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Subject: SP numbers about the dead...
mustavaris    12/12/2005 1:28:51 AM
"The Total Dead in Iraq December 11, 2005: American fatalities in Iraq, so far, amount to 2,400 coalition dead (89 percent American), about 12,000 Iraqi soldiers and police killed (half defending Saddam in early 2003, the rest defending the new Iraqi government), and about 28,000 civilians. The civilian figure includes anti-government forces. In fact, at least half the ?civilian? dead are terrorists and anti-government gunmen. We know that because over 80 percent of the dead civilians are adult males (which normally account for only about a quarter of the population.) However, adult males comprise over 99 percent of the terrorist and anti-government gunmen population. " If all of the males killed were terrorists/insurgents that would mean worse than 1:10 KIA ratio in coalition-terrorist numbers... Iraqi forces and wounded excluded. This number could only be true if the war is going far worse than expressed before... and donīt talk about the caught insurgents/WIAs in about every news its less than the number of killed [aint fast enough to surrender]. Someone wants to diminish the number of killed I think... or the war goes worse than imagined. Choose whether you wan, I choose the first one.
 
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dbdb    numbers matter   11/29/2008 6:57:20 PM
I'm not sure comparisons with WWII are valid for current conflicts. 
The Independent is normally relaible on statistics, this make a ratio of 25 resistance combatants killed for 1 occupying soldier, close to more recent figures I have seen for Afghanistan.  Not nice odds to wage an offensive war on but not bad.  If ratios get much higher than that it is close to being able to keep a non conscription army who can go over to shoot  foreign people as a (albeit dangerous) sport.
 
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dbdb    numbers matter   11/29/2008 9:04:43 PM
I'm not sure comparisons with WWII are valid for current conflicts. 
The Independent is normally relaible on statistics, this make a ratio of 25 resistance combatants killed for 1 occupying soldier, close to more recent figures I have seen for Afghanistan.  Not nice odds to wage an offensive war on but not bad.  If ratios get much higher than that it is close to being able to keep a non conscription army who can go over to shoot  foreign people as a (albeit dangerous) sport.
 
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theBird       12/25/2008 4:24:11 PM
I seem to recall a report from 2007 saying that either 19,000 insurgents were killed total or 19,000 had been killed by Coalition forces alone (the article isn't clear).  http://www.usatoday.com/news/w...
 
Of Course this does not include insurgents captured (around 25,000), or insurgents who happened to be away from their AK when they got whacked and thus classified as an "innocent civilian"
 
 
 
 
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theBird       12/25/2008 5:14:55 PM
I don't think that kill ratios are really that good an indicator of progress though, we had a great kill ratio in Vietnam (better than I think the British had in Malaysia) and still were unsuccessful there, meanwhile the British suffered a negative ratio in Northern Ireland, but you don't hear much of the IRA anymore.  One reason they were so successful and the ratio was negative is that they typically arrested IRA men instead of killing them (number of IRA arrested was around 5,000, number of Security forces killed around 1,000, number of republican paramilitary killed just shy of 400); its a lot harder to cry atrocity and claim that the Brits are murdering your people in the streets when all they do is arrest you for planting bombs in shopping malls http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...
 
 
 
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