Sometime on December 27, 2007, in a fierce gun battle in Al Kut, a milestone was reached.
The 20,000 AIF [Anti Iraqi Forces] terrorist was killed by our troops.
In many ways that anonymous soul typifies the war as it is now being fought. He was a Shia, a member of al-Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army, one of the Shia militias. Number 20,000 was acting in defiance of Sadr’s ceasefire order and was a member of a Special Groups cell. These cells are supplied, trained and armed by Iran.
He was killed by overwhelming firepower, in a futile battle that had no other outcome but loss.
Terrorist Death Watch has all the numbers and the stories behind the numbers.
3,186 American troops have lost their lives in defense of our freedoms and those of the Iraqi people.
UPDATE: I am provided by Multi-National Forces-Iraq with the same data that the USA Today received for this story. I have the official data through November. December’s count was made by reviewing all the MNF-I press releases for December and adding up the AIF killed.
MNF-I makes clear that these numbers do not include losses from the Liberation, Iraqi Army or aligned forces.
[...] dead bad guys in Iraq. Americas North Shore Journal [...]
i;m surprised its only 20k
[...] —-Chuck Simmins over at the North Shore Journal advises us tha a new milestone has been reached… The 20,000th anti-Iraq terrorist has been killed. [...]
Wow that is almost about 10 per day !! (10×365x6 = 22,000)
Do you think they will be able to keep up with those terrible losses ?
And we have only lost 4000 !! or 2 per day so I guess that means that we are winning ?
It’s pretty difficult to count bodies that have been vaporized by JDAMs, Hellfire missles, TOW, Javelin, 155 Howitzer. 20,000 is low by a lot…Kudos to our warfighters. They are giving al Qaeda and the rest of the cowardly insurgents an ass-kicking they will never forget. Those that live that is to say…
Grin Milestone…
Sometime on December 27, 2007, in a fierce gun battle in Al Kut, a milestone was reached. The 20,000th AIF [Anti Iraqi Forces] terrorist was killed by our troops. h/t……
Good on the guys that are doing the killing. Here’s hoping that they double their numbers soon, triple would be OK too. There’s no shortage of nutbars in that part of the world.
“Do you think they will be able to keep up with those terrible losses ?”
If you want to treat these numbers as actually being realistic figures, then you can find the MNF claiming the exact same number were killed each and every month for over a year in the Brookings Iraq index. Coupled with estimates of an increasing number of anti-Iraqi insurgents.
That would suggest yes.
The US military does not want to focus on body counts like it did so many years ago. I also think this number is low, likely for the reasons mentioned. The bad guys have many ways of filling vacant slots in the foot soldier category. However when you look at the list of mid and upper level commanders killed or captured, you see the true extent of the problem for anti-Iraq/coalition groups. You can’t replace Commanders or specialists easily. A steady decline in leadership and in internal security will result.
[...] Posted by Chuck Simmins [...]
[...] Another milestone: 20,000th terrorist killed in Iraq. Americas North Shore Journal [...]