The Iraq War: By The Numbers

How do we get our information about the Iraq war? Well we get it from the media, a place that makes it's money off of ratings, sensationalizing even the most minor story until the proverbial mountain has been made out of the ant hill.

Success in war is measured by two things historically: control of land and victory in battle. The oddity concerning the current conflict is that we're dominating on both fronts and we still aren't happy with where we are. But why?

Well everywhere you turn all you hear about is all the death going on in this war. Well if that's why we're unhappy with the way things are going in Iraq let's look at the death toll, and let's do it by the numbers only.

But first I'll preface

The Vietnam War

A conflict more unpopular then the current struggle in Iraq. This war:

Lasted 3,923 days (gulf of Tonkin till the final helicopter took off)
Had 58,209 American Deaths (btw all numbers are from wiki)

well, that's an average of 14.84 dead Americans everyday. It's not the kind of death toll we get daily on our highways, but it's pretty bad.

Now let's look at a war that was "worth it", perhaps the most noble war America has ever fought on foreign soil.

WWII

This war was fought for two reasons. First Japan attacked us, pretty good reason. Secondly it was fought to free Europe from the grasp of Hitler and stop a Jewish holocaust (for those who need it spelled out Saddam also imposed himself on his neighbors and committed genocide). We didn't need WMD to go to war with Germany, we didn't need Al Qaeda. Tyranny and genocide were enough for the US in the "good old days" and we saw it through until the end. And by the numbers?

1346 Days (from Pearl Harbor to VJ day)
418,500 Dead (yeah you heard me right)

In this just war we suffered American death at a rate of 310.92 per day! Every day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year my graduation class multiplied by one and one third died. Now ladies and gentlemen that's a price to pay! And not only did we pay it but homemakers worked in factories and people grew their of vegetables in their yard to do it! Nobody liked the war, but they were in it to win it!

The Iraq War

And now the moment you've been waiting for

1,575 Days (invasion to today)
3,611 Americans Dead

while the war isn't over that's good enough to establish a deaths per day average. And it comes in at a whopping total of 2.29 people a day.

That's right America, we lose more Americans to Abortion (2,340/day in 2003 according to the Center for Disease Control) then we lose in our horrible little conflict (which is BTW fighting Al Qaeda).

You wanna talk civilian casualties? Let's go back to WWII





What if I told you that 50% of all WWII deaths were Allied civilians?



not only that but 8/10 deaths period were Allied!


The fact is the while every last American life is dearly important to us all, the price we are currently paying to combat terrorist radical Islamic forces in Iraq is negligible by historical standards. In fact, it's not even an average month in WWII (9000+)