Monday, November 15, 2004

Looking at the Fatality Count

We are up to 72 hostile and 5 non-hostile Coalition fatalities this month.
I notice that the number of soldiers killed on November 13 increased today from 5 to 9. This means, as I have said before, that there is as much as a 48-hour lag time in reporting deaths, so it is not generally safe to assume that no deaths listed on a day equals no deaths that day until 2 or 3 days have passed.
(Day-by-day breakdowns can be seen by clicking on the month on the Military Fatalities by Month chart at the Iraq Coalition Casualty website. This is the current month (November 2004). The chart won't say when the deaths were added to the chart, so unless you check it frequently you won't notice how much delay is between a death and the reporting of a death. 2 days is actually pretty speedy, but if you check the site daily or more frequently, you should build that delay into your interpretation of the chart; for example, as of posting, no deaths are listed for November 14, but you shouldn't assume that November 14 was a quiet day until the 17 or 18, when enough time has passed for any deaths to have been recorded).
One thing that this means is that from Nov. 8 - Nov. 13, at least 9 Coalition forces have died each day. In fact, during this time period the only (1) non-US death and (2) non-hostile deaths occurred on Nov. 8, when 12 soldiers total were killed, so 9 Americans have died of hostile fire each day.
My prediction of hostile deaths for November 2004 going above 100 seems pretty accurate now, so I am now deciding to stick with it.

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