A Little Iraqi History

After a discussion of the war today, I decided to do a little informal research into the Iraqi war and casualties to compare it to other armed conflicts.

Here's a few tidbits for you. All numbers are approximate and come from sources such as the Iraqi Body Count project, Wikipedia and other fairly reputable Internet news sources.

Coalition military deaths to date: 4,228
US Portion of coalition deaths: 3,921. That's 3,921 US soldiers killed in combat since we started.

In contrast:
Chinese May 12th, 2008 Earthquake: 15,000 dead, 60,000 missing.
Vietnam war casualties: Approximately 60,000 US Soldiers killed or missing.

Iraqi insurgent death estimate (as of August 2007:) 18,832. That's 18,832 clear enemy combatants killed by allied forces. The problem with Iraq is identifying who is a clear enemy combatant when they hide as civilians.

In contrast:
Vietnam war North Vietnamese casualties: over 600,000

Iraqi Civilians killed: around 80,000 since the start of the war. It's estimated that around 20,000 of those were by Allied forces, primary collateral damage from the initial airstrike, collateral damage during combat, or mistaken for combatants. The other 60,000 were killed by their own people.

In contrast:
Vietnamese civilian deaths: 2,000,000 estimated

Oh, and how many people did Saddam Hussein either personally kill or order to be "ethnically cleansed?" Estimated at around 2,000,000. Yeah, the total of Vietnamese civilian deaths over the entire conflict. This includes the 150,000 Shia Muslims he had executed and buried in mass graves.

Do I believe any death is good? No. But to those who claim the Iraqi war is killing Americans left and right and is completely unjustified I say look again at the numbers. Just my opinion.