We had more military casualties during the Clinton than duirng Bush

[skinny21]

Before. And why are you playing dumb? Why do you think IAEA was in the country before we invaded? To play tiddly winks?

This is off topic and I apologize, but...

The IAEA did not find anything.

We said they had WMDs on freakin' semi-trailors driven around Iraq.

We (our gov't) used only the intelligence that would support our desire for

war against Iraq.

They (again, our gov't) led their own people to believe Iraq and Saddam was the cause of 9/11.

Various memos have proven that war was a foregone conclusion regardless of what the IAEA or our own intelligence showed.

From day one our gov't has tried to get the Iraqi gov't to pass a law allowing our oil companies almost unfettered access to their oil.

The US was in a recession... the quickest way to remove a country from recession is war.

This is just a handful of responses that popped into my 'dumb' head. I'm a pretty trusting guy, but from day one I feel like our people have been lied to about almost everything... I have absolutely no reason to think that we went into Iraq because of WMDs.

[Predicto]

And then we all asked the Congress for approval...

http://archives.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/10/11/iraq.us/

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- In a major victory for the White House, the Senate early Friday voted 77-23 to authorize President Bush to attack Iraq if Saddam Hussein refuses to give up weapons of mass destruction as required by U.N. resolutions.

You act like this is the first time a democracy has been led into an ill-advised war. Presidents have the power and ability to do that from time to time. they are our leaders, they have the inside information.

They still have to bear the responsibility for what they lead us into.

[PeterMP]

This is off topic and I apologize, but...

The IAEA did not find anything.

We said they had WMDs on freakin' semi-trailors driven around Iraq.

We (our gov't) used only the intelligence that would support our desire for

war against Iraq.

They (again, our gov't) led their own people to believe Iraq and Saddam was the cause of 9/11.

Various memos have proven that war was a foregone conclusion regardless of what the IAEA or our own intelligence showed.

From day one our gov't has tried to get the Iraqi gov't to pass a law allowing our oil companies almost unfettered access to their oil.

The US was in a recession... the quickest way to remove a country from recession is war.

This is just a handful of responses that popped into my 'dumb' head. I'm a pretty trusting guy, but from day one I feel like our people have been lied to about almost everything... I have absolutely no reason to think that we went into Iraq because of WMDs.

I could be wrong, but I don't think the IAEA was in Iraq just prior to this last war. The UN weapons inspectors were. They were lead by Hans Blix, and he concluded that Saddam was in violation of UN resolutions, including 1441.

[portisizzle]

You act like this is the first time a democracy has been led into an ill-advised war. Presidents have the power and ability to do that from time to time. they are our leaders, they have the inside information.

They still have to bear the responsibility for what they lead us into.

Not only the responsibility, but the recognition to be forward thinking enough to do what is right. Which is not necessarily what is politically prudent.

I copied this for you too. It will help with your sunday quarterbacking skills.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/02/05/sprj.irq.powell.transcript/

Following is a transcript of U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell's presentation to the U.N. Security Council on the U.S. case against Iraq.

[Larry]

It is prudent to assume that there is a small, well-concealed nuclear weapons program in Iraq, possibly with fully developed components suitable for rapid assembly into one or more workable weapons if the requisite fissile material (highly enriched uranium or plutonium) were acquired.

And it's possible that they've got the ability to produce a Warp Drive, if they could get the antimatter.

[JMS]

History is being written as we speak in that part of the world.

So we can agree their is no historical precedence in American history to justify this war or preemptive war in general.

If you think pulling the Middle East out of the dark ages was going to take 22 months than you are mistaken.

Let me digress into pedantism for a moment.

The Middle east actually uses dates based upon the birth of Mohamed rather than the birth of Christ. So most of the middle east is in the early 1400's before we arrived and will be after we leave. That's renaissance time, not dark ages time.

On the other hand, If nation's building is now the justification we are using for the Iraqi war why didn't we just proclaim that up front and send the peace corps rather than Army corps?

Who was the last Republican who was a great nations builder? Perhaps that is the justification we are left with, rather than the original justification for our involvement?

Expect this part of our history to play out for decades. And thank whomever you thank for the fact that the US chose to fight before they became a legitimate threat. And while history has no major examples of preemptive action my original point was this...That this war will be the defining case study FOR or AGAINST preemptive action.

No American examples of pre-emptive wars. There are historical examples.

Some examples of Pre-emptive war's designed to avert greater wars....

• Napoleon's invasion of Germany.
  
• Hitler's invasion of Poland.
  
• Hitler's invasion of Czechoslovakia.
  
• Japan's invasion of China.
  
• Japan's attack on America..
  

Historically pre-emptive war's don't work out well for the aggressors. Pre-emption has often been a sign of weakness.

In my opinion we had no choice but to engage the Middle East now rather than later. Again my opinion.

We had no choice but to throw 200 years of American history aside, and 500 years ( if I remember Kissinger's dates correctly ) international precedent aside because of why exactly?

Are you saying that Iraq was a gathering threat? I think it has been well proven that in-fact Iraq was not. I think this is at the heart of our disagreement. We certainly did have a choice. But why do you believe the choice we made was correct even to this day?

[pez]

They were lead by Hans Blix, and he concluded that Saddam was in violation of UN resolutions, including 1441.

And we all know what happened to him......

[Predicto]

Not only the responsibility, but the recognition to be forward thinking enough to do what is right. Which is not necessarily what is politically prudent.

I copied this for you too. It will help with your sunday quarterbacking skills.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/02/05/sprj.irq.powell.transcript/

Following is a transcript of U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell's presentation to the U.N. Security Council on the U.S. case against Iraq.

The cobbed together and contrived testimony that Powell himself considers the lowest and most shameful point of his career, and caused him to resign? That's ok - I've read it already.

[Larry]

Following is a transcript of U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell's presentation to the U.N. Security Council on the U.S. case against Iraq.

You mean, the one which Colin Powell now says was the worst thing he's ever done, loaning his credibility to an administration who didn't deserve any?

(The presentation which the UN didn't buy, even when we tried to bribe the members of the Security Council, which was why we decided to withdraw our request for authorization, and announce that we didn't need it?)

[JMS]

This is off topic and I apologize, but...

The IAEA did not find anything.

We said they had WMDs on freakin' semi-trailors driven around Iraq.

We (our gov't) used only the intelligence that would support our desire for

war against Iraq.

They (again, our gov't) led their own people to believe Iraq and Saddam was the cause of 9/11.

Various memos have proven that war was a foregone conclusion regardless of what the IAEA or our own intelligence showed.

From day one our gov't has tried to get the Iraqi gov't to pass a law allowing our oil companies almost unfettered access to their oil.

The US was in a recession... the quickest way to remove a country from recession is war.

This is just a handful of responses that popped into my 'dumb' head. I'm a pretty trusting guy, but from day one I feel like our people have been lied to about almost everything... I have absolutely no reason to think that we went into Iraq because of WMDs.

I'm reading a book called Legacy of Ashes now about the history of the CIA. This book deals with the complete history and is not focused on Iraq but they did make some interesting statements on Iraq.

Supposedly after the first gulf war the IAEA packed with CIA folks made the conclusion that Saddam was about a year away from having a bomb. The CIA totally missed it. Cheney who was sec defense at the time is said to have lost all confidence in the CIA's ability at that point. This is reasoned why Cheney personally colored subsequent intelligence given to him in the lead up to the second gulf war.

Also the IAEA did in fact disarm Saddam as they were supposed to do after the first gulf war. The reason they were still there a decade latter and the reason the embargo was still in place was because we didn't believe what the data was telling us. After all we were blind intelligence wise in the first gulf war, we were just as blind in the lead up to the second gulf war largely because of the precedence from gulf war one was still in the for front of the minds of Cheney, and the other neo cons; most of whom were veterins of the first Bush Administration and Desert Sheild.

Some of the reasons why the CIA was so blind in the late 1980's and early 1990's had to do with Israeli and Russians destroying our assets across the ME in the mid to late 1980's. Fall out from the Johnathan Pollard spy case.

[Larry]

They were lead by Hans Blix, and he concluded that Saddam was in violation of UN resolutions, including 1441.

Actually, I think your chronology is wrong, too.

Blix didn't conclude that Saddam wasn't co-=operating. He said that years earlier. (In '98?) In '02, he was saying that Saddam was co-operating, and that the inspectors were receiving free access. (And weren't finding anything.)

And I'm really, still, enjoying the irony, here. The US:

• Asked the UN to authorize military force against Iraq.
  
• Presented doctored intelligence to them to try to support that case.
  
• Offered big foreign-aid packages to tiny countries who were on the Security Council, to try to get them to vote with the US.
  
• When it became obvious that we weren't even going to win a majority vote of the Security Council, withdrew the request.
  
• Announced that the US doesn't need UN approval to act in our own self-defense.
  
• Invaded.
  
• Then tries to claim "it's not our fault! The UN authorized it."
  

Truly classic humor. And delivered with a straight face, too.

[mardi gras skin]

Clinton 1993-2001 8,392 deaths over eight years in office.

Bush 2001-2006 8,792 deaths over six years in office.

I can't believe the numbers are so close. Even with the 2 extra years factored in, the difference between peace time casualties and war time casualties aren't nearly as different as I thought.

[jpillian]

I can't believe the numbers are so close. Even with the 2 extra years factored in, the difference between peace time casualties and war time casualties aren't nearly as different as I thought.

Which you'd think would be the main point of the thread -- but somehow it's turned into a thread on whether an invasion of Iraq is justified.

Because we haven't covered that ground before in the Tailgate.

We're trailblazin' baby! :laugh:

[mardi gras skin]

Which you'd think would be the main point of the thread

No kidding.

I was so shocked by this that I sent the link to a friend (not a Bush fan) to see what he thought. Same thing. Not a significant difference in casualties from Clinton to Bush.

It seems as if the casualties from war have only been about 50% greater than the casualties from regular training. That can't be right, can it?

[Larry]

I can't believe the numbers are so close. Even with the 2 extra years factored in, the difference between peace time casualties and war time casualties aren't nearly as different as I thought.

They aren't close.

"Peacetime casualties" (which, I assume, covers all deaths of military personnell, whether related to their service or not) have been holding relatively steady at around 1,000 a year. (According to the numbers published in the first post in this thread.)

What the original poster did was to

1. Assume that peacetime casualties fell to zero in '05
   
2. Compare the total number of military deaths, from all causes, under Clinton, against only those deaths which the Bush administration is willing to take "credit" for.
   

Well, guess what? When we invaded Iraq, military personnel didn't instantly become immune to being killed, stateside, in a DUI. They didn't stop having heart attacks. (They didn't stop committing suicide, which I've read is a significant cause of military deaths in the US.)

Yes, I think it's pretty safe to bet that somewhere in the US, a soldier died of something, some time in '05.

-----

This "statistical exercise" is about as significant as it was when Rush was proclaiming that, well, you see, Clinton fired all of the federal prosecutors when he took office, whereas Bush only fired eight of them. (If you ignore the fact that he fired all of them, when he took office, too.) Wow, news flash: If you compare everything that happened under Clinton against a fraction of what happened under Bush, then Bush looks good.

Or, to make the summary even shorter: All it takes to make Bush look good against Clinton is to pretend some things don't exist.

[mardi gras skin]

What the original poster did was to

1. Assume that peacetime casualties fell to zero in '05
   
2. Compare the total number of military deaths, from all causes, under Clinton, against only those deaths which the Bush administration is willing to take "credit" for.
   

I'm not talking about the original poster's numbers. I figured those were biased so I haven't even looked back there to add them up. I'm referring to the numbers JMS used.

Clinton 1993-2001 8,392 deaths over eight years in office.

Bush 2001-2006 8,792 deaths over six years in office.

Are those numbers incorrect?

Edit: JMS's numbers are higher than the original poster's numbers so I assume they account for the issue you're talking about.

So in peace time, we had about 8000 military deaths over 2 terms, but in war time we can project about 12,000 military deaths over 2 terms. Not to sound crass, but I would expect a greater difference between the two.

I don't think this makes Clinton look bad but it does put the death toll for the current war in a different perspective. This war has had an extremely low casualty rate.

[jgbkab1]

I'm sure the explanation would have something to do with the end of the Cold War, draw down of troops, peace dividend ... yadda yadda.

I think the comparison between Presidents is kind of lame.

What is more telling, I believe is the comparison between conflicts. OIF keeps getting compared to Vietnam, but has nowhere NEAR the casualty or fatality rate.

At the time these stats were taken, OIF had claimed approx. 3000 lives (Mar '03 - Nov '06). Vietnam claimed approx 47,000 lives (arguable timeline, but something like from 1964-1973).

Puts things into perspective.

(Given -- if you don't believe OIF is a just cause for the sacrifice of American lives, anything > 0 is too many)

As most people know...the difference is the advancement of medicine. Most of the soldiers getting wounded now would have been dead back then. The credit goes to the forward medical stations and not the presidents.

[mardi gras skin]

Also, there were more military deaths per year during the cold war under Reagan than under Bush. I realize this is the result of a smaller military, but still. If someone had told me that before seeing this report I would have thought they were cooking the numbers.

Are we sure this report is legitimate?

[JMS]

I'm not talking about the original poster's numbers. I figured those were biased so I haven't even looked back there to add them up. I'm referring to the numbers JMS used.

Are those numbers incorrect?

Edit: JMS's numbers are higher than the original poster's numbers so I assume they account for the issue you're talking about.

I used the numbers originally posted. I just added up the numbers from the table for all the years the President was in office. So in 2001 for example both Clinton and Bush were in office so I added that year's number to both President's talley's even though Clinton was only in office for a few months of that year.

If you look, Clinton's worst year in office was his first year where he inherited Somalia from the Bush Administration.

I agree with Larry. The numbers are misleading because they are not consistantly reported. Given 2 million population of 18-65 year olds, it's not outragous to expect .2% deaths. It is outragous to note these deaths account for most of Clinton's fatalities and seem to drop to almost zero during Bush years.

My point was even by these inconsistant numbers there were fewer military deaths in the Clinton Presidency than in Bush's. So the title of the thread is wrong even by his own figures. Figures which are not consistant. Figures which are not up to date, and figures wich compare an 8 year period to a six year period leaving out what will likely turn out 2006 and 2007 which will likely turn out to be the worst years of fighting in Iraq.

So in peace time, we had about 8000 military deaths over 2 terms, but in war time we can project about 12,000 military deaths over 2 terms. Not to sound crass, but I would expect a greater difference between the two.

We've lost 3,800 folks in 5 years of fighting roughly.

I don't think this makes Clinton look bad but it does put the death toll for the current war in a different perspective. This war has had an extremely low casualty rate.

No it hasn't. It's had low American combat deaths. But that's largely because we garisoned our troups initially during this war, leaving the civilians to go toe to toe with the insurgents. We aren't doing that any longer, hense our casualties are going up; only these figures obmitt 2006 numbers where deaths are up from 2005.

Alsio, America has suffered more than 27,000 casualties and Iraq has suffered more than 100,000 innocent civilian deaths by some accounts. We won't even discuss the 2 trillion dollars we will likely have spent in Iraq by the time this is all over and done with.

3,800 combat deaths is a low figure compared with WWII, but that in and of itself does not touch the lack of justification for this war.

[JMS]

Also, there were more military deaths per year during the cold war under Reagan than under Bush. I realize this is the result of a smaller military, but still. If someone had told me that before seeing this report I would have thought they were cooking the numbers.

Are we sure this report is legitimate?

They are cooking the numbers. We've had 3732 deaths in Iraq. This report only reports 2800 roughly. It ignores casualty numbers. It's not consistant on reporting non combat deaths.

[Switchgear]

A coworker sent me the exact same email from the original post today. I hate to see otherwise smart people accept information that fits what they want to believe without critically examining it. I sent him a link to this thread, because it does a good job of showing the intellectual dishonesty in the email. I also sent him a response:

---

I came up with a chart using the tables from the online document.

Year Total Military Deaths Rate

1980 2,159,630 … 2,392 0.11%

1981 2,206,751 … 2,380 0.11%

1982 2,251,067 … 2,319 0.10%

1983 2,273,364 … 2,465 0.11%

1984 2,297,922 … 1,999 0.09%

1985 2,323,185 … 2,252 0.10%

1986 2,359,855 … 1,984 0.08%

1987 2,352,697 … 1,983 0.08%

1988 2,309,495 … 1,819 0.08%

1989 2,303,384 … 1,636 0.07%

1990 2,258,324 … 1,507 0.07%

1991 2,198,189 … 1,787 0.08%

1992 1,953,337 … 1,293 0.07%

1993 1,849,537 … 1,213 0.07%

1994 1,746,482 … 1,075 0.06%

1995 1,661,928 … 1,040 0.06%

1996 1,613,310 …… 974 0.06%

1997 1,578,382 …… 817 0.05%

1998 1,538,570 …… 827 0.05%

1999 1,525,942 …… 796 0.05%

2000 1,530,430 …… 758 0.05%

2001 1,552,196 …… 891 0.06%

2002 1,627,142 …… 999 0.06%

2003 1,732,632 … 1,228 0.07%

2004 1,711,916 … 1,874 0.11%

2005 1,664,014 … 1,942 0.12%

2006 1,664,014 … 1,858 0.11%

I know it runs contrary to the point you want this to make (that things aren't any worse for troops than they were under the Clintons) but casualty rates have risen during the war, the numbers don't lie.

[dwbiggs]

And the point is???

Clinton has long been out and Bush is on his way out.