41 US Soldiers Killed In Iraq In 8 Days

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What it says on the lid. Incidentally, this is the lying US administrations figure not the real figure.

The daily body count thing really pisses me off. Compare the numbers that died daily during WWI, WWII, Korea or even Vietnam, and this is a walk in the park. Figuratively speaking. More people die in gang violence and a hell of a lot more people die in traffic accidents in the United States, than are dying in Iraq trying to stabilize that country and bring them some measure of freedom from the Islamic tyrranists who would like to be running the place.

Incidentally, 41 in 8 days is about 5 per day. Which doesn't seem to be any more unusual than any other day in Iraq. And that's in the entire freakin' country.

(Perspective: There were about 23 deaths per day, average (over the span of the war) in Vietnam. (29 per day, if you start counting from the Tet Offensive.) 30 per day during the Korean conflict. 277 per day in WWII. 160 per day in WWI. 273 per day in the Civil War. )

Medical science and weapons technology has improved the fatality rate. If you look at the ratio of injured to deaths, it is much higher than in previous wars.

Quoted for truth.

I personally don't think that the war should have happened in the first place, but now that it's been started it would be ridiculously selfish of the US to pull out. They went in and made a huge mess and it's their responsibility to clean it up. It will take a long time.

Just upsets me that we've become a nation of whiny pantywaists.

I totally agree.

While I agree that Bush & Co. wouldn't know the truth if it bit them in the arse, I am not quite sure what you mean by "real" figure.

By the way, I don't want to debate how many Iraqi's are dying - I tend to trust the higher estimates since Bush has an agenda to minimize those figures. When I say "real" figure, I mean U.S. Soliders since that's the title of the thread.

With that in mind, do you mean that the casualty figures are being played down since devasating injuries aren't making the news like the body count is? I mean, I know that there are soldiers with traumatic brain injuries that may as well be dead. Others have their limbs blown off, but I wouldn't say those may as well be dead - I have a good friend that's an amputee (cancer) and he lives a good full life. Then there's the soldiers who come back with PTSD and other mental illness - they tend to commit suicide with some regularity, as I understand it, so there may be more of the "real figure"... Is that what you're getting at?

Anyway, I'd just like to understand that statement a little bit better. Chances are I will agree with most of what you have to say, even though I don't always agree with your inflammatory tone

Yeah Bazza has mentioned before in most cases a young man has about the same odds of being killed in the cillian world right now as he does if in combat.

However, a lot of the injured will have suffered permanent and crippling injuries (including chronic psychological problems caused by brain damage), which won't be included in the totals of fatalities.

I don't feel like we're a nation of whiny pantywaists. Just because somebody expresses an opinion that's different from mine doesn't mean they are whining. And I'm not sure what a pantywaist is, but I think it's kind of just a way of calling a guy a sissy.

So does this mean that a person is just as safe walking down any random street in Iraq as they are walking down any random street in the USA, because something doesn't seem to be adding up with that.

The homicide rate for white males in the US, ages 18-24 is about 0.011% per year -- 11 per 100,000. For black males in the same age group, it is about 0.1% per year -- 100 per 100,000. About 12% of US military personnel are black. If we take the pessimistic view that the 5% non-black, non-white segment of the population have homicide rates as high as for blacks (which I seriously doubt), that would give us:
17% * 100 = 17
83% * 11 = 9.13
--------------------------
Overall homicide rate of no more than 26.1 per 100,000

This also ignores the fact that many military personnel are over 24 years old, which would move them into a lower homicide bracket. So these numbers are, in all cases, the bleakest possible.

We have about 150,000 troops in Iraq, and have had roughly that number there since shortly after the war started. If the death rate there were comparable to what it is in the US, there would have been no more than 157 deaths in Iraq in the last 4 years.

We've become a nation ruled by munition corporations and one subject to a military-industrial complex. Do you think that the Japanese are "pantywaists"? their constitution outlaws war and yet their inovation can be seen in almost every technological componet you own. their GDP is second to ours without the added billions of dollars we spend domestically to fund our military. Their math and science scores destroy ours. Their average life span is 3.4 years more than ours, which is a statistical mile... maybe war isnt very good for a society, unless you like to die sooner, be dumber, and have the blood of innocents on your hands...