The Fickle Sickle has posted some interesting statistics, and a related quote from the New England Journal of Medicine, comparing the first four years of US casualties in Iraq and Vietnam:
Vietnam |
Iraq |
Comparison |
|
Deaths |
1,864 |
3,013 |
Over 1.5 times as many |
Injuries |
7,337 |
47,657 |
Over 6 times as many |
The quote from the New England Journal of medicine explains that the reason for the discrepancy in the comparison column is that we now have the medical technology to save the lives of soldiers who are so badly injured they would have died in the Vietnam era. This moves them from the death row to the injuries row.
In other words, our casualty rate in Iraq so far is six times as bad as the casualty rate in Vietnam, and only great leaps in medical technique keep that from being reflected in the death rate.