11 more killed as US deaths spike in Iraq

WASHINGTON -- Eleven American military personnel were killed in several clashes across Iraq, military officials said yesterday, bringing the total number of US troop deaths this month to at least 70 and putting October on track to be the deadliest month of the war in nearly two years.

The spike in US deaths, most of them in and around Baghdad, follows the decision this summer to beef up the American military presence in the capital to help curb sectarian militias blamed for skyrocketing civilian deaths.

An estimated 15,000 American troops have been helping Iraqi forces cordon off the city, set up checkpoints, and sweep through neighborhoods where insurgents and militias have established fiefdoms -- exposing US soldiers and Marines to more insurgent attacks. The sectarian violence has continued, with 800 Iraqi civilians killed so far this month.

The mounting casualties come less than three weeks before American voters go to the polls in mid-term elections. Campaign ads and stump speeches are filled with debate over whether the United States needs to make major changes in its war strategy. Republicans are on the defensive and struggling to head off a Democratic takeover of one or both houses of Congress.

US commanders in Iraq had also warned of more violence during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which ends this weekend , and have reported a growing sophistication in insurgent tactics, including more powerful and numerous roadside bombs.

In the most recent attacks, four US troops were killed by a roadside bomb and another was killed by small-arms fire in Baghdad on Tuesday, while four other troops died from ``enemy action," three soldiers in the northern province of Diyala and a Marine in western Anbar Province, the military said. Another soldier was killed yesterday in a roadside bomb attack north of Baghdad. The latest American death took place yesterday, when a soldier was killed after his patrol was attacked with small-arms fire south of Baghdad. The names of those killed were being withheld pending notification of their families.

The US death toll in the first two-and-a-half weeks of October is nearly equal to the 71 US soldiers lost in the entire month of September, according to military figures and news reports. Sixty-five were killed in August, after falling to 43 in July. The war's deadliest month for US forces was November 2004, when 137 troops died, many of them when US forces stormed the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah in a house-to-house battle.

Since the start of the war in March 2003, a total of 2,786 American military personnel had died and 20,895 had been wounded as of yesterday, according to the Associated Press. Iraqi civilian casualties have also surged, to an average of 45 a day this month, up from the average of 27 a day since April 2005, according to the Associated Press.

Republicans have acknowledged the potential impact of the casualties on voters.

``Everything's being discolored by people's view of the war and what's going on in Iraq, and as a result, you know, all of our numbers look pretty bad," House majority leader John Boehner of Ohio said in an interview yesterday with Fox News Channel. ``And there's no question that there's a jet stream in our face."

President Bush and Republican s in Congress have consistently portrayed the Iraq war as a central front in the wider war on terrorism.

But amid the mounting violence in Iraq and plummeting public support for the war, that strategy appears to be backfiring, according to a new analysis to be released today by the nonpartisan Rothenberg Political Report.

Because Iraq and the war on terrorism are so closely linked in the minds of many voters, the bad news out of Iraq has led to greater doubts about how Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress have handled homeland security and the broader fight against terrorism, the analysis found.

``The war on terror was the president's key issue to go to voters and say, `above all else my administration and my party is stronger on the war on terror,' " said Nathan L. Gonzales , the political editor of the Rothenberg Political Report. ``Now that a majority disagree with how the war is going that has hurt the president's numbers on the war on terrorism. What had been a tremendous advantage for the Republicans has almost been neutralized completely."

In recent days, the new Iraqi government has been forced to sideline top police commanders and pull an entire police battalion off duty amid allegations they were complicit in revenge killings, raising new doubts about the ability of Iraqi security forces to take over from the US-led coalition.

Asked yesterday whether the new US casualties are leading to a reassessment of the US strategy, White House spokesman Tony Snow responded: ``No, the strategy is to win. The president understands not only the difficulty of it, but he grieves for the people who have served and served with valor."

The highly charged American political season may be a factor in the strategy of anti coalition forces, according to Thomas Donnelly , a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

Donnelly said insurgents, terrorists, and militia leaders could be targeting US soldiers in the hope that setbacks in the war will give Democrats more clout in the November elections and eventually lead to a reappraisal of the US troop commitment.

``Nobody should forget that the enemy sees our domestic political debate," said Donnelly, co-editor of the forthcoming book ``Numbers Matter," which presents the case for a larger US military. ``If I were the operational officer for Al Qaeda in Iraq whose first order of business is to drive the Americans out, I would be on the move now. I would be pushing hard to discourage Americans right now."

But Andrew Bacevich , a retired Army colonel who teaches international relations at Boston University, believes that view assumes that the insurgents have far more control over events than they really have.

``I suspect we have an increase in violence because the civil war is increasing in intensity and US casualties are a by-product of that," he said.

Bender can be reached at bender@globe.com.