From Dr. Jerry E. Pournelle's Current Chaos Manor mail page, Your Pal wrote:

Take the issue of casualties, for example. We'll reach the 2,000 US deaths mark here before I get home I am sure. It is a dangerous place in some places.

The death of a soldier sucks. When you're sitting in the TOC and you find out there's been a KIA the whole place gets depressed. Everybody feels it. I've been to the memorial ceremonies; big tough guys cry. Heck, we feel it when Iraqi soldiers and cops get killed.

But it has to be put in perspective. I've read newspaper columns were they talk about high casualty rates in Iraq. That's nuts. In 2003 there were 1,403 deaths on New York State highways. The average death rate in Iraq is about 650 soldiers a year. Out of the 23,000 soldiers in Task Force Liberty, we have had 53 soldiers killed. That is a 0.23 percent death rate, that is very low, much lower than Vietnam. No soldier wants to die but it is part of the risk.

Hell one of our battalion commanders, five days short of turning over his command, got hit in an IED ambush on his way to a meeting and is now in Germany with a bad shoulder injury. He's a good guy and I hope he pulls through. A Navy guy assigned to our ACE (the All Source Collection Cell) was outside taking a smoke break when a mortar round landed and lost his legs. These things happen.

But I think you've got a statistically higher chance of getting killed driving down the New York State Thruway. It's just that driving on the Thruway is a risk people accept.

Task Force Liberty's death rate (per year, I assume) is about 29 times higher than the rate of death experienced by the residents of New York State due to motor vehicle accidents.

Working with vital statistics released by the New York State Department of Health, the state's population in 2003 was 19,190,115. Deaths due to motor vehicle accidents totaled 1,514. The death rate is therefore 0.007889 percent.

Of course, not all New York State residents drive or ride on the Thruway. (Here is the motor vehicle death rate per 100,000 population for 1993-2002. For New York City in 2002, the death rate per 100,000 population was 5.4, or 0.0054 percent.)

The New York State death rate due to all accidents, motor vehicles, suicides and homicides was 0.04109 percent.

The total death rate from all causes for New York State is 0.808 percent. So, is living in New York State about 3.5 times more dangerous than being a Task Force Liberty soldier stationed in Iraq?

The United States currently has 161,000 troops deployed in Iraq. If 650 soldiers die each year, that would be a death rate of 0.4037 percent, or half the death rate of New York State residents from all causes.