The Mahablog: The Ranks of the Dead

Remember that long-ago, innocent time--2003, I think--in which General Thomas Franks famously snapped, "We don't do body counts"? Not entirely true, of course, as somehow numbers of bodies got released to the media from time to time, anyway. Today Ellen Knickmeyer writes in WaPo that the U.S. military is counting bodies even more these days.

Using enemy body counts as a benchmark, the U.S. military claimed gains against Abu Musab Zarqawi's foreign-led fighters last week even as they mounted their deadliest attacks on Iraq's capital.

But by many standards, including increasingly high death tolls in insurgent strikes, Zarqawi's group, al Qaeda in Iraq, could claim to be the side that's gaining after 2 1/2 years of war. August was the third-deadliest month of the war for U.S. troops.

For you younger folks: Body counts became controversial during the Vietnam War, as explained by Mark Benjamin in Salon--

If history offers any clue, counting dead insurgents is a misleading endeavor that can destroy trust in the Pentagon and ultimately lead to atrocities on the battlefield. During the Vietnam War, historians say, inflated body counts that sometimes included civilians shattered the Pentagon's credibility with the American people and undercut support for that war. Former soldiers from that era say that relying too much on body counts can drive soldiers in the field to commit atrocities in order to achieve a high number of kills -- though there is no indication that is happening in Iraq.