Friday, January 02, 2009

Iraq By The Numbers...

The debate will continue on whether or not the invasion of Iraq was the right strategy. But you can't argue that the Democrats who were screaming that it was a "lost cause" and a "civil war" and that we had "lost the war" all look pretty stupid now.

The military is reporting that American losses dropped to 314 for 2008 down from 904 the year before. It is not clear from the articles I have read if these are all combat deaths. One site only lists 230 actual combat deaths while describing the rest as non-hostile.

In the first link from AP, they made sure to mention that combat deaths were up in Afghanistan. We wouldn't want the current administration to receive any credit or praise. The AP will wait until their savior is in office before starting their "everything is glorious and rosy under the Dear Leader" mode.

The Iraqi government is also reporting a major drop in civilian casualties from 16,252 in 2007 down to 5,714 in 2008. Remember these numbers are out of a 27 million population.

While every life is precious, it is nice to see such a huge drop in casualties, and that the Iraqi Army is taking over more responsibility. The surge seems to have been a success.

Compare those numbers to a typical, liberal American metro area. In 2008 New York had 501 murders, Detroit 340, Los Angeles 376 (as of 12/27), Washington DC 186 (429 DC area), Baltimore 234, Philadelphia 332, and of course Obama's own paradise Chicago (bang bang) posted 509 homicides for the year. Let's hope Obama doesn't do for the rest of the country what he has done there.

FYI - Dallas dropped down to 171 in 2008 from 200 in 2007. We must have had a "surge" or maybe that little concealed handgun law may act as a deterrent down here.

There are still three major terrorist supporting countries left to be dealt with by the next President. But somehow I think they will get a pass.

No comments:

Post a Comment