Statistically Speaking

Two hundred seventy-seven U.S. soldiers have now died in Iraq, which means that statistically speaking U.S. soldiers have less of a chance of dying from all causes in Iraq than citizens have of being murdered in California, which is roughly the same geographical size. The most recent statistics indicate California has more than 2300 homicides each year, which means about 6.6 murders each day. Meanwhile, U.S. troops have been in Iraq for 160 days, which means they're incurring about 1.7 deaths, including illness and accidents each day.


This is a grotesque distortion of fact. As Howard Kurtz reported in the Washington Post, California has 34 million people, but there are 145,000 U.S. soldiers in Iraq.  As Buzzflash.com calculated, this means that U.S. troops in Iraq at that time were 66 times more likely to die than Californians were likely to be murdered.