Death rates for the military in Iraq vs the folk back home

Three and a half years in Iraq and the above is the US military death toll in that country. I happened across a YouTube video of grunt action in Iraq and at the end of it they honoured the fallen. (the 101st Airborne division). I paused the video and Googled one of the fallens names and came across this site:Fallen Heroes of Operation Iraqi Freedom - Listed by nameScrolling down the alphabetical list of the fallen and reading a brief description as to the circumstances of their deaths, I noticed that a lot of folk were killed whilst engaged in non-combat activities. A surprising amount. And there were many about which you couldn't say one way or the other. Does "Helicopter Crash" means that the helicopter was shot down or did it simply crash?Then the thought occurred to me. "How many people of their ages could you expect to die in normal, non-war situations. It turns out that there is a thing called "Age Standardized Mortality Rate" which gives the amount of folk (per thousand) you can expect to die in a given year within a particular age group. This would be an across the board figure - not having anything in particular to do with folk being engaged in a war sone. Just how many of that age group die per thousand per year.The ages of the folk listed on the fallenhero website seemed to me to fall within the 18-25 bracket but, Google novice that I am, I couldn't find a ASMR figure for that age group pertaining to the US. What I did find was this. Answers - The Most Trusted Place for Answering Life's QuestionsSo I worked with this data. Across all ages groups, the US can expect to have 8.25 people per thousand of population/year die. This, incidently, puts the US 103rd on the world list of mortality (with Switzerland, Holland and Spain having more deaths per 1000/year and Ireland, Canada and well...Uzbekistan having less deaths per 1000/year)I don't know what the specifics per age group is - I Googled my heart out but couldn't trip across a breakdown. But lets say we take 8.25/1000/yr as average for the US. This means that in a normal US population of 140,000 (which happens to be the current approximate US military force in Iraq) we can expect to have 1155 people die each year.Doing the maths: in three and a half years (the duration of the current occupation and assuming a population of 140,000) we can expect 4042 people to die in civvie street US. Compare this to the 2757 who have died in a similar sized (military) population in Iraq in the same amount of time since the invasion began.We see that the normal (civilian) death rate is nearly 150% that which has occurred in a similar population located in a war zone!I find this remarkable (assuming the 8.25/1000/year to apply to 18-25 year olds). It would seem that you are more likely to die back in the US than you are to die on active service the Iraq.This has ramifications. The death toll amongst service men and women seems to me to be oft quoted as a reason for the US to get out of Iraq. But if you are safer there than at home...?Edited by iano, : No reason given.

Your answer is meaningless unless you match the age brackets.

It wasn't an answer. It was a comment.

Presumably that is the number who die over that 7 year period (age 18-25). You need to divide by 7 to find the number who die per year.I found a table of death rates at cdc.gov. That gives a death rate of 0.104% for the year between age 20 and 21. Let's take that as 0.1% as close enough for a back-of-the-envelope calculation. So that is 0.1% per year.The war has been going on for around 3 years. The number of troops has mostly been well under 200,000 over that period. That computes to an expected 600 deaths. So the 2700 means there were 2100 excess deaths among the troops.

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Compassionate conservatism - bringing you a kinder, gentler torture chamber

Not really on topic, but i think it should be shown.It is estimated that around 655,000 iraqis have died since the beginning of the war.I wonder which death toll is considered more tragic by the US government... Enormous death toll of Iraq invasion revealedEdited by U can call me Cookie, : No reason given.

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"The good Christian should beware the mathematician and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of hell." - St. Augustine

While I was against the invasion of Iraq and would even support criminal charges being brought against Bush and Co for it, I have to say I am skeptical about that estimate.It's a sad statement that the US tends to look at Iraq through the lens of just its own dead, rather than what it has inflicted. More credible numbers are extremely high. I'm not sure why people felt like it needed to be padded. And unfortunately it does a disservice by allowing the Bush administration to cast doubt on actual figures.

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holmes {in temp decloak from lurker mode}
"What a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away." (D.Bros)

while the figure was derived at via extrapolation, i'm not sure one could accuse the researchers of "padding".Fact is, though, i'd prefer it to be an overestimate...

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"The good Christian should beware the mathematician and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of hell." - St. Augustine

Point taken.

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holmes {in temp decloak from lurker mode}
"What a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away." (D.Bros)