AP, January 13, 2004:

Guerrilla attacks on the 150,000 U.S.-led coalition soldiers in Iraq have dropped sharply since the Dec. 13 capture of Saddam Hussein, and the number of troops killed and wounded has plummeted as well.

The figures appear to show the capture of Saddam has taken some of the sting out of the Iraqi insurgency....

The slump in combat casualties comes alongside a 22 percent drop in attacks on American-led forces in those four weeks....

According to U.S. military figures, insurgent attacks against coalition forces declined to an average of 18 a day in the past four weeks, compared to 23 a day in the four weeks before Saddam's capture. ...

Financial Times today:

US combat deaths in Iraq have risen sharply during January despite a drop in the number of attacks and the capture of former dictator Saddam Hussein over a month ago.

As of Thursday, 33 American soldiers and one civilian had been killed by hostile fire during the month. That compares with 24 US combat deaths in December, and a total of 32 coalition combat deaths....

Overall, January has been one of the bloodiest post-war months for the coalition. Combat deaths in the first 28 days of January alone exceeded those in every post-war month except October (35) and November (94), according toIraq Coalition Casualty Count - a website devoted to tracking coalition deaths....

Oh, and I love this:

The US military on Thursday declined to confirm or deny the figures for combat deaths in Iraq this month, which were calculated from press releases from US Central Command in Florida. A US military spokesman in Baghdad said figures were only kept for two-month periods, and a computer malfunction made it impossible to calculate an official casualty count for separate months.

Oh, please.

(Thanks to Cursor for the FT link.)