My brother was an infantry officer during the cold war and has several friends still in uniform. They're all at the major and lt col level now. I asked one of them recently about the Iraqi death toll. He said the kill ratio since major ops have ceased, is is still way, way higher than Vietnam.

I asked about non-Iraqi fighters and he said the numbers are growing but they are not an effective threat. He said everybody is certain that most attacks are bounty--money is offered for dead americans, broken equipment, etc.

Remember that what an army officer considers a threat (able to render fighting force ineffective) and what an American civilian considers a threat (any casualty at all) are wildly different.

Using w126's numbers for Vietnam = 60,000/3,000,000 or about 1/100. If that proportion is still the same or smaller than Vietnam, then there have been about 35,000 Iraqi combat deaths.

One thing the army learned was not to get into war-scoring by body count.