Quote:
Originally posted by sgtclub
I do think it's less than 50,000, but that's still irrelevant. The point was where things are today, not over the last 2.5 years. How many people are dying in Iraq a month these days? 100? 200? 300? Let's say 300. That's 3,600 a year. I would guess that the murder rates in America's top 10 cities exceed that, but even if they don't, it's in the ball park. And we live in a country that is not fighting an insurgency (at least not violently) and has a stable democracy. We can even forget about the US as a whole. What's the annual murder rate in CA? Between LA and Oakland alone, it's probably between 700-800. Whole state, say 1200-1500.
Just trying to put things in perspective.
ETA: CA murders in 2002: 1842 http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/West/04/2...rnia.crime.ap/
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3600 a year? You mean nearly a quarter of the deaths have been US soldiers?*
Somehow, I doubt that. (And, again, you ignore the difference in population sizes to make your "point").
*Over 1700 US soldiers dead in Iraq since March 2003 -- compared to Club's estimate of about 8000 total dead since that time.
eta: AP wire shows at least 1274 killed by insurgents since April 28 -- more than double Club's high-end rate. But that's just the beginning of the story.
First, that's just confirmed deaths, and doesn't count all the missing and unknowns.
Second, that's just Iraqi civilians killed by insurgents. It doesn't include US soldiers, nor the civilians killed by US soldiers.
Third, for every death there are several severely wounded -- i.e., loss of limbs. One sees nothing like this in US crime statistics -- there are not 3 or 4 people getting maimed for each murder.
I'm sorry, but the suggestion that more people are murdered in the US than in Iraq is just plain wrong -- and that is
without taking into account the huge difference in population.
To borrow from Shape Shifter -- would you feel safer in Baghdad, or in New Orleans?
