exclude the various paramilitary forces operating in Iraq as well as the official military forces that existed under Saddam Hussein's regime.)

One study done by public health experts from the Lancet medical journal published on 29 October 2004, found that an estimated 100,000 Iraqi civilians had died since the US invasion began. A survey was taken from nearly 1000 Iraqi households in which the residents were asked how many people lived there and how many births and deaths there had been since the war began. They then compared the death rate with the average from the 15 months before the war. Experts from both the US and Iraq found that Iraqi civilians were 2.5 times more likely to die after the invasion. They also found that most of the violent deaths were due to air-strikes by coalition forces. Falluja residents accounted for 2/3rds of violent deaths. Excluding Falluja the death rate was lowered to 1.5. At that rate, the study found the number of deaths would be at 98,000. Since the war began, civilian violent deaths were found to be 58 times more likely than in the 15 months preceding the war. [17]

The United Nations estimate of civilian casualties of the war in Iraq was 100,000 as of March 30, 2005. [18]

Another study by an Iraqi group, the "People's Kifah, or Struggle Against Hegemony," conducted a detailed survey in September and October of 2003 throughout the non-Kurdish areas of Iraq to surmise the total number of civilian dead [19]. They tallied 36,533 civilians killed in those areas by October 2003. This would not include civilian deaths since that time, nor civilians killed in the Kurdish areas of Iraq.

A western group, the Iraq Body Count project, compiles reported Iraqi civilian deaths that were caused directly by coalition military action, as well as deaths caused directly by the Iraqi insurgency (the Iraqi Body Count project claims that the Occupying Authority is responsible to prevent these deaths under international law.) It shows a minimum estimate of 27,295 and a high of 30,789 as of December 4, 2005. This estimate only includes incidents that were reported by at least two sources in the press. They claim the US and its allies are responsible for 37% of the 24,865 deaths. This works out to 9,200 deaths. The remaining 15,665 deaths are attibuted to the insurgency, foreign terrorists, Iraqi forces, and crime. [20]

As for the major combat phase of the war from March–April 2003, Abu Dhabi TV reported on April 8, 2003 that Iraqi sources claimed 1,252 civilians had been killed and 5,103 had been wounded. In comparison, the Iraq Body Count Project estimated that through April 9, 2003, between 996 and 1,174 civilians had been killed.

In 2004, the Associated Press completed a survey [21] of the morgues in Baghdad and surrounding provinces, to tally violent deaths since President Bush declared an end to major combat operations. In Baghdad alone, they counted 4,279 such deaths in a city of 5.6 million; these deaths generally do not include combatants, because they are typically not brought to morgues. This death rate translates to 76 killings per 100,000 people, compared to 39 in crime-ridden Bogotá, Colombia, 7.5 in New York City, 3.0 in Baghdad itself in 2002 (the year before the war), and the international average rate of 5.5.

Morgues surveyed in other parts of Iraq also reported large increases in the homicide rate. For example, the rate in the province of Karbala, south of Baghdad, rose from an average of one homicide per month in 2002 to an average of 55 per month in the year following the invasion; in Tikrit, north of Baghdad, where there were no homicides in 2002, the rate had grown to an average of 17 per month; in the northern province of Kirkuk, the rate had increased from 3 per month in 2002 to 34 per month in the survey period.

Many non-combatants from both coalition and non-coalition countries have also been killed or wounded, including more than 60 journalists and more than 150 international aid personnel and foreign civilians.

Some of the 18-20,000 ([22][23]) private military contractors and armed guards in Iraq, many of them working for the U.S. Department of Defense, have also died, though their status as civilian is controversial. As of October 9, 2005, some 273 foreign private military contractors are known to have been killed [24]. These include security contractors, truck drivers, construction workers, and businessmen. The contractors came from the USA, European coalition members, and non coalition countries like South Africa and Germany. However, the nation with the largest number of contractor deaths is the United States, with at least 127 killed.

In addition, although reporting on this situation has been quite sparse, one article [25] reported that at least 80 such contractors recruited to work in Iraq for American companies were killed during a period of eight days in early April 2004 — more than the roughly 70 coalition troops who were killed in the same period.

A study published in The Lancet on 29 October 2004 contains the following Summary:

Background In March, 2003, military forces, mainly from the USA and the UK, invaded Iraq. We did a survey to compare mortality during the period of 14.6 months before the invasion with the 17.8 months after it.

Methods A cluster sample survey was undertaken throughout Iraq during September, 2004. 33 clusters of 30 households each were interviewed about household composition, births, and deaths since January, 2002. In those households reporting deaths, the date, cause, and circumstances of violent deaths were recorded. We assessed the relative risk of death associated with the 2003 invasion and occupation by comparing mortality in the 17.8 months after the invasion with the 14.6-month period preceding it.

Findings The risk of death was estimated to be 2.5-fold (95% CI 1.6-4.2) higher after the invasion when compared with the preinvasion period. Two-thirds of all violent deaths were reported in one cluster in the city of Falluja. If we exclude the Falluja data, the risk of death is 1.5-fold (1.1-2.3) higher after the invasion. We estimate that 98,000 more deaths than expected (8000-194,000) happened after the invasion outside of Falluja and far more if the outlier Falluja cluster is included. The major causes of death before the invasion were myocardial infarction, cerebrovascular accidents, and other chronic disorders whereas after the invasion violence was the primary cause of death. Violent deaths were widespread, reported in 15 of 33 clusters, and were mainly attributed to coalition forces. Most individuals reportedly killed by coalition forces were men. The risk of death from violence in the period after the invasion was 58 times higher (95% CI 8.1-419) than in the period before the war.

Interpretation Making conservative assumptions, we think that about 100,000 excess deaths, or more have happened since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Violence accounted for most of the excess deaths and air strikes from coalition forces accounted for most violent deaths. We have shown that collection of public-health information is possible even during periods of extreme violence. Our results need further verification and should lead to changes to reduce noncombatant deaths from air strikes.

See Lancet study for more details of the methodology and subsequent controversy about the study.

Casualties among the coalition military forces have been tracked with greater accuracy.

As of 26 March, 2006, the coalition death toll in this conflict was 2,530. Of these, 2,321 Americans, 103 British, 27 Italians, 18 Ukrainians, 17 Polish, 13 Bulgarians, 11 Spanish, 3 Danish, 3 Slovaks, 2 Dutch, 2 Estonian, 2 Salvadoran, 2 Thai, 1 Australian, 1 Fijian, 1 Romanian, 1 Hungarian, 1 Kazakh, and 1 Latvian have died.[26] More than 90% of these died after President Bush's announcement on May 1, 2003 that major combat was over (see Mission Accomplished).

Troops killed in action account for 1,976 of the coalition casualties, including 1,826 of the U.S. casualties.

Since the official handover of power to the Iraq interim government on June 28, 2004, coalition soldiers have continued to come under attack in towns across Iraq.

Coalition casualties in the 2003–2006 conflict are now more than six times those of the 1990–1991 Gulf War. (In the Gulf War, coalition forces suffered around 378 deaths, and among the Iraqi military, tens of thousands were killed, along with thousands of civilians.) As a result of the second Iraq war and War in Afghanistan, the total US annual military casualty rate has tripled and returned to its 1989 rate of approximately 1700 casualties per year.

The total number of non-fatal coalition casualties of all kinds has never been comprehensively reported. For U.S. troops only, though, as of September 15, 2004, UPI reported that 16,765 had been medically evacuated from Iraq and Afghanistan for injuries or illnesses not directly related to combat [27], and The Pentagon's figures showed that 7,245 had been wounded in combat in Iraq by that time. The unspecified fraction of the former group who were evacuated from Afghanistan would not be included in the count for this conflict. However, estimating that the 9-to-1 ratio of U.S. troops killed in Iraq vs. in Afghanistan by then would also hold for non-fatal casualties, then about 15,000 of the medical evacuations would be from Iraq, so the total number of non-fatal U.S. casualties in Iraq was roughly 22,000 as of September 15, 2004.

Statistics on U.S. soldiers wounded in action, however, are disclosed regularly: according to the Pentagon, 17,269 have been wounded in action through 26 March, 2006, of whom 7,961 were wounded severely enough that they could not return to action within 72 hours.

In addition, the study on posttraumatic stress disorder found that the percentage of troops suffering from PTSD increased by between 7-10% after deployment to Iraq, which would represent 25,000 to 35,000 initial periodcases of PTSD among the roughly 350,000 U.S. troops who have served in Iraq.

Information on injuries suffered by troops of other coalition countries is less readily available, but a statement in Hansard indicated that 2,703 U.K. soldiers had been medically evacuated from Iraq for wounds or injuries as of October 4, 2004 and that 155 U.K. troops were wounded in combat in the initial invasion [28].

Ted Koppel, host of ABC's Nightline, devoted his entire show on April 30, 2004, to reading the names of 721 of the 737 U.S. troops who had died thus far. He did not mention deaths in Afghanistan. (The show hadn't been able to confirm the remaining 16 names.)

Claiming that this would constitute a political statement, the Sinclair Broadcast Group, a media company whose executives have strongly supported President Bush, took the unusual action of barring the seven ABC-affiliated stations it controls from airing the show. The decision to censor the broadcast drew criticism from both sides, including members of the armed forces, opponents of the war, MoveOn.org, and most notably Republican Senator John McCain, who denounced the move as "unpatriotic" and "a gross disservice to the public"

• United States casualties of war
• Breakdown of coalition casualties by location and time period
• Posttraumatic stress disorder
• Suicide bombings in Iraq since 2003

• NYTimes Interactive feature on US service members who have died in Iraq
• Detailed monthly statistics on coalition casualties
• 2-minute web movie about casualties in Iraq, from the American Friends Service Committee
• Coalition Casualties, according to CNN
• U.S. Military Casualty Information, from the DoD
• Iraqi civilian death toll, from the Iraq Body Count project
• Eyes Wide Open, a travelling exhibition on the human cost of war
• BBC Timeline: U.S. losses in Iraq since 1 May 2003
• Names and faces of U.S. troops killed supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom
• A "Running Log" with write-ups about dozens of individual wounded U.S. troops
• A graph of total U.S. military fatalities in Iraq since 3/20/03 Note: Trend chart no longer updated.
• An incomplete list of contractors and security personnel killed in Iraq
• 17,000 GIs not listed as casualties, according to UPI
• Mortality before and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: cluster sample survey
• Comparison of U.S. deaths in Vietnam and Iraq
• Casualties of the War in Iraq
• Journalists Killed in Iraq - CPJ
• US Casualties in Iraq Detailed information/graphs on US casualties since the beginning of hostilities.
• Flash graphic showing Coalition casualties over time with location within Iraq

Although there are no accurate counts of dead Iraqi soldiers, and U.S. Central Command has made few statements on the subject, U.S. General Tommy Franks reportedly estimated soon after the invasion that there had been 30,000 Iraqi troops killed as of April 9, 2003 [42]. (He later said "we don't do body counts.") Officials did estimate that 2,000-3,000 Iraqi troops were killed in one day alone during a blitz into Baghdad on April 5, 2003, suggesting that a total in the tens of thousands is not unlikely for the entire six-week period of major combat. (Following that period, the Iraqi military was effectively disbanded.)

In late May 2003, one reporter for The Guardian estimated that between 13,500 and 45,000 Iraqi soldiers were killed by American and British troops during six weeks of war [43].

A later, more frequently quoted study published in October, 2003 estimated that there were between 4,895 and 6,370 Iraqi military deaths [44]. The study explained that to arrive at this number, they had adjusted the underlying incident reports from the field by reducing each count by anywhere from 20% to 60%, based on their own reliability assessments, in order to "control for casualty inflation — a prevalent form of bias." Thus, the actual reports they were summarizing totalled between 6,119 and 15,925 deaths.

Iraqi civilians have suffered the bulk of fatalities in this conflict. Estimates of the number of civilian deaths are better documented than the estimates of Iraqi military casualties, but they still reveal significant uncertainty. (Note that the groups making these estimates all define the word civilian to exclude the various paramilitary forces operating in Iraq as well as the official military forces that existed under Saddam Hussein's regime.)

One study done by public health experts from the Lancet medical journal published on 29 October 2004, found that an estimated 100,000 Iraqi civilians had died since the US invasion began. A survey was taken from nearly 1000 Iraqi households in which the residents were asked how many people lived there and how many births and deaths there had been since the war began. They then compared the death rate with the average from the 15 months before the war. Experts from both the US and Iraq found that Iraqi civilians were 2.5 times more likely to die after the invasion. They also found that most of the violent deaths were due to air-strikes by coalition forces. Falluja residents accounted for 2/3rds of violent deaths. Excluding Falluja the death rate was lowered to 1.5. At that rate, the study found the number of deaths would be at 98,000. Since the war began, civilian violent deaths were found to be 58 times more likely than in the 15 months preceding the war. [45]

The United Nations estimate of civilian casualties of the war in Iraq was 100,000 as of March 30, 2005. [46]

Another study by an Iraqi group, the "People's Kifah, or Struggle Against Hegemony," conducted a detailed survey in September and October of 2003 throughout the non-Kurdish areas of Iraq to surmise the total number of civilian dead [47]. They tallied 36,533 civilians killed in those areas by October 2003. This would not include civilian deaths since that time, nor civilians killed in the Kurdish areas of Iraq.

A western group, the Iraq Body Count project, compiles reported Iraqi civilian deaths that were caused directly by coalition military action, as well as deaths caused directly by the Iraqi insurgency (the Iraqi Body Count project claims that the Occupying Authority is responsible to prevent these deaths under international law.) It shows a minimum estimate of 27,295 and a high of 30,789 as of December 4, 2005. This estimate only includes incidents that were reported by at least two sources in the press. They claim the US and its allies are responsible for 37% of the 24,865 deaths. This works out to 9,200 deaths. The remaining 15,665 deaths are attibuted to the insurgency, foreign terrorists, Iraqi forces, and crime. [48]

As for the major combat phase of the war from March–April 2003, Abu Dhabi TV reported on April 8, 2003 that Iraqi sources claimed 1,252 civilians had been killed and 5,103 had been wounded. In comparison, the Iraq Body Count Project estimated that through April 9, 2003, between 996 and 1,174 civilians had been killed.

In 2004, the Associated Press completed a survey [49] of the morgues in Baghdad and surrounding provinces, to tally violent deaths since President Bush declared an end to major combat operations. In Baghdad alone, they counted 4,279 such deaths in a city of 5.6 million; these deaths generally do not include combatants, because they are typically not brought to morgues. This death rate translates to 76 killings per 100,000 people, compared to 39 in crime-ridden Bogotá, Colombia, 7.5 in New York City, 3.0 in Baghdad itself in 2002 (the year before the war), and the international average rate of 5.5.

Morgues surveyed in other parts of Iraq also reported large increases in the homicide rate. For example, the rate in the province of Karbala, south of Baghdad, rose from an average of one homicide per month in 2002 to an average of 55 per month in the year following the invasion; in Tikrit, north of Baghdad, where there were no homicides in 2002, the rate had grown to an average of 17 per month; in the northern province of Kirkuk, the rate had increased from 3 per month in 2002 to 34 per month in the survey period.

Many non-combatants from both coalition and non-coalition countries have also been killed or wounded, including more than 60 journalists and more than 150 international aid personnel and foreign civilians.

Some of the 18-20,000 ([50][51]) private military contractors and armed guards in Iraq, many of them working for the U.S. Department of Defense, have also died, though their status as civilian is controversial. As of October 9, 2005, some 273 foreign private military contractors are known to have been killed [52]. These include security contractors, truck drivers, construction workers, and businessmen. The contractors came from the USA, European coalition members, and non coalition countries like South Africa and Germany. However, the nation with the largest number of contractor deaths is the United States, with at least 127 killed.

In addition, although reporting on this situation has been quite sparse, one article [53] reported that at least 80 such contractors recruited to work in Iraq for American companies were killed during a period of eight days in early April 2004 — more than the roughly 70 coalition troops who were killed in the same period.

A study published in The Lancet on 29 October 2004 contains the following Summary:

Background In March, 2003, military forces, mainly from the USA and the UK, invaded Iraq. We did a survey to compare mortality during the period of 14.6 months before the invasion with the 17.8 months after it.

Methods A cluster sample survey was undertaken throughout Iraq during September, 2004. 33 clusters of 30 households each were interviewed about household composition, births, and deaths since January, 2002. In those households reporting deaths, the date, cause, and circumstances of violent deaths were recorded. We assessed the relative risk of death associated with the 2003 invasion and occupation by comparing mortality in the 17.8 months after the invasion with the 14.6-month period preceding it.

Findings The risk of death was estimated to be 2.5-fold (95% CI 1.6-4.2) higher after the invasion when compared with the preinvasion period. Two-thirds of all violent deaths were reported in one cluster in the city of Falluja. If we exclude the Falluja data, the risk of death is 1.5-fold (1.1-2.3) higher after the invasion. We estimate that 98,000 more deaths than expected (8000-194,000) happened after the invasion outside of Falluja and far more if the outlier Falluja cluster is included. The major causes of death before the invasion were myocardial infarction, cerebrovascular accidents, and other chronic disorders whereas after the invasion violence was the primary cause of death. Violent deaths were widespread, reported in 15 of 33 clusters, and were mainly attributed to coalition forces. Most individuals reportedly killed by coalition forces were men. The risk of death from violence in the period after the invasion was 58 times higher (95% CI 8.1-419) than in the period before the war.

Interpretation Making conservative assumptions, we think that about 100,000 excess deaths, or more have happened since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Violence accounted for most of the excess deaths and air strikes from coalition forces accounted for most violent deaths. We have shown that collection of public-health information is possible even during periods of extreme violence. Our results need further verification and should lead to changes to reduce noncombatant deaths from air strikes.

See Lancet study for more details of the methodology and subsequent controversy about the study.

Casualties among the coalition military forces have been tracked with greater accuracy.

As of 26 March, 2006, the coalition death toll in this conflict was 2,530. Of these, 2,321 Americans, 103 British, 27 Italians, 18 Ukrainians, 17 Polish, 13 Bulgarians, 11 Spanish, 3 Danish, 3 Slovaks, 2 Dutch, 2 Estonian, 2 Salvadoran, 2 Thai, 1 Australian, 1 Fijian, 1 Romanian, 1 Hungarian, 1 Kazakh, and 1 Latvian have died.[54] More than 90% of these died after President Bush's announcement on May 1, 2003 that major combat was over (see Mission Accomplished).

Troops killed in action account for 1,976 of the coalition casualties, including 1,826 of the U.S. casualties.

Since the official handover of power to the Iraq interim government on June 28, 2004, coalition soldiers have continued to come under attack in towns across Iraq.

Coalition casualties in the 2003–2006 conflict are now more than six times those of the 1990–1991 Gulf War. (In the Gulf War, coalition forces suffered around 378 deaths, and among the Iraqi military, tens of thousands were killed, along with thousands of civilians.) As a result of the second Iraq war and War in Afghanistan, the total US annual military casualty rate has tripled and returned to its 1989 rate of approximately 1700 casualties per year.

The total number of non-fatal coalition casualties of all kinds has never been comprehensively reported. For U.S. troops only, though, as of September 15, 2004, UPI reported that 16,765 had been medically evacuated from Iraq and Afghanistan for injuries or illnesses not directly related to combat [55], and The Pentagon's figures showed that 7,245 had been wounded in combat in Iraq by that time. The unspecified fraction of the former group who were evacuated from Afghanistan would not be included in the count for this conflict. However, estimating that the 9-to-1 ratio of U.S. troops killed in Iraq vs. in Afghanistan by then would also hold for non-fatal casualties, then about 15,000 of the medical evacuations would be from Iraq, so the total number of non-fatal U.S. casualties in Iraq was roughly 22,000 as of September 15, 2004.

Statistics on U.S. soldiers wounded in action, however, are disclosed regularly: according to the Pentagon, 17,269 have been wounded in action through 26 March, 2006, of whom 7,961 were wounded severely enough that they could not return to action within 72 hours.

In addition, the study on posttraumatic stress disorder found that the percentage of troops suffering from PTSD increased by between 7-10% after deployment to Iraq, which would represent 25,000 to 35,000 initial periodcases of PTSD among the roughly 350,000 U.S. troops who have served in Iraq.

Information on injuries suffered by troops of other coalition countries is less readily available, but a statement in Hansard indicated that 2,703 U.K. soldiers had been medically evacuated from Iraq for wounds or injuries as of October 4, 2004 and that 155 U.K. troops were wounded in combat in the initial invasion [56].

Ted Koppel, host of ABC's Nightline, devoted his entire show on April 30, 2004, to reading the names of 721 of the 737 U.S. troops who had died thus far. He did not mention deaths in Afghanistan. (The show hadn't been able to confirm the remaining 16 names.)

Claiming that this would constitute a political statement, the Sinclair Broadcast Group, a media company whose executives have strongly supported President Bush, took the unusual action of barring the seven ABC-affiliated stations it controls from airing the show. The decision to censor the broadcast drew criticism from both sides, including members of the armed forces, opponents of the war, MoveOn.org, and most notably Republican Senator John McCain, who denounced the move as "unpatriotic" and "a gross disservice to the public"

• United States casualties of war
• Breakdown of coalition casualties by location and time period
• Posttraumatic stress disorder
• Suicide bombings in Iraq since 2003

• NYTimes Interactive feature on US service members who have died in Iraq
• Detailed monthly statistics on coalition casualties
• 2-minute web movie about casualties in Iraq, from the American Friends Service Committee
• Coalition Casualties, according to CNN
• U.S. Military Casualty Information, from the DoD
• Iraqi civilian death toll, from the Iraq Body Count project
• Eyes Wide Open, a travelling exhibition on the human cost of war
• BBC Timeline: U.S. losses in Iraq since 1 May 2003
• Names and faces of U.S. troops killed supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom
• A "Running Log" with write-ups about dozens of individual wounded U.S. troops
• A graph of total U.S. military fatalities in Iraq since 3/20/03 Note: Trend chart no longer updated.
• An incomplete list of contractors and security personnel killed in Iraq
• 17,000 GIs not listed as casualties, according to UPI
• Mortality before and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: cluster sample survey
• Comparison of U.S. deaths in Vietnam and Iraq
• Casualties of the War in Iraq
• Journalists Killed in Iraq - CPJ
• US Casualties in Iraq Detailed information/graphs on US casualties since the beginning of hostilities.
• Flash graphic showing Coalition casualties over time with location within Iraq