Shit.

[unhappycamper]

313 days ago, on October 14, 2006, we put up Arlington East on Coast Guard Beach in Eastham on Coast Guard Beach. We put up 2,759 markers for the solders who perished in bush-2's war.

This morning's death total is 3,723.

964 more soldiers have died since October 14, 2006, which means for the last 313 days, we are losing 3.0798 soldiers per day.

Shit.

[druidity33]

1. shit is right

and that's only the official total. I'm not the only one that suspects the real # is higher. What about suicides? Catastrophic injuries? How many limbs lost? PTSD?

The number of American lives shattered is tragic.

Multiply that by a hundredfold... two hundred fold, and put that conflict right in your hometown, in your backyard, IN AMERICA... and you see the scale of this tragedy becomes mind boggling. MILLIONS OF REFUGEES ALREADY.

There's no hope for us there. We must leave. Yesterday.

:(

[cascadiance]

4. And that's not adding contractor's like those working for Blackwater, etc. either...

Estimates are already probably close to 1000, though we don't have official counts. Jeremy Scahill was basing that on the insurance claims for death benefits by their employees.

And when you consider the following:

1) More Vietnam vets have committed suicide (over 58,000!) than were killed in the actual Vietnam War.

2) That we have injured vs. death ratio in Iraq now of 17-1, and in Vietnam it was more like 3-1. WWII it was 1-1. Jeremy Scahill indicated these stats in a recent speech of his.

So, putting those two facts together, where we have many with very debilitating injuries surviving (almost six times as much!), what do you think that will make the ultimate suicide rate from this war later, if you follow what happened with Vietnam? If you take the measure of an equal amount of suicides to the original death rate of Vietnam and do the following equation:

suicides = deaths

Iraq war:
17 * deaths = injuries

Vietnam war:
3 * deaths = injuries

Therefore if you use the wounded statistics as a comparitive variable, we might have close to six times the amount of suicides vs. deaths in this war if you follow that ratio, which I think might be a conservative estimate.

5.7 * 3723 = 21,221 SUICIDES

Do we want that folks! 21K SUICIDES? That's what these stats likely predict! It would be interesting to do a study on the number of suicides already, and to compare that to the number of suicides while the war was happening in Vietnam too, to see at what ratios they were then and now.

Some articles that support the notion that this war will have a VERY high rate of suicides:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/01/29/eveningnews/main596755.shtml

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/01/14/iraq/main593160.shtml

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/08/17/soltz-ptsd/

[Philosoraptor]

2. "Its a number".....tony snow, white house asshole.

[babylonsister]

3. Or a 'comma'... nt

[spanone]

5. surging into heaven - shame

[Lex]

6. So many families and friends grieving for the rest of their lives

for their loved one. Terrible and unforgivable. :cry:

Sometimes I still can't believe my country invaded Iraq after Iraq DIDN'T attack us.

[1620rock]

7. The beautiful minds of the Bush's must not be concerned with this.

[stop the bleeding]

8. Thank you n/t