[antimedia] antimedia: The constant bleating about the death toll in Iraq....

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Posted by antimedia:
The constant bleating about the death toll in Iraq....
http://www.antimedia.us/posts/1156715437.shtml


   ....may have to be [1]adjusted in the light of this research.

     The consequences of Operation Iraqi Freedom for U.S. forces are
     being documented by the Defense Department with an exceptional
     degree of openness and transparency. Its daily and cumulative
     counts of deaths receive a great deal of publicity. But deaths
     alone don't indicate the risk for an individual. For this purpose,
     the number of deaths must be compared with the number of
     individuals exposed to the risk of death. The Defense Department
     has supplied us with appropriate data on exposure, and we take
     advantage of it to provide the first profile of military mortality
     in Iraq.
     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.

   How do this compare to the rates here in America?

     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.

   So, if you're a black American male living in Philadephia, enlist now.
   You'll be safer in Iraq.

References

   1. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/25/AR2006082500940.html