Sources for following the casualty count in Iraq.
There are a couple very good sources on U.S. and allied casualties.
Sources on Iraqi casualties are speculative and unclear by comparison.
That’s because the United States got out of what’s been termed "the
body-count business" (an allusion to the weekly totals provided during
most of
the Vietnam War) during the Gulf War. I guess that’s because it was
politically tricky to report the magnitude of the casualties we were
inflicting. But enough of memory lane, and on to the casualty
counts:
Iraq
Coalition Casualties:
A very reliable and up-to-date summary
of U.S. and allied casualties, backed up by press and military reports
of killed and wounded. Includes a list of every U.S./allied soldier
killed in action since the war started.
GlobalSecurity.org
gives a slightly different count.
Its totals vary slightly from those on the previous site. Maybe the
best feature of the list is the longish explanatory
essay, with some historical perspective, on the numbers and
how they’re derived.
Iraq Body Count:
An explicitly antiwar site that attempts to do what the governments
involved will not do and what the media cannot do (or haven’t gotten
around to doing): tally civilian deaths in Iraq since the beginning of
the war (the current estimated range is 9,018 to 10,873).