By the Numbers: Iraq = Vietnam

A lot of comparisons have been made between the Iraq war and the Vietnam war. One of the defenses of the Iraq war are the casualty numbers. After all, we lost 58,000 men in Vietnam but so far have only had 3,200 casualties in Iraq. So Iraq isn't as deadly, right?

Problem is the numbers the Pentagon itself put out that the ratio of killed to wounded is 16:1. That means we have had 51,200 wounded in Iraq (the Pentagon reports only in the mid-twenty thousand range but why should we expect consistency out of a Bush-controlled Government body). The Pentagon attributes the ratio, immensely higher than Vietnam at 1:2.8, to better body armor and better medical battlefield medical techniques and I'll give them that. So, if we were still using Vietnam-era technology, the number of casualties would be 51,200/2.8, or around 18,300. Given we've been at war about five years, the number of casualties per year would be 3,657.

Now Vietnam lasted 16 years and had 58,000 casualties. That places the Vietnam count per year at 3,625 per year. Statistically that's no difference. So there, by the numbers, Iraq roughly equals Vietnam. Not a grand distinction.