<p>In another thread, someone made the statement that "Iraqi's are killing US solidiers every day." Someone else posted a link to the CNN site (<a href="http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2003/iraq/forces/casualties/index.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2003/iraq/forces/casualties/index.html</a>)
that showed all of the casualties in the war and listed the cause of death for each. As I read through the list, it began to occur to me that many of the deaths were not combat related, so I spent some time adding up the CAUSE of death of the over 1100 men and women killed to date.</p>
<p>Surprisingly, over 600 of the deaths - over 50% - were NOT directly attributable to Iraqi actions against our military troops. Instead, these military personnel died from things like vehicle accidents (lots of those), heart attacks, collapsing after training exercises, non-combat accidents (electrocution and drowning accidents), non-combat equipment malfunctions and a host of other things. Many of these deaths are things that occur with relative frequency among troops stationed here in the U.S. so to a certain extent, I'm not sure it's even fair to say being in Iraq caused some of these deaths.</p>
<p>My question: should the media be breaking the cause of death down in their coverage? Especially when they make a big to-do about "surpassing 1000 deaths" --- yet over 50% of those deaths were not combat related?</p>