How are the different?

Strategic:
a) We were actually attacked by forces (at least tacitly) supported by the Iraqi government (weakest reason)

b) Said government paid families of people who attacked an ally (Israel)

c) We are currently fighting the forces that attacked the US

d) We are currently supported by many Iraqis, and have done much good for the people

Tactical:
a) Completely different terrain

b) Massive technological advantage in current war

c) More motivated force (all-volunteer army)

d) We are actually kicking the shit out of the enemy this time
(not sure of Vietnam stats, but I doubt they were this good): (http://umr.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=2297094820)

e) Our losses since 2001 are actually extremely low (4,417 Military deaths during Clinton's non-war administration. ~3,600 under Bush during two ongoing wars.)

f) Vietnam: 58,184 KIA in ~10 years. That's 5,818.4 per year, average. Iraq War: 3133 since 3/19/03 (almost 4 years). That yields 783.24 per year

That's all I've got now, I'll come up with more in a while.

<offtopic>
Thank you for starting what is invariably going to be a huge flame war. I'm actually being serious here, I find these discussion hilarious.
</offtopic>

2002 had less than 900 military deaths. 2004 had some 1500.

Bush has already got more deaths under his belt, and he has a bit more time for people to die.

It also helps the stats that the number of deaths by accident is now a third lower than in the 1980s.

Clintons years actually saw the best death to total soldiers ratio at 1:2000, whereas the 1980s were at 1:1000 and 2004 was at 1:900

I *think* you've got some error in your numbers there. According to your ratios, the Clinton administration saw nearly 9 million deployed troops? Hmm.. doesn't seem right to me.

Seems to me you pulled those numbers out of... nowhere. Please show me where and how you came up with those numbers.

Anyhow, I actually have data, and I'll do this here calculation for you. To give Clinton a little edge, I'm going to compare the average troop deployment of ALL us troops 1992-2000. This number is about 285000. This number includes those fighting as well as those simply stationed overseas. I'm going to compare this number (285000) with the average troop deployment for the US from 2000-2007 ONLY FOR IRAQ/AFGHANISTAN, which is just under 200000.

Reminder, I'm using TOTAL deployed troops for Clinton, and only deployed troops AT WAR for Bush.

Now, there were 4417 military deaths during the Clinton administration. This means that about 1 in 65 of soldiers deployed overseas were killed (1:2000, wtf?!). For argument, I'll do a gross normalization of that number (for 7 years instead of 8 ) and it comes to 1 in 74. Ok, about 3600 US soldiers killed in Iraq/Afghanistan during the Bush administration. This means that about 1 in 55 soldiers were killed... in a warzone. Expand troop deployments to all troops overseas and that number drops drastically to about 1 in 84.

Clinton's non-war administration saw a 14% higher casualty rate than Bush's wartime administration. Get your numbers straight.

By the way, much of the troop deployment data obtained from this little exercise can be found here (2006-07 data collected from various other places): http://www.heritage.org/Research/Nation ... oopsdb.cfm

Let me catch myself here and do another calculation. I'll play along and do your total soldiers thing, because I found the numbers. Anyhow, soldier death to total soldiers ratio for Clinton: 1:3700... for Bush 1:4000. Either way, its a useless number considering the % of deployed troops to total troops changes year-to-year... just doing it to humor you. (I know this is Iraq-Vietnam... but hopefully no one wonders if the death ratio for US troops in Vietnam was comparable to that of those in Iraq)

I hate getting into discussions like this online, but let's just not forget that the policies of the current administration regarding personnel from the private sector in a war zone is vastly different from the past administration.

Good point. It is difficult to find meaningful results unless you've got mounds of data (including, but not limited to, monthly troop deployments, redeployments, deployments of fresh troops, tours of duty, etc). The reason I started number crunching was simply to show that, no matter how you look at it, dannyboyfx's numbers were way off (and pretty meaningless).

You can't compare death rates like that, huge advancements in armor and personal protection have been achieved since the 60's and 70's. Also, i was just pointing out the ideological similarities and drawing on precedent to show that it probably wont end well, just like vietnam.



Actually, 51% of Iraqi's support attacks on US soldiers (STL Post)


EDIT: Added quote and retort

I was going year by year.

800 deaths a year for clinton

1.5 million active duty troops.

I guess in order to really do well, we would have to see how many troops were there during each presidency, as in total number of men, and how many of them died.

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL32492.pdf

I will get us back on topic and say that the vietnam war also lasted 15 years with a huge split between the two peoples. Ending in us just staying in south vietnam. The iraq war has lasted for 4 years with a civil war going on now..we have no plans to leave.

The error is in you choosing ALL active duty troops. The percentage of deployed troops changes year to year. It doesn't make much sense to include the number of troops sitting in the US in your numbers, does it? In fact, it generates a pretty useless number. EDIT: my source is that link in my post.

those people could be involved in accidents. that is why i used that data...and i was lazy.

But anywho, i am against all forms of war, and will go back to [censored] where things important to me take place.

Let me guess, Online Poll?

Pass the popcorn. This is going to get funny.

Sorry, I was moving what was inevitably a flame war out of the word game.

Never mind. It's pointless.