Good WaPo Research

Samuel H. Preston and Emily Buzzell at the Washington Post answer a question that has been in the back of my mind but that I have been too lazy to research.

In short, there are a lot of young men and women serving our nation in Iraq. Every death is regrettable, but how many would die if they stayed home or went on spring break in Aruba?

Kudos to Preston and Buzzell for a nifty piece.

Between March 21, 2003, when the first military death was recorded in Iraq, and March 31, 2006, there were 2,321 deaths among American troops in Iraq. Seventy-nine percent were a result of action by hostile forces. Troops spent a total of 592,002 "person-years" in Iraq during this period. 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.

To give away the ending, that’s half the US average. But wait, that includes 95 year olds and people not in the good health of our men and women in uniform.

U.S. men 18-39 only face 39% of the risk, which seems closer to an intuitive estimate. But -- insert your own W.C. Fields joke here -- on the whole, it's better to be in Iraq than be an African-American in Philadelphia; the latter is 11% more risky.

"The death rate of American troops in Vietnam was 5.6 times that observed in Iraq. " (I blogged that we lost well over twice as many in a short while in WWII fighting for eight square miles of Iwo Jima).

In short, to post the number dead is specious. Kudos to Professor Preston and Ms. Buzzell for the perspective, and to the WaPo for printing it.

Hat-tip: Insty

Freedom on the March Media and Blogging Posted by jk at August 26, 2006 6:29 PM