[Vision2020] The Numbers Games

[Tom Hansen]

>From the November 7, 2005 edition of the Army Times (www.armytimes.com) -

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The numbers games
Use of enemy body counts doesn?t add up

By Joseph L. Galloway 


When you pay the sort of tuition that we Americans paid in Vietnam - 58,249
Americans dead and more than 300,000 seriously wounded - it would seem
incumbent on us to remember the lessons we learned for at least a generation
or two.
One important lesson was that using enemy body counts as a metric of success
corrupts the system and makes liars out of soldiers and officers.

The high command in Saigon in those long-ago days seized on a strategy of
attrition - we will kill far more of them than they kill of us - and then,
to prove the efficacy of its fatally flawed strategy, demanded body counts
every time gunfire erupted in the jungle.

The GIs ordered to comb the gloom of a battlefield counting bodies joked
that they would, at times, tally up the arms and legs and divide by four.
Whatever number they reported often grew like Jack's beanstalk as it climbed
the chain of command. 

That led to straight-faced colonels at the daily press briefing in Saigon,
dubbed, not without cause, the "Five O'Clock Follies," reporting that 96
enemy were killed, and 12 weapons were recovered. A logical response was:
"The hell you say."

In the wake of Vietnam, U.S. military commanders, from Army Gen. H. Norman
Schwarzkopf in the 1991 Persian Gulf War to Army Gen. Tommy Franks in the
early part of the Iraq war, refused to play the body-count game. Franks told
reporters: "We don't do body counts." Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
echoed this in the fall of 2003 on a Sunday cable-television show: "We don't
do body counts on other people."

Well, guess what? Now, we do.

There's no evidence of any written or announced change in U.S. policy on
body counts. In fact, the senior military spokesmen in the Pentagon and in
Baghdad deny that there's been any change.

It seems that we've just drifted back into an old and discredited way of
doing business. 

Air Force Brig. Gen. Don Alston, whose mouthful of a title is chief,
communications division, deputy chief of staff, strategic effects,
Multi-National Forces - Iraq, told Knight Ridder that the release of figures
on enemies killed was done because the Americans "were trying to provide
more context to the Tal Afar operation" against suspected insurgents in
western Iraq.

But, Alston added, there is "no intention of making this a practice." Even
so, body counts have become increasingly common, beginning with the Marine
Corps' estimate of 1,200 to 1,600 enemies killed in the capture of Fallujah
last November.

Some official communications experts admit that beyond providing context to
an operation, a ripping good enemy body count can bolster the morale of U.S.
forces and help illuminate success in a war of shadows that increasingly
troubles Americans.

But body counts can hide a lot of sins, including dead civilians who
happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

So what do the Iraq numbers mean? Well, last year American commanders
estimated that there were no more than 5,000 active insurgents in Iraq.
Those same commanders have reported that 1,300 insurgents have been killed
since the end of January and another 8,260 have been detained.

But before you declare the war over, consider this: Army Gen. John Abizaid,
the head of U.S. Central Command, said Oct. 2 that he estimates there now
are 20,000 insurgents.

So let's do a little math: 5,000 insurgents minus 1,300 killed equals 3,700
left, minus 8,260 insurgents captured, equals 20,000 insurgents still out
there.

Hmmm.

It's the more trustworthy numbers out of Iraq, however, that break our
hearts. This week, the 2,000th American was killed in that war, and the
number of those wounded or injured hovers around 15,000. 

A friend of mine who keeps count of the number of American children orphaned
by the war in Iraq, because the Vietnam War left her fatherless, reports
that 21 American children lost their fathers in Iraq in September alone.

That number is a national tragedy. These are young Americans who will grow
up listening for a footstep they will never hear again; reaching out for
arms that will never hold them again; living a lifetime with a hole in their
hearts where a father was supposed to live and laugh and love.

And many, many times that number of Iraqi children have been condemned to
the same heartbroken existence by insurgent car bombs and American mistakes.


The writer is a nationally syndicated columnist for Knight Ridder
Newspapers. 

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Seeya at the polls, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho


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