More missleading statistics. Read the quote below. this seems to originally have come from this RedState.com post. Now you might think this is fairly definitive but lets ask a few questions, The context of this seems to be deaths related to military action which seem to be the most politically relevant. The first hint at a problem with these numbers is the statement “by any cause” so this includes all active military deaths for any reason. The obvious question is , How many are dying in hostile action? Better yet here is what seems important to me.
Total deaths from hostile action.
Death rate from Hostile action.(deaths per person)
Deaths per military or political goal. ( no idea how to answer this, so I won’t try)
if you take a look at this PDF and the columns for Hostile and Terrorist. Now you know how missleading the numbers below are. From this PDF you can calculate the “Death rate from Hostile action.(deaths per person)” but you can see that it is not even close. The final question “Deaths per military or political goal.” is important clearly there has been a goal and achiving it was going to cause many more deaths than any operation during the Clinton years. So in the end the question is still was/is it worth it?
“Whatever your politics, however you lean and however you feel about
the current administration, this report is interesting.
As tragic as the loss of any member of the US Armed Forces is, consider
the below statistics:
The annual fatalities, by any cause, of military members while actively
serving in the armed forces from 1980 through 2006:
1980 2,392 (Carter)
1981 2,380 (Reagan)
1984 1,999 (Reagan)
1988 1,819 (Reagan)
1989 1,636 (George H W)
1990 1,508 (George H W)
1991 1,787 (George H W)
1992 1,293 (George H W)
1993 1,213 (Clinton)
1994 1,075 (Clinton)
1995 2,465 (Clinton)
1996 2,318 (Clinton)
1997 817 (Clinton)
1998 2,252 (Clinton)
1999 1,984 (Clinton)
2000 1,983 (Clinton)
2001 890 (George W)
2002 1,007 (George W)
2003 1,410 (George W)
2004 1,887 (George W)
2005 919 (George W)
2006 920 (George W)
2007 899 (George W)
Clinton years (1993-2000): 14,107 deaths
George W years (2001-2007): 7,932 deaths”