One shot, one kill cites a New York Times article that states that Marine snipers killed 62 people on Tuesday. As Phillip Carter explains, that’s a lot of killing being done by a relatively small number of Marines:
So we’re really talking about 20-30 Marines — only half of whom are actually shooters, due to the marksman/observer team concept — killing 62 Iraqis in one day.
High body counts don’t indicate success, but they do indicate combat intensity and combat effectiveness:
One point that comes through again and again in stories of engagements in Iraq is that the Iraqi insurgents simply don’t understand tactical fundamentals such as cover and concealment. I have seen Al-Jazeera tapes and U.S. military tapes of engagements where Iraqi insurgents, whooped up by their buddies into a frenzy of martyrdom, literally rush out into the middle of the street to launch an unaimed RPG at U.S. forces. In nearly all the videos, they are instantaneously cut down by a few short bursts of aimed rifle and machine gun fire. No trained soldier would ever do something so stupid. But the Iraqi grunts do it again and again, almost inviting death.