Edited to add:I was originally going to start off by saying that the America media probably isn't interested in reporting the deaths of other forces as some kind of slight on parochial US attitudes. However, having done a bit of digging, and while that still might be ture, it appears that the British media have also been keeping us in the dark on international comparisons of casualty rates. Either they aren't interested either, which I find hard to believe, or they just don't want us to know. A sobering thought.
Edited insert endsAs at 5th november, there have been 211 US casualties and 19 British. I couldn't find any up to date figures for other countries, but at 7 October, the breakdown was:
COMBAT/ATTACKS
United States 206 (91)
Britain 19 (11)
Multinational 0 (0)
NON-COMBAT
United States 117 (94)
Britain 32 (7)
Multinational 0 (1)
IRAQIS KILLED:
MILITARY 2,320#
CIVILIANS Between 7,376 and 9,178*
Figures in parenthesis indicate casualties since the May 1 2003
# = U.S. military estimates relating only to fighting in or near Baghdad. No other figures available.
* = Figure compiled on Web site www.iraqbodycount.net, run by academics and peace activists, based on incidents reported by at least two media sources.
NOTE: NON-COMBAT is defined as accidents, U.S. or British fire killing or wounding their own troops, and other incidents unrelated to fighting.
(
Source)
Here's a link showing troop strength by country for the coalition
as at 7 SeptemberSo very roughly, the USA has lost one man in every 616 deployed, while Britain has lost one in 558. In that respect, the casualty rates are rather
higher for America's coalition partners (well, us Brits, anyway) than they have been for America. I must admit to being rather surprised by this myself, having heard the same things about the Sunni triangle, the comparative friendliness of the Shia's in the British-controlled areas, and so on.
The easiest thing to do would be to blame American friendly-fire, but that to me would indicate more casualties during the main conflict when our forces were in the field together, rather than in their own separate areas. which isn't borne out in these figures.
Maybe the British penchant for doing without body armour etc. is just a higher risk strategy? Or maybe we just have a harder attitude to troop deaths over here and are prepared to accept higher casualty rates? If so, I certainly wouldn't attribute any values to that attitude compared to the US, as I'm still vaguely surprised to learn that we have higher casualty rates than the US, man for man.