Powerline makes the case that Americans sense of failure in Iraq has been grossly exaggerated by media accounts of the service men and women whose lives have been lost. They have a point. Powerline compares military deaths during peacetime with those in Iraq during the war. It turns out that peacetime deaths are almost one third those of wartime Iraq.
During Vietnam I often contrasted the number of Vietnam combat deaths to the number of people who died stateside in traffic accidents. I can’t recall the numbers but I’d guess that in a year with a maximum of about 10,000 combat deaths there was a traffic death toll on the order of 70,000. In those years only Ralph Nader was out protesting highway safety.
As of 2004 there were 42,000 traffic related deaths in the U.S.
