US deathtoll in war on terror surpasses 9/11 toll

edition.cnn.com...

(CNN) -- As the fifth anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attack on the United States approaches, another somber benchmark has just been passed.

The announcement Sunday of four more U.S. military deaths in Iraq raises the death toll to 2,974 for U.S. military service members in Iraq and in what the Bush administration calls the war on terror.

The 9/11 attack killed 2,973 people, including Americans and foreign nationals but excluding the terrorists. The 9/11 death toll was calculated by CNN.

My opinion?
Absolutely disgusting!



[edit on 5-9-2006 by Black_Fox]

Yes, but we should summarily dismiss this figure because these were soldiers in a warzone there to protect...

oil - or - checkpoints - or - democracy - or - stability - or - U.S. national interests - or - something like that;

not innocent people struck down just trying to do their jobs. Wait, that's not right...because these guys and gals were just trying to do their jobs.

hmmm

I'll get back with you. There's surely some way to minimize this number.

Originally posted by Valhall
Yes, but we should summarily dismiss this figure because these were soldiers in a warzone there to protect...

oil - or - checkpoints - or - democracy - or - stability - or - U.S. national interests - or - something like that;

not innocent people struck down just trying to do their jobs. Wait, that's not right...because these guys and gals were just trying to do their jobs.

hmmm

I'll get back with you. There's surely some way to minimize this number.

I agree Val and may I point out 9/11 was 1 day the other deaths are over a 5 year period.

We all knew there would be casualties in the war on terror let's just hope theres not too many more but the outlook is bleak.

Just my opinion

How long did it take for war death's to surpass the death's at Pearl Harbor in WWII?

Originally posted by HimWhoHathAnEar
How long did it take for war death's to surpass the death's at Pearl Harbor in WWII?

I was thinking the same thing, but doubt that can be found. Although, here are a few statistics that put it in perspective.

Casualties from the Pearl Harbor attack: 2,403 American servicemen and 68 civilians

en.wikipedia.org...

US Casualties from WW2: 291,557

But you can't really compare the WOT or Iraq to WW2 because it includes the European Theatre, so let's go the other way and compare it to the First Gulf War.

US Casualties from the First Gulf War: 147

www.infoplease.com...

Now that's something to think about.

In either case the civilian casualties far outnumber any of these statistics. The problem is there isn’t an accurate count done on civilian casualties.

[edit on 9/5/2006 by Hal9000]

Yeah, it would be interesting to know the total civilian casualtie's from WWII. I mean all the massive fire bombing's of Germany and Japan.

I think the key difference with the first gulf war is the lack of an attack on american soil coupled with leaving the aggressor standing after his retreat. I mean, if we had just chased the Japanese and German's out of their conquest's and back to their own land's, many live's may have been saved. Total victory come's at a cost. But leaving tyrant's in power has a higher cost, due to the necessity of fighting them again later.

Originally posted by Hal9000


But you can't really compare the WOT or Iraq to WW2 because it includes the European Theatre, so let's go the other way and compare it to the First Gulf War.

US Casualties from the First Gulf War: 147

www.infoplease.com...

Now that's something to think about.

In either case the civilian casualties far outnumber any of these statistics. The problem is there isn’t an accurate count done on civilian casualties.

[edit on 9/5/2006 by Hal9000]

I'm not as good at Googling as you, could you tell me how many troops were in the 1st Gulf war as opposed to the 2nd? Thanks!

Well, like any statistics, they mean different things to different people.

If you take the Desert Storm KIA figures (I've used Wiki figures), and divide into the number of days combat operations were conducted, you get roughly 3.6 deaths a day (on the Coalition side. Iraqi casualties were much, much more).

For Iraqi Freedom, if you consider the conventional war fighting phase (ie the period between 19 March and 30 April 2003), you get about 3.4 deaths a day (same comment on numbers as above).

So, considering Desert Storm and the Conventional part of OIF, and taking into account the achievement of taking Baghdad in OIF, and the similar time frames that the operations were conducted over, OIF is a pretty impressive effort in terms of death rate. Unless you represent one of 3.4.

Now these figures will depend on your source, but they give you some rough order of magnitude. For Iraqi Freedom post 30 April 2003 to now, Defenselink suggests a figure of 2513 killed (figures are killed in action, and non-combat casualties, but I figure you are just as dead if you get hit by your own truck than if hit by an enemy bullet), which works out to be roughly 2.1 killed per day. So safer now than during conventional ops.

So what's the moral of the story? Hopefully it's that breaking human lives down into figures doesn't tell the real story. The real story is each figure represents a life that didn't need to be lost if human beings could sort their sh*t out. The last five years have been nothing short of a tragedy for the world, irrespective of what side you are on, whether a soldier or civilian in Iraq, or someone who turned up for another boring day in the WTC on Sep 11 2001. The sooner people start worrying less about statistics and tracking death tolls, and start focusing on the root cause (which, I hate to say, remains religion in most cases) the better off the world will be. Will it happen in my life time? I so very much doubt it.

Originally posted by curme
I'm not as good at Googling as you, could you tell me how many troops were in the 1st Gulf war as opposed to the 2nd? Thanks!

Well if you clicked on the linky, you would see those that served in theatre for the first Gulf War is 665,476.

And with a five minute search I found this source for all servicemen deployed since 9/11.

Well over 1 million U.S. troops have fought in the wars since Sept. 11, 2001, according to Pentagon data released to Salon. As of Jan. 31, 2005, the exact figure was 1,048,884, approximately one-third the number of troops ever stationed in or around Vietnam during 15 years of that conflict.

www.globalsecurity.org...

Originally posted by Willard856
The real story is each figure represents a life that didn't need to be lost if human beings could sort their sh*t out.

Agreed.

Originally posted by Willard856
The sooner people start worrying less about statistics and tracking death tolls, and start focusing on the root cause (which, I hate to say, remains religion in most cases) the better off the world will be.

I agree with finding the root cause, but I don't think it is religion. Religion is just a tool used by extremists to rally support for the cause. But IMHO the real cause is gaining or retaining power.