That is a big mistake

[binny]

I dont know if anyone caught this on NBC tonight but there was someone who was talking about the how we arent beingtold how bad the attacks on our forces are in Iraq.

He emphazied that 23 THOUSAND of our forces have been killed. I looked it up, even on Anti War sites and it lists around 3,000. Yes that number is stagerring and yes Im upset but to be that far off?

Was I the only one who caught this?



If I misheard I will be glad to withdraw this, I hope Im mistaken but I'm quite sure that I heard him say that. I was only listening because they were talking about Bob Woodward and I wanted to see how he was doing.

 

[tekmom]

Wow, that would be a mistake. Did he actually say 'killed' or casualties? I think I read somewhere that there have been thousands injured, but not 23,000 killed.

 

[floridaminnie]

I caught it, but I thought he was talking about how many incidents there have been. Aren't we still at war there and 2nd of all how is he counting the incidents. Is it every bullet that is shot or what? They weren't very specific about that which makes me leary in both directions.

 

[Mugg Mann]

I didn't catch the program, so I'm only taking an educated guess here.

An injury is sometimes classified as a casualty (while a death is a fatality), and the number of US troops injured in Iraq is approx. 23,000. Perhaps you heard them say that there are 23,000 casualties and assumed they meant deaths?

 

[binny]

I was quite sure that he said "23 thousand fatalities" but again, I could have missed that and it could have been casaulities.

 

[puglove]

Sounds like a mistake to me, and as someone who works in tv news, I can tell you that it does happen (more than I'd care to admit). It could have been a producer mistake or the anchor could have misread the prompter.

 

[floridaminnie]

Here's the link on the book they were talking about http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15051776/

 

[AKLRULZ]

It's NBC, is anyone surprised they would mislead or even make a "mistake"?

 

[tekmom]

It's NBC, is anyone surprised they would mislead or even make a "mistake"?

So, you can confirm that they said fatalities? I followed the link and General McCaffrey said "23,000 killed or wounded". I believe its been 2700 or so killed.
Too many. As for injuries, they have been horrific, as well.

 

[Charade]

It's NBC, is anyone surprised they would mislead or even make a "mistake"?

And Woodward's selling a book, it's less than 40 days to an important election, it's likely "dirty" politics as usual.

 

[PlutoPony]

Bob Woodward has a reputation of getting his facts right and writing well thought out, balanced pieces, and is pretty respected in the DC area by high level people of both parties. IMHO this is not someone's whose work I'd dismiss out of hand because I didn't agree with the points they're making ......

 

[DJR]

Bob Woodward has a reputation of getting his facts right and writing well thought out, balanced pieces, and is pretty respected in the DC area by high level people of both parties. IMHO this is not someone's whose work I'd dismiss out of hand because I didn't agree with the points they're making ......

In the past, Woodward has been lauded by the White House for writing things that supported their positions. Now that he has written a book that pretty mush describes them as disfunctional, I can only imagine how he will be villified.

 

[Golf4food]

So, you can confirm that they said fatalities? I followed the link and General McCaffrey said "23,000 killed or wounded". I believe its been 2700 or so killed.
Too many. As for injuries, they have been horrific, as well.

While a single lost life is bad, I can't help but keep things in a historical perspective sometimes: On September 17, 1862 outside the small town of Sharpsburg, Maryland there were 24,000 casualties in a single day of fighting during our Civil War - it is still the single bloodiest day in American History. Three days of fighting at Gettysburg cost over 50,000 casualties. All total the American Civil War resulted in over 600,000.

So from that perspective, 3,000 deaths and 23,000 total casualties in almost 5 years of fighting in multiple countries in combat that we can even take full advantage of our technological superiority is, well, not as bad as it could be. Acceptable? From a military standpoint - yes. From a human standpoint? Never.

But things could be a lot worse, people. And we still haven't caught up to the number of people killed on 9-11, lest we forget. Over 3,000 innocent Americans were murdered that day. Five years later our war deaths in fighting back still haven't caught up. Keep that in mind as well.

 

[salmoneous]

And Woodward's selling a book, it's less than 40 days to an important election, it's likely "dirty" politics as usual.

Just curious - does "telling people the truth" count as "dirty politics"??

 

[BibbidiBobbidiBOO]

While a single lost life is bad, I can't help but keep things in a historical perspective sometimes: On September 17, 1862 outside the small town of Sharpsburg, Maryland there were 24,000 casualties in a single day of fighting during our Civil War - it is still the single bloodiest day in American History. Three days of fighting at Gettysburg cost over 50,000 casualties. All total the American Civil War resulted in over 600,000.

So from that perspective, 3,000 deaths and 23,000 total casualties in almost 5 years of fighting in multiple countries in combat that we can even take full advantage of our technological superiority is, well, not as bad as it could be. Acceptable? From a military standpoint - yes. From a human standpoint? Never.

But things could be a lot worse, people. And we still haven't caught up to the number of people killed on 9-11, lest we forget. Over 3,000 innocent Americans were murdered that day. Five years later our war deaths in fighting back still haven't caught up. Keep that in mind as well.

ITA. Can you imagine how the Civil War and both World Wars could have turned out had we had news stations scrolling casualties and details 24/7!?

 

[BibbidiBobbidiBOO]

I never answered the OP. 23,000 have not been killed. That may be the casualty rate though.

An article that helps to put it in perspective (at least for me when DH was over there) was along the lines of this one:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/25/AR2006082500940.html

The ratio of deaths to person-years, .00392, or 3.92 deaths per 1,000 person-years, is the death rate of military personnel in Iraq.

How does this rate compare with that in other groups? One meaningful comparison is to the civilian population of the United States. That rate was 8.42 per 1,000 in 2003, more than twice that for military personnel in Iraq.

The comparison is imperfect, of course, because a much higher fraction of the American population is elderly and subject to higher death rates from degenerative diseases. The death rate for U.S. men ages 18 to 39 in 2003 was 1.53 per 1,000 -- 39 percent of that of troops in Iraq. But one can also find something equivalent to combat conditions on home soil. The death rate for African American men ages 20 to 34 in Philadelphia was 4.37 per 1,000 in 2002, 11 percent higher than among troops in Iraq. Slightly more than half the Philadelphia deaths were homicides.

It also says 79% of the deaths are from hostile force. I know they have quite a few vehicle accidents and some deaths from natural causes (a man had a heart attack at DH's camp while asleep when DH was there).

It just helped me to see statistics at times, even though they are lost lives and very sad indeed. It is horrible to see it on the news all the time, and for certain units to have a lot of casualties.

 

[Mugg Mann]

In the past, Woodward has been lauded by the White House for writing things that supported their positions. Now that he has written a book that pretty mush describes them as disfunctional, I can only imagine how he will be villified.

Bingo.

I was thinking the exact same thing myself.

 

[nuke]

You also have to take into effect that in 1860 if you were grazed from a bullet you could end up dead from infection. If you got shot in the leg they cut it off. That's probably not going to happen today.

 

[NotUrsula]

While infection isn't as deadly as it once was, there is an awful lot of limb-cutting going on now.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/Iraq/War-injuries-spur-9m-amputee-fund/2004/12/09/1102182422970.html

The rate of amputations is higher for this war than for any preceding war, even Vietnam, where there were Bouncing Bettys all over the jungle. Many more soldiers are getting wounds that preclude them from returning to duty, which means they have to be replaced on the front. We are not using all that much altillery in this war, but our troops sure are still cannon-fodder.

For unreal casualty numbers, not many wars rival WWI: http://europeanhistory.about.com/library/weekly/blww1castable.htm
For example, over a 5 month period from Jul-Sept 1917, some 568,000 men died in the Third Battle of Ypes. (Previous battles at Ypres in 1914 and 1915 killed 238,000 and 105,000, respectively.) John McCrae's famous poem about the poppies in Flanders fields refers to the dead of Ypres, but it was written after the second battle -- I can only imagine what he must have thought when the family of the dead there more than doubled 2 yrs later.

 

[mill4023]

For unreal casualty numbers, not many wars rival WWI

WW2 estimates are around 60 million. The Soviet Union alone lost roughly 25 million people, half of whom were civilians.