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 ==Title.== 
 This page actually discusses casualties from both the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq, so I think it should be renamed to something like ""Casualties in the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq"". Any objections? Suggestions for a better title? (I think it should remain one page, rather than having separate pages about the invasion and the occupation, because most people interested in either would want to know about both, and I think it's best to have ""Casualties"" as the first word of the title, since that's its subject. The title I just suggested, though, is a bit unwieldy.)   

 ==Non USA coalition wounded?== 
 Does anyone have any statistics on wounded soldiers from other coalition countries besides the U.S.? The death tolls on this page are inclusive, but counts of wounded soldiers are limited to U.S. troops.   

 ==Number of mercenaries.== 
 I have looked into the 18,000 number and cannot independently verify it. Aside from having many friends in theater, who dispute this, I was able to dig up a few sources:  

 :The fact that you or your friends in the theater cannot verify what a professional journalist has reported from the scene does not make it false, or even credibly disputed. I don't think U.S. troops generally get leave to travel around Iraq researching the deployment of armed contractors. 

 :If you have seen an actual news source that claims there is a lower number of armed contractors, then it would be reasonable to modify what we say in this article, but if no such source can be found, then the claims in the story we do know about remain undisputed. 

 :The suggestion that the 80 civilian contractors who were killed in the last couple of weeks were cooks and cleaners seems somewhat absurd to me; most of them were presumably armed security personnel.  

 Thanks to overlapping contracts and multiple contracting offices, nobody in the Pentagon seems to know precisely how many contractors are responsible for which jobs  or how much it all costs. 
 http://www.newhouse.com/archive/wood080103.html  

 :The Pentagon has no incentive to disclose such information, and even if, in fact, nobody in the Pentagon knows the total number of contractors, an investigative reporter could still do independent research (for example, via contacts in the contracting agencies) to determine at least a lower bound for that number. 

 :The story you cite above even reports one study's conclusion that ""over the past decade, there has been a ten-fold increase in the number of contract civilians performing work the military used to do itself,"" which makes the figure of 18,000 sound at least plausible.  

 The coalition refuses to disclose how many contractors  and in particular, security contractors  it has employed in Iraq, ""out of legitimate concern for security,"" said one spokesman. 
 http://www.boston.com/news/world/articles/2004/04/02/as_insurgent_attacks_increase_so_do_contractors_costs/  

 :The fact that the coalition does not provide this information does not invalidate a reporter's research. It just means that the result should not be characterized as ""official"" or ""officially acknowledged.""  

 even your own source disputes the statment in the article  

 :Hmm... given that the story had previously clarified that by ""mercenary"" it means private security personnel, I don't see how the quote below does anything other than affirm that at least 18,000 armed contractors are at work in Iraq.  

 At least 18 000 mercenaries, many of them tasked to protect US troops and personnel, are now believed to be in Iraq, some of them earning $1 000 (about R6 300) a day. But their companies rarely acknowledge their losses unless - like the four American murdered and mutilated in Fallujah three weeks ago - their deaths are already public knowledge. 

 The individuals I spoke to about this said that most of the contractors they deal with perform duties such as cleaning, food service, electrician, plumbers etc..., and security duties are kept to low value instalations, except when the contractor happens to be highly trained (ex-special op).   

 :The story I cited agrees: 

 :although many of the heavily armed Western security men are working for the US Department of Defence - and most of them are former Special Forces soldiers - they are not listed as serving military personnel. 

 :So, your friends confirm the story's claim that DoD is using private (ex-special op) armed co