US Iraq War Dead for December, 2005
Here are the updated graphs of US war deaths in Iraq for December, with 68 US fatalities during the month. As always, I’m comparing the military casualties to those from the Vietnam war at a similar point in each war’s political lifetime (which many have charged is inherently misleading; see newly expanded disclaimer below).
The data come from the advanced search tool at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund site, and from Lunaville’s page on Iraq coalition casualties. The figures are for the number of US dead per month, without regard to whether the deaths were combat-related.
The first graph shows the first 34 months of each war. (Click on any image for a larger version.)
Next, the chart that gives the US death toll for the entire Vietnam war:
Disclaimer: Every so often someone comes along and says I’m guilty of intellectual dishonesty by comparing apples to oranges in these graphs. For the record, here’s what I am not arguing with these graphs:
- I’m not saying that Iraq is somehow deadlier per soldier-on-the-ground than Vietnam. For both wars, the number of fatalities in any given month tracks pretty closely with the number of troops deployed (along with the intensity of the combat operations being conducted). There are more troops in Iraq today than were in Vietnam during the “corresponding” parts of the graphs. Similarly, for later years in Vietnam, when the monthly death toll exceeded the current Iraq numbers, there were many more troops in place.
- I am not saying that Iraq is somehow “worse” than Vietnam, and have not chosen the starting dates for the respective graphs out of a desire to make a dishonest argument to that effect. I include the first graph mainly because I wanted a zoomed-in view of the Iraq data. And I include the second graph, which shows the entire span of the Vietnam war, because I want to be clear about what the data show about overall death tolls — where any rational assessment would have to conclude that, at least so far, Iraq has been far less significant (at least in terms of US combat fatalities) than Vietnam.
I was just curious how the “death profile” of the two wars compared, and how those deaths played out in terms of their political impact inside the US. For that reason, I chose as the starting point for each graph the first fatality that a US president acknowledged (belatedly, in the case of the Vietnam graph, since US involvement in the war “began” under Kennedy, but the acknowledgement was made only later by Johnson) as being the result of the war in question.
As ever, you are free to draw your own conclusions. And for that matter, you’re free to draw your own graphs, if you have a way of presenting the information that you believe would be more honest. In that case, feel free to post a comment with a URL to your own version. Thanks.
January 22nd, 2006 at 1:46 am
Quote: “As always, I’m comparing the military casualties to those from the Vietnam War at a similar time in each conflicts political lifetime (which many have charged is inherently misleading…) – Lies.Com (An apropos name for the B.S. you espouse on this website).
Well, Gee, dumb-ass, you certainly are INTENTIONALLY misleading! For your information, the USA did not have ANYWHERE NEAR A COMPARABLE LEVEL of combat troops in Vietnam during Dec 1961 when compared to the number of combat troops deployed in Iraq during Mar 2003 – let alone the fact that we were not principally responsible, and in fact forbidden officially, from engaging combatants on our own initiative during Dec 1961)
Several facts (that you are totally not aware of):
FACT: We did not have any (Read: 0) troops in South Vietnam prior to May 1961 and by December 1961 the USA had only 400 MILITARY ADVISORS deployed to RVN solely for the purpose of attempting to train for combat, the poorly trained, ARVN.
http://www.historyplace.com/unitedstates/vietnam/index-1961.html
May 1961 – President Kennedy sends 400 American Green Beret ‘Special Advisors’ to South Vietnam to train South Vietnamese soldiers in methods of ‘counter-insurgency’ in the fight against Viet Cong guerrillas.
The role of the Green Berets soon expands to include the establishment of Civilian Irregular Defense Groups (CIDG) made up of fierce mountain men known as the Montagnards. These groups establish a series of fortified camps strung out along the mountains to thwart infiltration by North Vietnamese.
FACT: Again…during the Vietnam conflict we did not have anywhere near the number of troops stationed Vietnam during December 1961 versus what we had in Iraq during March 2003.
October 1961 – To get a first-hand look at the deteriorating military situation, top Kennedy aides, Maxwell Taylor and Walt Rostow, visit Vietnam. “If Vietnam goes, it will be exceedingly difficult to hold Southeast Asia,” Taylor reports to the President and advises Kennedy to expand the number of U.S. military advisors and to send 8000 combat soldiers.
FACT: The number of U.S. troops in Vietnam was not “ramped up” until nearly the end of 1963:
http://www.historyplace.com/unitedstates/vietnam/index-1961.html
November 24, 1963 – President Johnson declares he will not “lose Vietnam” during a meeting with Ambassador Lodge in Washington.
By year’s end, there are 16,300 American military advisors in South Vietnam, which received $500 million in U.S. aid during 1963.
FACT: Conversely, during March 2003 the United States had approximately 130,000 COMBAT personnel on the ground in Iraq. The purpose of this massive buildup of US combat personnel was to EXECUTE major combat operations against Saddam Hussein’s military.
Now – here’s the big question: How is it that you can compare the number of “combat casualties” between December 1961 in Vietnam – a place and time in which we had only 8,400 combat ADVISORS in place and during which time where we were STRICTLY providing support (principally training) to the ARVN forces vs. March 2003 where we were in a FULL COMBAT MODE with THE PRINCIPAL responsibility for the execution of a war?
Answer: YOU ARE BEING INTELLECTUALLY DISHONEST by trying to compare two totally different situations based upon their so-called “political lifetime.”
By the way, how do you DEFINE “political lifetime” Frankly, anyone with half a brain that reads your BS will answer that one very easily. You simply made up a stupid BS label in a horridly weak attempt to justify your earlier lies.
YOU ARE A LIAR AND AN IDIOT.
January 22nd, 2006 at 8:46 am
I define “political lifetime” as the interval during which the activity in question was characterized by the politicians who tell the soldiers what to do as a “war.” What’s unclear about that?
Did you notice the part where I wrote:
[begin quote]
I’m not saying that Iraq is somehow deadlier per soldier-on-the-ground than Vietnam. For both wars, the number of fatalities in any given month tracks pretty closely with the number of troops deployed (along with the intensity of the combat operations being conducted). There are more troops in Iraq today than were in Vietnam during the “corresponding” parts of the graphs.
[end quote]
If it would make you feel better to mentally break those two graphs (the Vietnam and the Iraq graphs, I mean) out into separate graphs, rather than overlaying one on the other, feel free to do that. I wanted to make a comparison between the number of troops who died at what point over the history of each war, and laying one graph on top of the other made it easy to make that comparison. That’s all.
Why does that piss you off so much?
January 23rd, 2006 at 1:26 pm
He doesn’t care what you say or do. You are simply wrong because you’re a smelly lying hippie liberal h-mo. Your interests are not completely consistent with his and therefore, he disagrees with any numbers or facts that you present, and how you present them (regardless of what they represent and how they’re presented). He was able to read one paragraph before his rage took over and thus completely missed the other paragraphs explaining what you were trying to do.
I love the fact that the simple existance of those graphs enrages so many people. It reminds me of those affiliate broadcast networks refusing to show a memorial presentation, honoring the fallen soldiers in Iraq on memorial day (of all days), because it was too political. Instead, the owner of the affiliate networks decided to air a clearly political message. Simply genius :)
January 23rd, 2006 at 1:38 pm
“I define “political lifetime” as the interval during which the activity in question was characterized by the politicians who tell the soldiers what to do as a “war.” What’s unclear about that?”
Its not unclear. It’s simply really arbitrary. Its an opinion based observation based on an opinion based on a loose definition of the word ‘war’, and it ignores the inherent problem in such data in that politicians (and the electorate for that matter) might not recognize wars as ‘wars’ (until well after the fact) and politicians may be reluctant to avoid the term ‘war’ for political reasons.
You choose a nebulous definition for the ‘political lifetime’ of a war, one that isn’t based on any political actions at all, or even on public perceptions, or even on equivalent military actions or force structures, but – in at least one case – on the internal perceptions of politicians as they report them retrospectively. The sole advantage of the definition is that it is nebulous. It would appear to be a very self-serving definition. But, the fact that you would choose such a definition is particularly funny in the case of the two wars you are comparing.
In December 1961, Politicians were studiously avoiding calling the Vietnam war a ‘war’. This semantic silliness would continue for years, until well after it was completely clear that Vietnam was a war. It became a running joke – a rallying cry of the opposition to the war. It was the war that dare not speak its name. LBJ certainly didn’t publicly use this word to describe the conflict in Dec ’61 or even for years after that, and we’ve no evidence that he privately instructed anyone to act any differently based on his insight that we were at war in Dec. ’61. In fact, you won’t find much tangible evidence that LBJ actually came to the realization in Dec. 1961 that we were at war, certainly not in his instructions to the American armed forces. So, its not hard to imagine that LBJ’s retrospective indication that he thought of a particular casualty as the start of the war is mere after the fact rationalization. It’s a meaningless point in time, marked only by a meaningless speach made by a failed political leader.
Meanwhile, the Iraq conflict has the opposite problem. To the extent that we could ever really know what he is thinking right now, GWB shows no indication of considering the Iraq war (or second Gulf War or whatever you want to call it) as be wholly separate and distinct from the larger War on Terrorism. GWB’s political supporters show little indication of considering the Iraq War to be wholly separate and distinct from the larger War on Terrorism. Feel free to disagree with GWB’s internal perception of the war all you want, but if you want to fairly apply your own definition (that is a war and its ‘political lifetime’ is defined primarily by how the political leaders view the start and ends of the war) then you can’t possibly consider March 2003 the beginning of the Iraq War. As far as we can tell GWB considers 9/11 the start of the Iraq war and every other conflict he’s launched America into since that point. As far as we can tell, many of those that support the Iraq War agree with him. I suspect that you do not, but so what. Did you not define a war’s “political lifetime” as “the interval during which the activity in question was characterized by the politicians who tell the soldiers what to do as a “war”? Equally problimatic, is that GWB (or Clinton) could at some later point reveal that he’s always thought of the beginning of the Iraq War being some point during Operation Southern Watch or Operation Northern Watch wholly invalidating your graph by wholly invalidating your assumptions about what someone else was thinking. Do you even begin to see why this is such a stupid definition?
“I wanted to make a comparison between the number of troops who died at what point over the history of each war, and laying one graph on top of the other made it easy to make that comparison. That’s all.
Why does that piss you off so much?”
It’s dishonest. Hasn’t that been said countless times? Not only is the graph dishonest, but your protests to the contrary continue to be dishonest. Shortly after creating this graph you made clear that your purpose in creating the graph was to deter the war’s continuance and to deter all such future wars. This is a reasonable purpose to have, I suppose, and I’d be glad to argue such a purpose with you if you were going to be honest about it. But, the reason most people are pissed off is that its clear that you aren’t going to be honest about it.
Let’s be honest. You didn’t choose Dec. ’61 as the start of the war because you were trying to find a definitive historical start to the Veitnam war or because it was the point in time with the clearest correspondence to March ’03. You choose Dec. ’61 as the start of the Veitnam War because it produced the visual you wanted to produce – the graphic representation that the Iraq war was worse than the Vietnam War. Had you first chosen a different point in time which had not produced that visual, you’d never have produced the graphic in the first place because it wouldn’t have suited what you’ve already admitted to be your purpose in creating the graph. You continue to argue for your arbitrary starting point despite the overwhelming evidence that it as a point in time has absolutely no correspondence to March ’03 solely because you value the message of your graph more than you value whether it actually conveys truth. You now retroactively rationalize your decisions when you created this graph, without noting the irony in the fact that your current rationalizations markedly differ from your initial explanations:
“And that reminded me of something I’d been meaning to do for a while. Whenever I bring up a Vietnam/Iraq comparison, fans of the current war point out that casualty rates in Vietnam were way beyond anything we’ve seen so far in Iraq. Which is true, if you’re talking about the Vietnam war at its peak. But there was a long run-up during which Vietnam simmered along at much lower casualty rates. I keep meaning to put together some charts to compare the two wars in terms of the US death toll, and now I’ve done that.”
That is a much more honest statement of your intention than anything you say now.
What I find interesting is that you by your own admission understand that the Vietnam War had a ‘long run up’ in which casualties simmered along at much lower casualty rates, but omit the obvious fact that the Iraq war had an equally long run up in which casualties simmered along at much lower casualty rates. Why don’t you find these two things comparable, especially if your intention was to establish that the Iraq war and the Vietnam war were similar? You answer that question yourself:
“It’s interesting to me how the Iraq war, so far at least, shows dramatically more US deaths per month than the Vietnam war did at a comparable point in its political lifetime.”
It’s been clear since the beginning that you would in no fashion be interested in a graph that shows dramatically less US deaths per month than the Vietnam war did at a “comparable point in its political lifetime”.
January 23rd, 2006 at 7:55 pm
Who says I’m pissed off? Believe me, if I were, I’d not respond at all. Frankly, I am more than a little irritated for a couple of reasons. First, I both a CPA and possess a MASTERS DEGREE in mathematics. Second, I am also a history buff on the Vietnam Conflict and have forgotten more about what happened than likely anyone else here has ever known.
Second, Uncle Sam is not acting as an EVIL imperialist in this situation. Lemme guess, it’s all about Oil, right? Baloney!! Did you ever hear one serious mention of an invasion of Iraq prior to 9/11? If so, go out, find it and post a link to it here.
Am I conservative? You betcha! Does that make me bad? No. Does the GOP have all the answers – HELL NO. There are many problems with our country and I for one believe that we need to spend more money helping people here than sending aid abroad, but that’s another story for another time.
BTW, I was a registered Democrat up until around 4 years ago. Frankly, party affiliation is a moot point anyway, as there are LIARS and THEIVES in either party (or political system for that matter).
p.s. Ethan-P, the only one around here who is a hom0, is you! At least JBC makes an argument beyond pure political partisanship.
End of Rant.
January 23rd, 2006 at 8:48 pm
Desert Rat: wow. A masters degree. Are we suppose to be impressed? How does that give your view point any more weight than JBC or anyone else? For someone who boasts so much, you aren’t conveying your argument very intelligently. While I have no doubt you raise valid points, I pretty much stopped reading your first post after you threw the word dumb-ass around. If you’ve got something to say, it seems you could do so in an manner more befitting the college degree you brag about. I half expect that next you’ll start exajurating about your penis size to somehow proove your argument.
January 24th, 2006 at 8:16 am
People get pissed off reading these graphs because its a pretty stark reminder of this president’s failures.
Iraq war supporters seem to forget that we were told by numerous high ranking Bush admin officials that this war, “would be a cakewalk”. Or that the US, “would in fact, be greeted as liberators”. Or how about about, “I doubt this war will last six months.”
So we are allowed to interpret these graphs the way we want. What these graphs show me is that the arcitects of this war were idiots and had, and still have, no clue.
Oh ya, I’m a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE), so I guess that makes my political point of view valid. ;)
January 24th, 2006 at 2:07 pm
DesertRat:
How did you figure out that I was queer? Was it the lisp I used to type my message, or did you happen to notice that I was fucking another guy while I typed my message?
In any case, I think given the context, my remarks were appropriate. You clearly skipped much of what JBC had written. It’s pretty clear that it went like this: You read a little bit of his message, and started typing your angry rant right away — skipping over important parts of what he wrote. Further, you used all caps quite a bit, and called him a dumb-ass, a liar and an idiot. Not like JBC needs me defend him, but seriously — how can you expect to have an intelligent discussion with anyone when you treat them like that? How can you expect someone to take your opinions seriously if you angry, emotional messages? I think that my flame of you was pretty justified.
Learn some basic Netiquette, and stop being an asshole. The people here are humans, and will respond like humans. People tend to react more favorably to you if you treat them with the basic respect that you would give any other stranger (regardless of their opinion). Further, this respect will usually be returned (and people will actually take you seriously). If you were at a town hall meeting, and someone presented an opinion contrary to yours, would you get up in front of your entire town and talk to them like that? Why is it that since you’re anonymous that you feel that it’s appropriate to treat strangers in this way?
If you still think that I’m totally nuts, do yourself a favor: Read your response to JBC’s post and just imagine that someone was writing it to you (substituting JBC’s opinion/message/whatever with one of yours). Forget about any intentions, sarcasm, feeling, etc that you knew went into that (that nobody else can detect, because we don’t know you) and read it from an outsider’s perspective. Ask yourself this: “If someone wrote this to me, how would I respond? Would I take it seriously, or is it just a troll?” (A troll is a net-term for someone trying to illicit an emotional response, and nothing more.) If it were you who were just called a dumb-ass, a liar, and an idiot, would you take the time to have an intelligent dialogue over your remarks, or just chalk the poster up as an asshole?
I don’t know anything about you — but I can tell you this: Judging solely from your initial remarks (and your lack of basic respect for your fellow man), you’re sounding like a real asshole. As a semi-regular poster and regular reader — I sort of felt a little obligated to publicly laugh at your behavior…and you’re still sounding a little silly.
A couple more things: How was what I said partisan? It was clear that you did not care about about what he had to say — you just flatly disagreed with him on the basis of your interpretation of his underlying message, not the data itself. I still think that this is the case.
Finally:
That’s probably the funniest thing I’ve read all day. Maybe we do not share a common definition of “pissed off” — but where I come from, “more than a little irritated” and “pissed off” tend to be synonomous.
Anyhow, good luck with getting people to see your side of things by yelling and screaming and calling them dumb-asses, liars, and idiots.
January 24th, 2006 at 2:41 pm
I’ll keep it short and simple: Vietnam War… Iraq War2… both wars… with Americans fighting… both had generally agreed upon start dates (see jbc’s note on the admittedly somewhat arbitrary starting dates for each)… move the start dates around to suit your perspective (partisanship? opinion? god-like knowledge of ‘nam history?)… compare at will.
Personally, I would like to see a more detailed set of graphs: deaths, wounded, post-traumatic stress disorder, perhaps as overall numbers and as a percentage of force in theater. My hunch is we are better at saving lives, which gives us an increase in the number/% of wounded and pstd.
Have a nice day.
January 24th, 2006 at 3:10 pm
(D’oh illicit/elicit — yeah, I know that they’re two different words with two completely different meanings and even different parts of speech)
January 26th, 2006 at 12:54 am
I agree with Sven and ethan-p on their previous longer statments…
February 3rd, 2006 at 1:12 pm
Exactly, enkidu.
I would totally agree that medical advances over the past 30 – 40 years, along with advances in soldier body/vehicle armour (do they all have it yet?) have resulted in less casualties than if this war was faught 40 years ago. Makes a lot of sense to me. Unlike some posts I’ve read on this site lately.
Peace!