The tens of thousands of injured military personnel in Iraq dwarf the number injured in non-war periods.

I certainly don't have the time, energy, or resources, but can Salon do a year-by-year comparison of deaths, both military and out-sourced-Halliburton-employee, both hostile and accidental/suicide/homicide from 1977 to the present? I like Salon, but I will pledge my undying devotion to you if someone can come up with these figures.

It's attacks like this that really make me question the Right's claim that they support the troops. Using some kind of vague moral-relativism (by comparing the deaths in Iraq to car-accident deaths in the US, etc.) belittles the enormous sacrifice made by the men and women in uniform who gave their lives for our country.

Colon's argument also ignores that the Bush/Cheney combat casualty figures have benefitted from the recent (post-2001)policy of outsourcing large portions of the Iraq war to non-military personnel such as employees of Halliburton, Bechtel, etc. This was not done (certainly not on this scale, anyway) by predecessor administrations.

For example, large portions of Iraq security operations (such as oil infrastructure security) are now outsourced to U.S. "civilians" (usually recently-retired military personnel, who are hired as civilians to do largely the same job that they were doing as soldiers at greatly increased salaries).

In order to make an apples-to-apples comparison in counting combat deaths, the substantial number of "combat" deaths of those non-military personnel would need to be added to the military, because, had those security roles not been out-sourced, those deaths would not have been counted as dead civilians, but rather dead soldiers.

Stated another way, by outsourcing these security roles to non-soldiers, the Bush/Cheney regime is permitted to "legitimately" undercount what otherwise would have been military combat deaths (as well as repay their corporate campaign donors).

I guess the real point to be remembered though is that, whether civilians or soldiers, they are just as dead, and it is equally tragic in this unnecessary escapade.

It was shot down with some similar facts. A couple of us overwhelmed the righties with facts, then were banned. It seems that most right-wingers don't like to be told the truth.

Are you kidding me ....I can't believe this lady's name. Sounds like her real one might be impacted! I didn't want to, but I find myself feeling sorry for my Repubic amigos. It's free fall time for them and the desperation that's setting in is obvious. Like my Uncle Ray used to say, "They're gettin' it laid in their warm bowels and they can't take it!"

I do not EVER remember the media being nice to Bill Clinton. Clinton was bashed by our media repeatedly, for a solid 8 years. Clinton was just POLULAR, because he PERFORMED HIS JOB WELL.

If you want to talk about "Media Darlings" look at the Frankenstein you created: Bush. Bush is a TRUE MEDIA DARLING, because the media LOVES him, even though the people HATE him. In 1999, the media hated Gore and loved Bush to such an extent that no one in the media (NO ONE) seemed to give a shit that the Republicans didn't even win Florida! Bush is so hated by so many more people than Clinton ever was, but you'd never know it listening to these BIASED, LYING, SELFISH, GREEDY, WAR-MONGERING CONSERVATIVE PRICKS! On inaugeration day, the news didn't even mention the gigantic crowds of potesters. All that came out of the TV that day was what a wonderful, strong moral leader Bush was. All I could do was say "Fuck You!" to the TV and turn it off to avoid vomiting.

Republicans will say ANYTHING to avoid taking responsibility for all the blood that has been spilled. Republicans are so crazy, so selfish, and so self-righteous that they never once consider how many innocent civilians they have killed to serve than own idiotic, religious, nationalistic, agenda. Our media is so out of touch with the people's best interests, it is shocking.

Colon would have scaped all the confrontation with facts if she had prefaced her statements with "I believe that...". Who can argue against beliefs? W. has realized that and played that card for a long time (so long that it is getting worn out!) succeeding in convincing a part of the public that he was "true to his beliefs".

If conservative blow-hards are going to play loose with facts, they should at least use the proven tactics that have been demonstrated over the years by Rove, Cheney and W.

Let's not, even for a second, allow this ridiculous, cobbled together statistic blur the fact, the FACT, that none of those military deaths under Clinton occurred as a result of a poorly planned, poorly executed, and illegal war. Not one.

The nauseating aspect of these sick Colon-like slanted articles is that it is somehow OK to get people killed as long as someone else also got people killed too. Preferably by someone from a different political base. Following this logic, it's must also be ok to rob banks , steal identities, rape, swindle and any other manner of bad behavior as long as you can make a case that someone else did it too. Preferably by someone from a different political base. This, by the way, is an argument not often successful in a court of law. Deaths under the tutiledge of Bush are wrong for as many reasons as they are wrong under anyone's leadership. It's just that these deaths and dismemberments were sooooo avoidable.

America has turned into a hate based society where truth and intelligence is deferred to partisian spin attacks aided by a weak-kneed and complacent press and a corporate funded government. So long democracy, it was nice to know ya'...

Colon - the part of the intestines that are full of shit; as in "Ms. Colon, you're ........"

Looking at the pdf that's linked to in the post, it's very striking how much the accident rate seems to have declined over the years since 1980, which is the first year on the chart.

Now, I'm not sure I totally understand how the "Total Military FTE" column is calculated, but if you use it to calculate total deaths per 1000, you get 1.108 for 1980, and 1.102 for 2004 (the last year on the chart). Which ironically would seem to validate Colon's rather trivial point (and leaves aside all the terrible combat injuries our troops have sustained in Iraq). Deaths per 1000 for any year in the Clinton administration seem to average about 0.6 to 0.7. But there's nothing these people won't twist into a Clinton smear.

Of course, one would assume the death rate would be higher for 2005 and 2006, since, if everything else stayed constant, there would be more deaths due to hostile action, to get to a total of 3133.