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Former good article nomineeIraq War was a good articles nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There may be suggestions below for improving the article. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.
Article milestones
DateProcessResult
September 1, 2006Good article nomineeNot listed
February 14, 2007Good article nomineeNot listed
In the newsA news item involving this article was featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "In the news" column on September 1, 2010.
Current status: Former good article nominee

Casualty Table[edit]

Per the above section, it sounds like it may be useful to migrate some of the infobox fields into the article body. The existing section solely examines Iraqi casualties. Therefore, I propose the addition of a subsection entitled Casualty Overview and, in it, three tables of the form:

Forces Killed Missing/Captured Wounded
Force1 X dead Y missing Z Wounded
... ... ... ...
Total XX YY ZZ

There would be one table each for Coalition, Iraqi, and civilian casualties. This would allow us to make a single, high-level figure for the "Casulaties" section of the infobox, provide more detail in a piped link, and also direct the reader toward the article on casualties if desired. We'll also need to revamp the citations currently used in infobox; currently it's a lot of tabulation of values with bare URLs, which I think we can do better on.

Thoughts? EducatedRedneck (talk) 15:30, 23 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Looks to be a good place to start. Cinderella157 (talk) 08:52, 25 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Alright, since I got that encouragement and no objections, here's a first stab at the Coalition Casualties Table:

Coalition Casualties
Force Killed Missing/Captured Wounded
Iraqi security forces (post-Saddam) 17,690[1] 40,000+[2]
Coalition forces 4,821 (4,421 US,[3] 179 UK,[4] 139 other)[5] (US): 17 (9 died in captivity, 8 rescued)[6] 32,776+ (32,292 US,[7] 315 UK, 210+ other[8])[9][10][11][12]
Contractors 3,650 [13][14][15] 43,880[14][15]
Awakening Councils 1,002+[16] 500+ (2007),[17] 828 (2008)[18]
Total 27,163 117,961

Something I didn't know how to categorize was this category in the coalition forces part:

Injured/diseases/other medical*: 51,139 (47,541 US,[19] 3,598 UK)[9][11][12]

Some problems with this table: As mentioned above, the sources are a mess. I suggest we put in the casualties section each of those year-by-year figures, summing to a total, and put each year's reference there. Then the table can make do without a reference, as it's only summarizing the article body.

I also note that some of the "sources" are, aside from being bare URLS, just links to Google Docs. We'll have to look more closely and purge the ones which aren't reliable.

Thoughts? EducatedRedneck (talk) 00:30, 26 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for this. Two thoughts: (1) I'd be hesitant about taking too much out of the infobox; we should probably end up with more than "a single, high-level figure for the "Casualties" section of the infobox" (depending on exactly what you mean by that). (2) This work ought to take account of Casualties of the Iraq War and vice versa. Furius (talk) 11:36, 26 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for the feedback! In order, (1) That's valid. I was thinking the casualties in the infobox would have something like, "Coalition-allied: X killed, Y Wounded", "Iraqui-allied: M killed, N wounded", and "See #Casualties" in a similar grouping to the current infobox. Is that still stripping out too much detail? (2) I agree emphatically. When I get more time, I might see about gathering some legitimate sources from that article to replace some of this mess. EducatedRedneck (talk) 14:59, 26 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It looks like (2) will probably be a two-way process, so I applaud you for the undertaking! On (1) I agree that killed and wounded is enough. I think it would be important to keep the Iraqi security forces and Awakening separate, but that coalition and contractors can probably be merged, and that we should probably retain "detainees" on the insurgents' side. "Documented deaths from violence" can probably be reduced to a single range. "Statistical estimates" is tricky; getting rid of them entirely seems wrong, but the range of different estimates is so huge (151,000-1,033,000) and that range represents some very different methodologies. Furius (talk) 18:43, 26 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I took a look at the Casualties of the Iraq War article, and oh boy. It also has some majorly messed up citations. I think you're right that it's going to be a two-way street. Given the subject matter of that article, I'm thinking I should start refining that one first, have the more detailed discussions there, and once we have some presentable sections, copy (with attribution) them over to this article. @Furius, would you be willing to take a look from time to time? I'm still pretty new at this, so I'd appreciate an experienced editor's eyes on it to help me avoid mistakes.EducatedRedneck (talk) 14:10, 28 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, these kinds of specific current event articles are often this. I'm absolutely happy to act as a sounding board as you improve the article (it's actually quite important that articles like this be reliable), but note that I'm in no way a subject expert, so it might also be worth dropping a line to the relevant wikiproject from time to time. Furius (talk) 16:17, 28 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
(what you say about your planned approach is very sensible, imo) Furius (talk) 16:18, 28 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  1. ^ 260 killed in 2003,[1] 15,196 killed from 2004 through 2009 (with the exceptions of May 2004 and March 2009),[2] 67 killed in March 2009,[3] 1,100 killed in 2010,[4] and 1,067 killed in 2011,[5] thus giving a total of 17,690 dead
  2. ^ "Iraq War" (PDF). US Department of State. Retrieved 18 November 2012.
  3. ^ The US DoD and the DMDC list 4,505 US fatalities during the Iraq War.[6][7] In addition to these, two service members were also previously confirmed by the DoD to have died while supporting operations in Iraq,[8][9] but have been excluded from the DoD and DMDC list. This brings the total of US fatalities in the Iraq War to 4,507.
  4. ^ "Fact Sheets | Operations Factsheets | Operations in Iraq: British Fatalities". Ministry of Defence of the United Kingdom. Archived from the original on 11 October 2009. Retrieved 17 October 2009.
  5. ^ "Operation Iraqi Freedom". iCasualties. Archived from the original on 21 March 2011. Retrieved 24 August 2010.
  6. ^ "POW and MIA in Iraq and Afghanistan Fast Facts". CNN. Retrieved 5 June 2014.; As of July 2012, seven American private contractors remain unaccounted for. Their names are: Jeffrey Ake, Aban Elias, Abbas Kareem Naama, Neenus Khoshaba, Bob Hamze, Dean Sadek and Hussain al-Zurufi. Healy, Jack, "With Withdrawal Looming, Trails Grow Cold For Americans Missing In Iraq", The New York Times, 22 May 2011, p. 6.
  7. ^ "Casualty" (PDF). Retrieved 29 June 2016.
  8. ^ 33 Ukrainians,[10] 31+ Italians,[11][12] 30 Bulgarians,[13][14] 20 Salvadorans,[15] 19 Georgians,[16] Archived 13 May 2011 at the Wayback Machine 18 Estonians,[citation needed] 14+ Poles,[17][18][19] 15 Spaniards,[20][21] Archived 2 April 2019 at the Wayback Machine [22][23] 10 Romanians,[24] 6 Australians,[25] 5 Albanians, 4 Kazakhs,[26] 3 Filipinos,[27] and 2 Thais,[28][29] for a total of 210+ wounded
  9. ^ a b Many official US tables at "Military Casualty Information" Archived 3 March 2011 at the Wayback Machine. See latest totals for injury, disease/other medical Archived 2 June 2011 at the Wayback Machine
  10. ^ "Casualties in Iraq".
  11. ^ a b iCasualties.org (was lunaville.org). Benicia, California. Patricia Kneisler, et al., "Iraq Coalition Casualties" Archived 21 March 2011 at the Wayback Machine
  12. ^ a b "Defence Internet Fact Sheets Operations in Iraq: British Casualties" Archived 14 November 2006 at the Wayback Machine. UK Ministry of Defense. Latest combined casualty and fatality tables Archived 4 October 2012 at the Wayback Machine.
  13. ^ "Human Costs of U.S. Post-9/11 Wars: Direct War Deaths in Major War Zones | Figures | Costs of War".
  14. ^ a b "Office of Workers' Compensation Programs (OWCP) – Defense Base Act Case Summary by Nation". US Department of Labor. Retrieved 15 December 2011.
  15. ^ a b T. Christian Miller (23 September 2009). "US Government Private Contract Worker Deaths and Injuries". Projects.propublica.org. Archived from the original on 27 July 2011. Retrieved 23 October 2010.
  16. ^ 185 in Diyala from June 2007 to December 2007,[30] 4 in assassination of Abu Risha, 25 on 12 November 2007,[31] Archived 14 May 2013 at the Wayback Machine 528 in 2008,[32] Archived 10 December 2016 at the Wayback Machine 27 on 2 January 2009,[33] 13 on 16 November 2009,"Thirteen anti-Qaeda tribe members killed in Iraq – France 24". Archived from the original on 29 April 2011. Retrieved 14 February 2011. 15 in December 2009,[34] 100+ from April to June 2010,[35] [36] 52 on 18 July 2010,[37] [38] total of 1,002+ dead Archived 18 April 2009 at the Wayback Machine
  17. ^ Moore, Solomon; Oppel, Richard A. (24 January 2008). "Attacks Imperil U.S.-Backed Militias in Iraq". The New York Times.
  18. ^ Greg Bruno. "Finding a Place for the 'Sons of Iraq'". Council on Foreign Relations. Archived from the original on 10 December 2016. Retrieved 26 December 2011.
  19. ^ "Global War on Terrorism – Operation Iraqi Freedom March 19, 2003 Through May 31, 2011 By Casualty Category Within Service" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2 June 2011. Retrieved 7 February 2016.

My question is this: If the United States wanted to show Saddam Hussein we were not playing games, isn't it sufficient that we went to war with him in the Gulf War "Operation Desert Shield August 1990-January 1991" and "Operation Desert Storm January 1991-April 1991"? There were also numerous airstrikes against Iraq from the time he threatened George Bush in January 1993 onward. The No-Fly Zone should have been enough to keep the Iraqi military in check, since Saddam was effectively unable to invade either Kuwait or Iran. The Coalition War against Iraq also never officially ended, since in the United States you are an Iraq War veteran if you served in the Gulf War, the No-Fly Zone conflict, or the Invasion of Iraq any time between August 1990 and the present. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.242.176.66 (talk) 16:59, 27 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

What the hell is wrong with the infobox now?[edit]

Who thought it was a good idea to oversimplify the infobox and remove most of the insurgent groups that were involved in the fighting? Somebody needs to reverse these changes. 78.170.229.162 (talk) 16:48, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Why? Slatersteven (talk) 16:49, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Something wrong with CS1[edit]

@Alexeyevitch: Again, fixing a dash on an eISSN parameter in a citation causes an error message. Achmad Rachmani (talk) 11:46, 12 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

"Second Persian Gulf War"[edit]

Greetings, @Swatjester. To avoid confusion, we should stick to the more widely recognized name, "Iraq War". In case you were unaware, the Iran–Iraq War was known as the First Gulf War, while the Gulf War of 1990–1991 was in fact also known as the Second Gulf War. If we were to follow this naming convention, the Iraq War should be called the "Third Gulf War", but that term isn't widely used. This inconsistency is the issue at hand. Omitting this WP:FRINGE name entirely might be the best solution to address this problem. Skitash (talk) 10:55, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree, I think it is more widely known as the Iraq war. Slatersteven (talk) 11:00, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I strongly disagree with that. The WP:FRINGE claim here is in fact that the Iran-Iraq War is widely known as the First Gulf War, which is really isn't. That claim is completely unsourced in the Iran-Iraq War article, and sourced only to a single Iraqi journal article in the Gulf War article. It's not widely used otherwise, and I've never seen it used outside of Iraqi or Iranian sources. In contrast, the phrase "Second Gulf War" *is* widely used worldwide to refer to the Iraq War. So if the purpose is to avoid inconsistency, the actual change should be removing the fringe naming from the Iran-Iraq War article, not this one. ⇒SWATJester Shoot Blues, Tell VileRat! 14:04, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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