--
Casualties, Expectations Might Collide Experts Warn of Rising Losses as Factor in Support for War
By Jonathan Weisman Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, March 28, 2003; Page A25
The numbers of U.S. servicemen killed, wounded or missing on the Iraqi battlefield are mounting steadily, and military experts warn that Americans might soon be confronting military carnage they have not seen since the Vietnam War.
About 30 U.S. servicemen have been publicly reported killed in a week of combat, along with 20 British soldiers and marines. But that total could be considerably higher, because news from the battlefront has been slow to be tallied. The number of wounded appears to be soaring.
Officials at Camp Lejeune, N.C., released a curt tally yesterday morning, listing 11 Marines from the 2nd Expeditionary Force as missing within the past 24 hours and 14 as wounded in action in fighting near Nasiriyah. Defense Department officials quickly informed the public affairs office at Camp Lejeune that the release was a violation of Pentagon policy, said Marine Maj. Michele Flynn, a base spokeswoman. Casualty totals are supposed to come from Washington, and the Pentagon has released those numbers reluctantly.
Reports from the battlefield tell of violence that is not reflected in the upbeat assessments issued at press briefings at the Pentagon and Central Command in Doha, Qatar. More than half of a contingent of 120 Marines were wounded Wednesday when they were hit with gunfire and rocket-propelled grenades on the approach to a bridge at Nasiriyah. Fifteen of their Humvees and seven-ton trucks were destroyed.
"Nasiriyah was supposed to be a six-hour fight," a wounded gunnery sergeant said at a field hospital yesterday. "It's already been five days. Five days of nonstop, 24-hour fighting."
Body armor that protects the head and torso has done wonders to keep troops alive, but officials at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in the District have been told to prepare for an influx of wounded soon.
"We don't really know if the country will accept casualties like this because it hasn't been tested in 30 years," said Charles Moskos, a Northwestern University sociologist who has studied the reaction of the public and the military to casualties.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A39764-2003Mar27?language=printer