Jules Crittenden points out that our kill ratio in Iraq is roughly 10:1.
Chuck Simmins of TDW had been toiling away diligently, recording the deaths of terrorists as reported by MNF-I flaks. Turns out, they weren’t reporting them all. Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno had a press conference recently, largely ignored by the press, in which he reported 3,184 terrorists killed since January 2007, and another 1,018 wounded. Simmins took that number, subtracted the ones he had already logged to avoid duplication, and then averaged them out over the last six months. Turns out our soldiers are killing terrorists at a rate of up to 10 to 1.
See the helpful graphics from Terrorist Death Watch.
I guess the enemy is better than I thought, because I was expecting a lot better than 10:1. Of course, if we ever actually admit who’s fighting us and do something about it, I’d expect the ratio to change.
Thanks for the link.
I suspect that kill ratios were higher in the period before I began tracking data. The bad guys who survived to date have learned to not attack us in large numbers and to not congregate in large numbers. By and large we’re killing them in the ones and two and I think it was more in the past.
Comment by Chuck Simmins — 11 June, 2007 @ 7:19