http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/content/news/photos/war_casualties/map/m10000.html
Puts things in perspective.
I can’t help but think that if the Iraqs or Afghans had similar maps they would be all covered in red.
Afganistan is about the same size as Texas.
(just for comparison)
And this map only shows those who were killed in action on Iraqi soil. You have to mulitiply it by about 10 to include those who died later from their wounds.
Can you back that up? 
This is too hard for me to think about! We have lost a lot of people and it often makes me want to do really crazy things!
U.S. Military Personnel who died in German hospitals or en route to German hospitals have not previously been counted. They total about 6,210 as of 1 January, 2005. The ongoing, underreporting of the dead in Iraq, is not accurate. The DoD is deliberately reducing the figures. A review of many foreign news sites show that actual deaths are far higher than the newly reduced ones.
I knew I could count on you for a reliable report with specific factual citations - not!
Even if you believe the source (notice that their citation is wonderfully non-specific) your math is way off. Even if one takes these figures at face value (yeah, right) the last I checked approximately 6500 divided by approximately 1500 is about 4.3 (one can only do approximates because they cite different inclusive dates for the official estimate vs. the estimate of “several foreign news services”). The last I checked “about 4.3” is less than half the “about ten” you claimed.
BTW, I seriously doubt those estimates of foreign “news” services for good reasons, not knee-jerk reactions. Even in 'Nam the mortality rate for soldiers that lived long enough to be removed from the theater of ops was no where near that high - and we have a heck of a lot better medical technology now than they did then. In fact, I read an AP article a while back that stressed that the VA is ill equipped to deal with the unusually high percentage of seriously wounded soldiers who survive and the cost of rehabilitating them or, in many cases, treating them for life.
So, for those foreign “news” services supposedly reviewed by your source to be correct it would mean that we would have to be suffering a far higher percentage of out-of-theater losses than we did when we had technology that was absolutely primitive by today’s standards.
None the less, it is clear that the 1700 odd deaths reported in the media represents the miminum, and includes only those casualties of combat who were DOA at hospital.
Those are the ones the pentagon’s briefers announce and which the media has been counting. Later deaths at evac hospitals have been unreported and hence uncounted.
It’s a no brainer to realize that some number of the 13,000 or more announced as wounded probably died later. I’ve never seen official figures, and I suspect they’re a closely guarded secret which we’ll only find out much later. However, the 1,700 figure is definitely unreliable.
I’m sure someone must know survival rates for serious trauma victims in modern hospitals, but I don’t–applying that rate to the 13,000 we know to have been evacuated for medical treatment out of theatre is probably the best estimate of the true number of US combat deaths.
I wouldn’t expect you to believe any of my sources. However, the people reading this thread might have a different opinion. As for my math, I said “about” because I was guessing. I’m not a mathematician, but the bigger point I was making still stands.
When you say “evacuated out of theater” I assume you’re referring only to those who were not treated successfully within the combat zone.
According to stat’s I’ve dug up, during Vietnam 1 out of every 5.6 soldiers “hit” in combat died. The ration for WWII was 1:3.1 and Korea, 1:4.1.
If we surmise that military medicine has advanced since 1975 then it wouldn’t be hard to surmise that the death rate is probably fairly small for those evacuated to a medical facility. Even if we use Vietnam figures then we come up with around 2400 of your 13,000 who died thereafter.
I’d be interested to find out how many total wounded there’ve been.
As of July 5, 2005, OIF (Operation Iraqi Freedom) total casualties include 1346 killed in action, 397 non-hostile deaths, 6708 wounded in action and returned to duty, 6482 wounded in action and not returned to duty. -statistics from [u]Department of Defence[/u]
Of the 6482 WIA not RTD, anyone, including all media, can access miltary service records at NARA’s (National Archives and Records Administration) National Personnel Records Center through the Freedom of Information Act.
Hey thanks Lorenzo.
You can always count on someone here to get the facts.
The DOD wasn’t consistant with their casualty statistics during the Vietnam war, so what makes you think they would be this time around? DOD low-balled the casualty figures in Vietnam. It wasn’t until the war was over that we got the actual numbers. The official count was something like 17,000 when the real count was in excess of 58,000 dead.
We already debated this last month. 9,000 US soldiers killed so far in Iraq?
If you want to make a map with lots of dots on it, make a map of the US that shows the location of each alcohol related traffic death. I think the number is approximately 25,000 (a year). Of course, no one will be disturbed by this because we all know that people choose to get mowed down by a drunk driver. (Insert sarcasm emoticon here.)
Oh of course, thanks Eric. Death is so meaningless when you look at the statistics like that. We can all just relax and forget about the whole thing now I suppose. :roll:
My point was not that death is meaningless. It is that we strain out gnats while swallowing a camel. While there should be outrage that so many die on the roads each year–many of these deaths entirely preventable–there is instead an acceptance that such events just happen.
The effort to do something about it is in high gear as far as I can tell. The punishment for DUI has been on the increase, and the rate of DUI incidents, even though it’s too high, has been going down as a result. (I haven’t researched this, my opinion here is based on impression from hearing about it on the TV news.) The point is that there is no “acceptance” and people seem to be working hard trying to prevent it.
But also it seems to me (and you all can correct me if I am wrong) that this is more like comparing apples to oranges. I don’t see what your comparison here has to do at all with the deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan. Those deaths were pretty darn preventable too, and yet too many Americans accept it as no big deal, while as jGilder pointed out, much IS being done to prevent drunk driving.
I don’t think that many Americans view the deaths in Iraq as “no big deal”, nor do I think that they view the deaths on Sept. 11, 2001 as no big deal. Many deaths in Iraq were prevented. After all, several hundreds of thousands of troops were sent into Iraq, and several hundreds of thousands of these were not killed. But in any war there will be deaths. Perhaps we could prevent these deaths by avoiding war, but it is not entirely evident that this would be the case. As an analogy, we could prevent the deaths of our policemen simply by doing away with law enforcement entirely. We could negotiate with criminals and they would leave us alone, right?
I’m grateful that I am not president. I would not want to make the tough decisions George Bush has had to make, knowing that no matter what decision he makes it will be wrong.