- PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) --
The U.S. death toll in Iraq has surpassed the number of American soldiers
killed during the first three years of the Vietnam War, the brutal Cold
War conflict that cast a shadow over U.S. affairs for more than a generation.
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- A Reuters analysis of Defense Department statistics showed
on Thursday that the Vietnam War, which the Army says officially began
on Dec. 11, 1961, produced a combined 392 fatal casualties from 1962 through
1964, when American troop levels in Indochina stood at just over 17,000.
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- By comparison, a roadside bomb attack that killed a soldier
in Baghdad on Wednesday brought to 397 the tally of American dead in Iraq,
where U.S. forces number about 130,000 troops -- the same number reached
in Vietnam by October 1965.
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- The casualty count for Iraq apparently surpassed the
Vietnam figure last Sunday, when a U.S. soldier killed in a rocket-propelled
grenade attack south of Baghdad became the conflict's 393rd American casualty
since Operation Iraqi Freedom began on March 20.
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- Larger still is the number of American casualties from
the broader U.S. war on terrorism, which has produced 488 military deaths
in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Philippines, Southwest Asia and other locations.
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- Statistics from battle zones outside Iraq show that 91
soldiers have died since Oct. 7, 2001, as part of Operation Enduring Freedom,
which President Bush launched against Afghanistan's former Taliban regime
after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington killed 3,000
people.
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- The Bush administration has rejected comparisons between
Iraq and Vietnam, which traumatized Americans a generation ago with a sad
procession of military body bags and television footage of grim wartime
cruelty.
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- Recent opinion polls show public support for the president
eroding as he heads toward the 2004 election, partly because of public
concern over the deadly cycle of guerrilla attacks and suicide bombings
in Iraq.
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- On Thursday, heavy gunfire and explosions echoed across
Baghdad as U.S. troops pounded rebel positions for a second night, and
administration officials sought ways to accelerate a transfer of power
to the Iraqi people.
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- U.S. COMBAT POWER
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- Because U.S. involvement in Vietnam increased gradually
after the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, there is little consensus
on when the war in Southeast Asia began.
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- Some date the war to the late 1950s. Others say it began
on Aug. 5, 1964, when Lyndon Johnson announced air strikes against North
Vietnam in retaliation for a reported torpedo attack on a U.S. destroyer
in the Gulf of Tonkin.
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- However, the Army's start date for the Vietnam War has
been set by its Center of Military History as Dec. 11, 1961, when two helicopter
companies consisting of 32 aircraft and 400 soldiers arrived in the country,
an Army public affairs specialist said.
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- "It was the first major assemblage of U.S. combat
power in Vietnam," explained Army historian Joe Webb.
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- Vietnam casualties, which amounted to 25 deaths from
1956 through 1961, climbed to 53 in 1962, 123 in 1963 and 216 in 1964,
Pentagon statistics show.
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- At the time, the U.S. presence in Vietnam consisted mainly
of military advisers. President John F. Kennedy increased their number
from about 960 in 1961 to show Washington's commitment to containing communism.
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- But not until 1965, after Congress had approved the Gulf
of Tonkin Resolution, did Washington begin its massive escalation of the
war effort. With a huge influx of soldiers, casualties in Vietnam soared
to 1,926 in 1965 and peaked at 16,869 in 1968, the year of the Tet Offensive,
data show.
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- In a major revision of U.S. military history in 1995,
former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara said he believed the Gulf of Tonkin
torpedo attack never occurred.
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- More than 58,000 U.S. military personnel died in Vietnam
before the war ended in the mid-1970s.
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- In another comparison, British forces that created Iraq
in the aftermath of World War One suffered 2,000 casualties from tribal
reprisals, guerrilla attacks and a jihad proclaimed from the Shi'ite holy
city of Kerbala, before conditions stabilized in 1921, according to U.S.
military scholars.
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- Reuters included military deaths both on and off the
battlefield for Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom,
for comparison with Vietnam War statistics that made no distinction between
hostile and non-hostile casualties.
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- On Thursday, U.S. combat deaths totaled 270 for Iraq
and 28 for other battle zones, including Afghanistan.
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thereon.
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- http://www.veteransforpeace.org/US_War_Dead_111403.htm
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