A thought about casualties (help me out, please)

[kstewart33]

I was reading Peter Beinert's article today (op-ed) at the Washington Post site. He says that over 58,000 Americans died in the Vietnam war and over 3 million served there. So, I calculated that we lost 1.93% of the soldiers who served there.

In Iraq, I'm estimating that we've lost 1856 soldiers and about 138,000 are there now. So we've lost 1.35% of the soldiers who served there.

But we've been in Iraq for 2.5 years or so. We were in Vietnam almost 10 years.

So aren't we losing soldiers at a much greater rate than we did in Vietnam?

I've never heard or read any so-called expert comment on this. What do you think?

[riverwalker]

1. an article here

http://www.veteransforpeace.org/US_War_Dead_111403.htm
November 14, 2003

"The U.S. death toll in Iraq has surpassed the number of American soldiers killed during the first three years of the Vietnam War, the brutal Cold War conflict that cast a shadow over U.S. affairs for more than a generation" <more>

[bryant69]

2. Part of that might be different ways the wars were run

We moved into Vietnam a lot more slowly - it was a bit like the frog boiling metaphore - we kept going a little more out on the limb, committing ourself just a little more to the South Vietnamese government until it turned out we were fighting a war.

With Georged W. Bush, we avoided that getting into the pot and letting it boil up - nope, instead we saw a pot of boiling water and just hopped right in.

Anyway that could explain part of this.

Bryant
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