Tally of war deaths shows up next door to Duluth recruiting station

http://www.startribune.com/stories/462/5772444.html

An Army recruitment office in Duluth said a sign next door tallying the Iraq war's casualties and duration was unwelcome.
Larry Oakes, Star Tribune

DULUTH - A large sign went up Monday in the storefront next to the U.S. Army recruiting station in downtown Duluth.

What it says and how its message was received by the "Be-All-You-Can-Be" folks next door may well make it a sign of the times. "Iraq," it says. "Remember the Fallen Heroes." Below, in black numbers changed daily, is a tally of the dead and wounded U.S. soldiers and the number of days the conflict has gone on.

It took only one day for Staff Sgt. Gary Capan from the recruiting office to walk over and politely ask Scott Cameron to take the sign down. Cameron is a volunteer on the Steve-Kelley-for-governor campaign, which opened its northern Minnesota office next to the recruiting station last week. Although the sign was Cameron's idea, Kelley, a DFL state senator from Hopkins, approved of displaying it in the window. Cameron, a disabled and decorated Vietnam veteran, previously had the sign in his front yard. There, people stopped and left flowers or just thanked him, he said.

Capan wasn't thankful. According to Cameron, Capan explained that the tally was disturbing to some of the six recruiters working for him. Cameron said that Capan also expressed concern about the chilling effect the sign might have on potential recruits. But in an interview Thursday, Capan said he's really not worried about that.

-- MORE --

Just a little truth in advertising.

And I'm all for it.

Some of the military brass I've talked to have always insisted that if you join the Armed Forces, you must realize that there is a chance you will be sent to fight for America and possibly die in combat. Yes, there are GI Bills and funds for college tuition and possibly a chance to travel the world, play basketball for the Marines, play on the Army football team, watch Britney Spears in concert in Afghanistan, etc., etc. - but then there's the nuts and bolts. You drill. You train. You sacrifice your body on the BT runs and the obstacle course. Then, one day, the sitting President will start a television address with "My fellow Americans..." and by then, you're either stepping out of an amphibious vehicle, taking off from a runway, manning the guns on a battleship, or entering the launch codes for a missile. You will fight, and you may die, and you may be kept on even after your tour of duty is slated to end.

Thus, if the military wants to recruit more soldiers to be dropped into the Middle East, those kids need to know exactly what they're getting into.

I'm all for it. Weeds out the cowards who are just looking for a government job.

Although, for REAL truth in advertising, I'd like to know the percentage increase in death rates for 18-22 grunts vs. non-military American 18-22-year-olds. I expect it's marginal. It's not like it's the battle of the Somme over there, or even Vietnam. We're averaging 700-800 dead per year in Iraq, compared to ten times that in Vietnam (for non-history-buffs, the Brits lost 60,000 on the first DAY of the Somme offensive in 1916).

Normal deaths from peacetime training accidents in the Army is a couple hundred.

:toast:

The "action" that the military is seeing over there is more survivable, though the IED's are very lethal. I read about the advancements in battlefield trauma medecine that have come from the ER's in urban centers with high gun violence incidence in America. Some much higher surviveability rates from massive trauma than in any previous conflict.

So you see? Urban gun violence really just trains our future medics for the foreign wars of imperial aggression! :eyes:

It's been a few years, but I've met several USAF PJs, SEAL HCs, and SF Medics riding along on local Medic units. I've also seen future USMC 2LTs observing in local EDs.

This was years ago, and the guys becoming corpsmen and the like were good, but fairly inexperienced. Most of them were very interested in the salary and schedules of Firefighter / Paramedics. I hope all of them are still around.

When people wave their arms around and say, "They're murdering the children," referring to our troops, it's easy and statistically sound to reply, "No, they're not." Troop deaths are 2-3 times the number of deaths you expect from peacetime accidents, suicides and murders. Odds of getting killed over there, even for an infantry grunt who makes multiple deployments, are well under 1 percent per year of duty.

But when you look at the psychological trauma and the degrading of military preparedness caused by the constant bombing attacks, you've actually got a sound point.

The number of people with grievous, debilitating injuries, including dismemberment, loss of limb, and disfigurement is another "truth in advertising" statistic about which new potential recruits should know. This way the Armed Forces recruiters and the generals can sleep at night knowing they haven't sold a lie to a bunch of hoodwinked recruits.

from http://www.lies.com/wp/2003/10/20/us-deaths-in-vietnam-and-iraq-by-month/


Whenever I bring up a Vietnam/Iraq comparison, fans of the current war point out that casualty rates in Vietnam were way beyond anything we’ve seen so far in Iraq. Which is true, if you’re talking about the Vietnam war at its peak. But there was a long run-up during which Vietnam simmered along at much lower casualty rates.

snip

the Iraq war, so far at least, shows dramatically more US deaths per month than the Vietnam war did at a comparable point in its political lifetime.

on edit: from the comments

Lead Balloons Says:

October 22nd, 2003 at 6:42 am
Nice work. Maybe an even better comparison of the severity of the two conflicts would track all casualties, not just deaths. This might be a more accurate comparison of the intensity of the two conflicts because the U.S. Army has gotten so good at saving severly wounded soldiers. Thus, many of the wounded in Iraq are more directly comparable to the dead in Vietnam, because they received a wound that would have killed them in Vietnam.

The Vietnam war was so bloody because the Soviets (and later the Chinese) spent $1B a year arming the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong. Same thing happened in the other direction in Afghanistan; the insurgents were about to quit before we started pouring money in there in '84.

IF we can get a State department competent enough to keep the Iranians and Syrians from full-fledged government backing for the insurgents, the civil war there will die down to Northern Ireland levels, and we can declare victory and get the heck out. A big IF, but not one that existed in 1965.

Those recruiter weasels have gotten away with their lies for too long.

Call them on it, and watch them throw hissy fits.

"Be all the weasel you can be."

I'm in favor of keeping young, impressionable, uninformed kids alive long enough so that they can learn how life works and see through the lies these people tell them. Lies that will get them killed.

I'm glad to see that someone is posting the truth out there.

BTW, nice avatar. :D

Hello? Nutball Captain Unelected is sending bodies to the Middle East to try to spark Armageddon. Join the Army? No, join the Crusades. Duh.

We have a voice, we just need to raise it.