Eye-opening data

A friend sent me a Congressional Research Service report as of April this past year which contained some interesting information on military deaths of all causes since 1980. Here is the link to the report.

If you only read the newspapers, you would certainly expect that the war in Iraq since 2003 and the earlier invasion of Iraq in 1990-1991 would have lead to higher than normal military deaths among those on active duty. The data belie that conclusion. Table 4 on page 10 of the congressional report show that there were more military deaths in 1980, the last year of the Carter administration than any year of Bush's. Further analysis of the data shows that there were more deaths during the Clinton administration than Bush's---some 14,000.

Of course, there have been more deaths from hostile action in past 6 years, but accidental deaths and deaths due to homicide and illness are way less than in previous years. Any loss of our service men and women is too high, but a balanced reporting of the issue has not been presented.