Article

2006-02-28 Iraq

American Casualties Fall for 4th month in a row in OIF

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Posted by mhw 2006-02-28 08:35|| || Front Page|| [2 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 I wouldn't call it a trend yet. The average casualty rate for 2004 and 2005 has been 70 per month. There were quite a few months with 50 or less, but then spiked with battles such as Najaf, Sadr city and Fallujah, just like Oct and Nov 2005 spiked with offensives in preparation for the Dec 2005 elections. The Army may have to go after Sadr and the Madhi army again.

Posted by ed 2006-02-28 09:49|| 2006-02-28 09:49|| Front Page Top

#2 trouble is positive trends will not be mentioned anyway no matter how good they may be. we could be down to just 20 a month and the media would keep parroting the same old line ' The war is getting worse everyday with no end in sight' or perhaps from the really anti war John Simpson type it'd be still deamed a 'Quagmire'!

Posted by ShepUK 2006-02-28 10:10|| 2006-02-28 10:10|| Front Page Top

#3 QUAGMIRE!

Posted by CrazyFool 2006-02-28 10:54|| 2006-02-28 10:54|| Front Page Top

#4 Old newspaper saying:
If it bleeds, it leads.

Posted by tipper 2006-02-28 11:12|| 2006-02-28 11:12|| Front Page Top

#5 As a senior reserve officer with a son who will soon deploy to SW Asia...the truth is the military is a dangerous place even in peacetime. If you have a friend or co-worker who is/was a naval or marine aviator...ask themhow many friends they have lost in training accidents. Carrier ops, shipboard ops, amphib assauults, etc....all dangerous. We fight like we train and train like we fight.

Posted by anymouse">anymouse 2006-02-28 11:26|| 2006-02-28 11:26|| Front Page Top

#6 CF: QUAGMIRE is sooo '05. It's IMPENDING CIVIL WAR now.

Posted by Xbalanke 2006-02-28 11:40|| 2006-02-28 11:40|| Front Page Top

#7 anymouse,

I recall doing a short study more than a decade ago (when I was in the Reserves) on fatalies.

I don't have the study or the data but I think it was something like like 200-500 fatalities a year in accidents related to military service and 300-700 a year in accidents unrelated to military service (mostly automobile accidents).

Posted by mhw 2006-02-28 14:23|| 2006-02-28 14:23|| Front Page Top

#8 mhw...I recall that the military loses, on average, about 1 person per day due to training related activities (~400/year). It is not unsual at all to lose 1 or 2 personnel per deployment overboard in what we call now an ESF.

It doesn't make it feel better. It's just a fact of life. The military, by its very nature is a dangerous place.

Posted by anymouse">anymouse 2006-02-28 15:29|| 2006-02-28 15:29|| Front Page Top

#9 ...the truth is the military is a dangerous place even in peacetime.

Amen! I can recall at least 70 people who died during my military career THAT I KNEW. Three of them were pilots at Holloman AFB in 1970, including John Ryan, my cadet squadron commander at the Air Force Academy. Three of my classmates that I knew personally died in Vietnam - only one from combat. We lost an aircraft and two pilots at an airshow in England in 1987. I lost a good friend in a training accident in Germany in 1983. We had a spate of drunk-driving accidents in Germany in the late 1980's that left three people dead. A plane crash in Panama took nine lives - a plane I was supposed to be on until the last minute. War is not a game - it's a very dangerous business. People get hurt even practicing. Working 12-16 hour shifts leaves people tired, and they don't pay as much attention as they should. When things go wrong in high-performance aircraft, more often than not it's fatal.

We had a police officer shot here last week. It made nationwide news. A security-police friend of mine was shot by someone trying to break into the restricted area in Panama - no mention even in the local newspapers. That was in the 1960's, not recently, so it's not just the MSM being themselves. Being injured or killed in the military isn't "news", unless it can be used to make someone else look bad, or to promote an agenda.

Posted by Old Patriot">Old Patriot 2006-02-28 15:40|| http://oldpatriot.blogspot.com/]">[http://oldpatriot.blogspot.com/] 2006-02-28 15:40|| Front Page Top

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