Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (63053)	5/2/2008 7:11:47 PM
From: Cogito	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542552

>>You can have all sorts of deaths outside of combat, or from small battles and operations. But a bunch of small operations isn't one major operation any more than a bunch of subcompact cars are an 18 wheeler.<< Tim - If playing with semantics in that way makes you feel better, be my guest. I don't think you could argue with me about one thing, however. Having over one hundred and fifty thousand troops on the ground, and in harms way, is a major military commitment. You are correct, of course, that not all troops die because they are in combat. In Iraq, for example, suicides have been on the rise among our forces. Somehow, I fail to find that comforting. By the way, if you look at any population of millions of people, a certain number of them are going to die each year, from various causes. In 1981, for example, there were more than 2.1 million people in the US armed forces. A bit over 1% of them died that year of various causes. That's only slightly higher than the death rate in the US overall, which according to the page I link to below, is about .8%. hypertextbook.com (The data on the linked page comes, in term, from the US Census Bureau's Statistical Abstract of the United States; 2006.) Compare the military deaths from 1996 through 2000, when the total number of people serving was roughly equal to what we have now, to the deaths from 2003 onward. The big difference is due to our involvement in Iraq and to a much lesser extent, Afghanistan. When we speak of the 4,000 plus troops killed in Iraq, we are talking mostly about soldiers killed in action. - Allen