Home > Sept. is 2nd-deadliest 2004 month in Iraq
Wars and conflicts International
By Robert Burns
WASHINGTON — September was the second-deadliest month of the year for U.S. forces in Iraq and brought to nearly 500 the number who have died since the insurgency escalated in late March.
The Pentagon announced Sunday evening that two soldiers died late last week of injuries suffered earlier in the month, and another was killed Sept. 30 by a roadside bomb. That brought the month’s death toll to 80, up from 65 in August and equal to the 80 who died in May.
The worst month of the year for U.S. troops in Iraq was April when 135 died in a wave of insurgent attacks. Some had hoped the violence would decrease after an interim Iraqi government was given sovereignty June 28, but the death toll has risen steadily since then.
Forty-two U.S. military deaths were recorded in June and 54 in July.
In remarks Monday to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld noted that the death toll in Iraq now exceeds 1,000 and lamented the losses.
"It is in freedom’s defense that our country has had the benefit of these wonderful volunteers," he said.
Rumsfeld said the violence in Iraq that is killing large numbers of Iraqi civilians as well as Americans is a price that must be paid to ensure the extremists do not achieve their aims.
"It is often, on some bad days, not a pretty picture at all," he said. "In fact it can be dangerous and ugly, but the road from tyranny to freedom has never been peaceful or tranquil."
In its Sunday evening announcements, the Pentagon said Spc. Allen Nolan, an Army Reserve soldier from Marietta, Ohio, died Saturday at Fort Sam Houston, Texas, of injuries sustained Sept. 18 in Balad, Iraq, when his vehicle hit a roadside bomb and then came under small arms fire. Nolan, 38, was with the Army Reserve’s 660th Transportation Company at Zanesville, Ohio.
Army Staff Sgt. Mike A. Dennie, 31, of Fayetteville, N.C., died Friday in Balad from injuries sustained Sept. 22 in Baghdad when the driver of his vehicle pulled off the road and lost control, causing it to roll over. Dennie was with the 106th Finance Battalion from Kitzingen, Germany.
As of Monday, the U.S. military death toll since the Iraq invasion began in March 2003 stood at 1,058, the Pentagon says. The total includes three Defense Department civilians. Of the total, 917 have died since President Bush declared major combat operations over May 1, 2003.