Is this true? More soldiers died under Carter's and Clinton's predsidencies than

[rainy]

during Bush's. That's compared in each not together.

[Mz Pip]

1. Maybe of old age

:shrug:

Mz Pip
:dem:

[maxsolomon]

2. which Bush?

that smells like BS.

over 3000 have died in iraq alone.

[meegbear]

3. What's the source?

[rainy]

7. Some RW nut on C-span this morning was yelling this info out. No one

corrected her on the show so I didn't know if it was true?

[meegbear]

20. Wished someone call them on it ...

I guess none died during Reagan and Bush I, go figure.

[maddezmom]

25. probably read or heard about this column

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=258775

[rodeodance]

34. oh yes, I recall that silly one. Thanks

[IntravenousDemilo]

4. Depends. Where did you hear this? The source will be a good indication if it's true or not. n/m

[Demit]

12. What do you mean by "it depends"?

[IntravenousDemilo]

35. Whaddya think it means?

If the source is truly independent and non-partisan, then fine. If not, then we'd be viewing the information through a biased filter and would decide accordingly.

[wryter2000]

5. Whoever told you this

Ask them for an accounting.

[Lerkfish]

6. don't recall any large number of military casualties in either presidency

:shrug:

make them prove it, I guess, cause I sure don't see it.

[RaleighNCDUer]

8. Absolute nonsense.

* has cost more than Carter and Clinton together, with a big margin left over.

[Claire Beth]

9. that is not true....

it sounds like something Rush limpballs would come up with.

[soothsayer]

10. here's a place that espouses that

http://www.timeimmortal.net/2007/02/21/more-soldiers-died-in-peacetime-under-bill-clinton/

and another
http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2006/10/us-lost-more-soldiers-annually-under.html

[Kagemusha]

11. Not due to enemy action (i.e. KIA).

You need to really look at the causes of death involved. They kept saying how in Somalia under Bush 1, more soldiers died in car accidents (usually off duty) than during the time they were deployed in Somalia.

[unhappycamper]

13. Perhaps so, but they didn't die from combat or combat-related causes.

The only way I can see this being true is if they counted all military/ex-military deaths for any reason during those terms.

Poppy is good for at least 12,000 premature deaths of veterans in Gulf War I.

[progdonkey]

28. and you have to look at the total number of casualties...

not just members of the military who have died, but those who are left injured--psychologically and physically--for the rest of their lives.

I don't want to use any percentages, since I honestly don't know what they'd be exactly, but I know a massive portion of the soldiers who come back physically injured from Iraq wouldn't have survived at all during Vietnam, so right there you have a huge skewing of the numbers of casualties from dead to injured.

That is, if there are fewer soldiers dying in Iraq than even during peacetime under Carter, it's a testament to the advances in battlefield medicine, not to the supposed low level of risk involved in serving in Iraq.

[Synnical]

14. No - Link and Source

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2007/02/clintons_milita.html

Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Clinton's Military Casualties

21 Feb 2007 12:27 pm

The New York Sun piece that argued that military casualties in the Clinton years compared unfavorably with military deaths in Iraq under president Bush is based on data that can be found here (PDF). http://siadapp.dior.whs.mil/personnel/CASUALTY/WWT.PDF As I suspected, almost all the deaths are either from illness, accident, suicide, or homicide. A total of 59 were caused by enemy action from 1993 - 1999. It is perfectly possible to make an intellectually honest case that the media pay too much attention to military deaths in wartime. Alicia Colon didn't manage it.

[Ian David]

15. The Google is your friend. Look what I found on the internets

I found this at MurdocOnline:

Yet more on military death rates

This has apparently become the topic of the week. (Well, at least it's better than Britney's hair styles...)

Dadmanly posts on the comparison between the number of military deaths in Iraq and the number of military deaths under Bill Clinton, a topic that I first posted on eleven months ago and mentioned again yesterday.

First, I would strongly caution against trying to read too much into this comparison, surprising though the numbers are. Many critics of the comparison are accusing comparison-makers of claiming that "more troops died under Clinton than are dying under Bush", which isn't true. Never mind that I don't know of anyone actually making that claim. Be sure your words cannot be interpreted to make it.

However, the fact isn't that the numbers are lower than during Clinton's presidency, it's that they're not nearly as much higher as you'd expect considering that we've conquered two nations and are in the process of returning those two nations to their rightful owners in the midst of two determined insurgencies.

We are fighting a war and are losing 36% more troops (2001-2004 only) than we lost under Clinton. Is that a lot? I don't think so, considering what we've done and what we're doing.

Here's how I got that 36% (using this as a source):
(PDF DOCUMENT) http://www.murdoconline.net/pics/Death_Rates.pdf (PDF DOCUMENT)

From 1993-2000 under Clinton, the average total size of the military (factoring in Guard and Reserves as they were active) was 1,630,618 per year. During that period, an average of 938 military personnel died per year of all causes for a death rate of 0.057%.

From 2001-2004 under Bush, the average total size of the military (factoring in Guard and Reserves as they were active) was 1,655,947 per year. During that period, an average of 1,297 military personnel died per year of all causes for a death rate of 0.078%.

0.078 is 36.21% higher than 0.057.

Please note that this is the death rate. This means that the respective sizes of the militaries under the two presidents has been factored in. Also please note that this is deaths from all causes. If you check out the charts I created last year, you'll see that the rate numbers track the total numbers closely enough to pretty much dismiss variations in the size of the force as a meaningful issue.

The point is that if one said the total military death rate under Bush is only about a third higher than it was under Clinton despite the fact that we've invaded and liberated two countries from brutal dictatorships and then stuck around to help them deal with even more brutal insurgencies, I don't think many folks would believe you. But that's the fact. I don't know exactly how relevant that fact is, but it is a fact.

More:
http://www.murdoconline.net/archives/004583.html



Edited to add:

<snip>

Instapundit points out this post at Red State which notes that the increase in the total number of deaths in the US military isn't all that much greater under GW Bush than it was under the previous three (plus) Presidents. Here's the gist:

Take a look at the actual US Military Casualty figures since 1980. If you do the math, you wil find quite a few surpises. First of all, let's compare numbers of US Military personnel that died during the first term of the last four presidents.

George W. Bush . . . . . 5187 (2001-2004)
Bill Clinton . . . . . . . . . 4302 (1993-1996)
George H.W. Bush . . . . 6223 (1989-1992)
Ronald Reagan . . . . . . 9163 (1981-1984)

Even during the (per MSM) utopic peacetime of Bill Clinton's term, we lost 4302 service personnel. H.W. Bush and Reagan actually lost significantly more personnel while never fighting an extensive war, much less a simulaltaneous war on two theaters (Iraq and Afghanistan). Even the dovish Carter lost more people duing his last year in office, in 1980 lost 2392, than W. has lost in any single year of his presidency. (2005 figures are not available but I would wager the numbers would be slightly higher than 2004.)

More:
http://www.murdoconline.net/archives/003564.html

[dsc]

37. This is a wonderful example of the total misuse of statistics

If I teach AP stats next year I will use it as such. The correct way to look at these percentages isn't the way they did so. They are mixing up the way to calculate this statistic. The correct way to look at this is that 78/57 which is about 130%. He didn't increase deaths by 30% he did so by 130%.

[Ian David]

38. Math is hard.

You should correct the guy.

[mr_hat]

16. This is leaving the mouth-breathers gasping. Rush >

announced the other day that mortalities in Iraq aren't that bad because under Clinton (red mist) there were about as many ACCIDENTAL deaths in the military as there have been combat casualties in Iraq.

Which, of course, is idiotic. It means that if we sent every single enlisted person to Iraq, we'd suffer fewer casualties.

What Rush and those other dumbfucks leave out is the fact that accidental deaths continue unabated, war or no. And there's NO COMPARISON to the 10,000+ wounded in Ir/Af stateside.

Specious, pathetic, easily swallowed by the dittoheads.

[Rabrrrrrr]

17. It is true, mostly, but not quite in the way they want it to be true.

http://siadapp.dior.whs.mil/personnel/CASUALTY/Death_Rates1.pdf (although this only goes back to 1980, and so Carter is missing his first three years).

But most of those deaths were accidental, as opposed to from hostile fire.

Also, during Carter and Clinton's time (esp. Carter's) the training and equipment weren't as good as they are now (imagine that) and so there were a lot more accidental deaths, even though there weren't any major conflicts to speak of.

Also, during Carter's time and Clinton's, the military was much larger - by as much as about 40%, so one would expect higher absolute death totals.

Note also the self-inflicted death rate - 10 per 100,000, almost constant for the whole period of that chart.

Sad.

[CJCRANE]

18. They're surely not comparing like-for-like

(i.e. not including natural deaths/death by accident under B*sh) and also missing out the first two years of B*sh's first term (from what I can tell). Plus there is also two years of B*sh to go, so again it's not like for like.

[Fresh_Start]

19. This looks like reasonable type information

http://siadapp.dior.whs.mil/personnel/CASUALTY/Death_Rates.pdf

They'd be comparing 8 years of Clinton with 4 years of Bush.
There's no reason to believe that accidents, illness, or self-indicted death will be lower under Bush than Clinton.
Therefore, the operative columns become hostile action and terrorism deaths. Which Bush exceeds Clinton by orders of magnitude.

Whoever made that statement either knowingly lied or is a low-intelligence tool.

[ourbluenation]

21. not one soldier died under wes clark's nato command in bosnia

and he of course, served under clinton.

[TlalocW]

22. Clinton did not send one troop into combat that did not make it back alive

I remember reading that somewhere, and I haven't found anything to contradict it. Yes, troops died under his command - in accidents, in Somalia (troops were there because of Bush I), and the Cole, but whether you agreed with his decisions to enter into military operations in Somalia, etc. not one troop sent into combat by Clinton died. The military never had it so good as under Clinton.

TlalocW

[maddezmom]

23. was it the RW'er Alicia Colon or about her article in the NYSun?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=258775

read some of the comments. :hi:

[SOS]

24. No, it's absurd

Hostile action active duty military deaths per 100,000 serving:

1993: 0
1994: 0
1995: 0
1996: 0.1
1997: 0
1998: 0
1999: 0
2000: 0
2004: 43.1

http://siadapp.dior.whs.mil/personnel/CASUALTY/Death_Rates1.pdf

[A HERETIC I AM]

26. It's horseshit. Check these links.....

Although this only goes back to 1980, there were no major combat operations during Carter's presidency. The biggest single event casualty loss during Cart4er was the failed rescue attempt in April of 1980.

http://siadapp.dior.whs.mil/personnel/CASUALTY/Death_Rates.pdf

This link gives some more detail - look at pages 5 - 12 for the pertinent tables. It includes info of all conflicts of the US armed forces. Be sure to look for "Hostile" deaths. Those tables also list accidents and suicides or "Self inflicted".


http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL32492.pdf

[A HERETIC I AM]

30. Damn! all you fast posters above. Looks like 3 or 4 of us posted the same links,.

Rabrrrr beat me to it! Ah well, the lag from read to research to post may only be a minute or so but when there are several dozen doing it.....

[hippiechick]

27. Well, that would be 12 years (Dem) compared to 7 (Bush) ...

:shrug: The ratio still isn't in his favor ...

[theoldman]

29. I would bet that the death rate in Iraq is greater than the death

rate at military installations in the US. Just ask any military person where he/she would rather be. Common sense, which Republicans do not have, will tell you that your odds of dying are much greater in a war than during a time of peace. How about including the wounded especially those who lost an arm or leg or even their minds.

[Zynx]

31. Not in combat they didn't.

There were no major military actions in either presidency.

[Captain Hilts]

32. This is a crazy rumor that has been going the rounds. nt

[zbdent]

33. again, that's the RW comparing bad examples

like the fill-in-the-blank city had X deaths, but the Iraq war had X soldiers die.

I always point out that the comparison is counting soldiers in the same way as violent deaths total ... when the true comparison would be counting the number of police killed in the line of duty ... which would either be wayyyyyyy smaller, or the national outrage over the number of policemen killed is being suppressed ...

[EndElectoral]

36. US Active military deaths declined each year of the Clinton presidency.

Clinton's last year as Prez was lower than any year of the Bush administration. The early years of the Clinton presidency were higher numbers of self-inficted and illness than latter years

Repubs don't like to talk about PTSD and the effects of illness vets complained about after Bush I and the Gulf War syndrome. Time has a way of lessening the effect of depleted uranium and aberrant vaccines. And so the lessening of numbers under Clinton indicate something happened AFTER the Gulf War which caused a problem among returning vets. Big surprise.

http://www.paceadvantage.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=2054

The same could be true of the effects of Agent Orange and the return after Nam. Exepct the same when massive numbers return from Iraq in the next Presidency.

Ask them about deaths by hostilities or combat deaths -something that relates to the Commander in Chief? They'll shut up real fast because they know.