Wednesday, March 22, 2006

Statistics

Check out this chart on U.S. active duty military deaths, 1980-2004. It seems that the wartime military is not much more dangerous than times of peace.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yup, suicide/drunk driving is a HUGE deal in the military. It's too bad, but they try and combat that as much as they can.

/start sarcasm
I wonder if the Anti-war people should change their protests to anti-soldiers driving cars. /end sarcasm.

Tom said...

Yeah, it almost seems like war gives soldiers focus away from drunk driving and suicide.

John Blom said...

At the bottom of the report in mentions these numbers exclude reserve and guard personnel. It seems that might increase the fatality numbers over the last two years. I believe the US is doing the right things staying in Iraq, but it seems that arguing that not that many more people are dying than would otherwise is not the way to build support for US policy . The focus should be on the reasons why we are there (humanitarian, economics, mistakes [not lies] in intelligence) and on the positive developments in the country.

Tom said...

Not trying to build support, I'm trying to put this so-called disaster in perspective.

Ren said...

When I recall my fallen comrades, those that died from accidents far outnumber those dead from combat. I remember for five straight years it was a goal of the division not to loose anyone over the Labor Day weekend - we never made that goal.

John Blom said...

I agree with you Tom. It needs to be put in perspective, I did not mean to imply you were trying to build support. My comment was that I would not be comfortable with anyone saying Iraq is justified because not that many more people have died.