U.S. Murder Rate vs. U.S. Military Deaths in Iraq

I was trying to catch up on a few blogs I fell behind on (that I need to add to my blogroll...). I came across THIS post from May 18th. The post is about fuel-efficient vehicles and Obama mandates. One commentor questioned the outrage over cars vs. Military deaths from the Iraq War.


Let me make clear that EVERY TIME I hear about a military death, I mourn the loss and appreciate the sacrifice of the Soldier/Sailor/arine/Airman no matter where or how they died.

And I find it insulting when people use the heroic deaths of our Military personnel as ammo in discussions that have NOTHING to do with the war. It's their "I-have-nothing-intellegent-to-say" or "I-have-no-way-to-back-up-what-I've-said" so "I'm-going-to-throw-out-the-number-of-deaths-in-Iraq-to-try-and-throw-you-off" response.

So I did a little digging ... research ... and wrote the following so *I* could have a few numbers of my own.

...we went into Iraq in 2003. According to the AP, as of July 30, 2009, there have been 4,329 American Military deaths of the Iraq War. I did several searches to find the number of murders in four U.S. cities during the years 2003-2008 (the 2009 murder rates aren't yet available). I found the following:

Chicago 2,951 (Wikipedia)

New York City 3,270 (NY Times & CNN)

D.C. >1,163 (Police Records minus Dec '08)

Detroit 2,285 (Wikipedia & MI Profile online)

If you add just those four cities up, there were over 9,669 murders in 72 months from 2003-2008. The number of Military deaths in Iraq represent 76 months, 1 week, and four days. For proper comparison I converted to days and then came up with the per day death rate.

Cities = 9,669 murders/2,192 days = 4.41 Murders/day

Iraq = 4,329 deaths/2,325 days = 1.86 Deaths/day

Considering that Iraq is a war zone and the aforementioned cities are not, I don't believe that using Military deaths from the Iraq War is going to help you at all with the current discussion.

And I have family on the front line who saw his best buddy blown up by a roadside bomb just six months ago.



I'm not saying that the death rate in Iraq is acceptable. I'm just saying that it's lower than the murder rate of just FOUR U.S. cities (notice they're all democrat run cities...).

Peace Out,

~*~*~Krystal~*~*~