Iraq war deaths

You see occasional mentions saying that the war in Iraq has NOT increased the death-rate among American military personnel. It seems counter-intuitive but it is true. Getting into a car with a skinful of alcohol at home in the USA seems to be just about as dangerous as going around fighting terrorists in Iraq. The official figures are here. See particularly Tables 4 and 5 in the "active duty" column. The casualties actually seem more numerous in the earlier part of the series but that would be because the army was larger then. You would however need some pretty fancy statistical fiddling to argue that the war has increased U.S. military deaths.

About 150,000 Iraqi Muslims have been killed by Muslim terrorists "About 151,000 Iraqi civilians were killed in the three years following the US-led invasion of their country, according to World Health Organisation (WHO) research. The study, which said violent deaths could have ranged from 104,000 to 223,000 between March 2003 and June 2006, is the most comprehensive since the war started. The study drew on an Iraqi health ministry survey of nearly 10,000 households - five times the number of those interviewed in a disputed 2006 John Hopkins University study that said more than 600,000 Iraqis had died over the period. While well below that figure, the United Nations agency's estimate exceeds the widely cited 80,000 to 87,000 death toll by the human rights group Iraq Body Count, which uses media reports and hospital and morgue records to calculate its tally. "There are a lot of uncertainties in making such estimates," WHO statistician Mohamed Ali, who co-authored the study, said."

Posted by John Ray