Stats from Iraq

486 war-related civilian deaths in Iraq so far.

35 coalition hostile deaths.

And yet (back to my first link, the one for the civilian deaths) only 82 Iraqi police/miliitary deaths.

Assuming these trends continue, the stats for April will be 1041 Iraqi civilian deaths, 75 coalition hostile deaths, and 176 Iraqi police/military deaths.

This would mean that Iraqi civilian deaths have skyrocketed since November 2005 to their highest level since August 2005 (and their second highest level since Icasualties started recording in March 2005) and coalition deaths would be higher than they have been since October 2005, but deaths among the Iraqi police and military have been stable at betwen 150 and 200 since October 2005.

In fairness, a coalition hostile death toll of 75 for a month would not be inconsistent with the death tolls from May 2005 to October 2005, but it owuld not be combined with such high civilian casualties.

In any case, there is something strange about the Iraqi security forces not dying in larger numbers when violence against civilians is exploding, and about the Iraqi Security Forces not experiencing the same fatality rate increase as the coalition forces.

I predict that before the year is out we will have increasing reports of both elemetns of the Iraqi Security Forces being behind a lot of the mayhem in Iraq, and of the ones who are not actively causing problems being unwilling to fight against the insurgents and preferring to stay in areas where it is safe, but where they accomplish little to nothing.

That is all.