Gaining perspective on media predictions of disaster through... the Wyoming Index

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Gaining perspective on media predictions of disaster through... the Wyoming Index (10/24/03)

I had this thought and ran the numbers to provide some perspective on the number of US deaths the media was reporting in Iraq.

					U.S. forces in Iraq	Wyoming
Population				130,000			498,703
Deaths from May 1st[1]			345			2,037
% of deaths of total population		00.27%			00.41%	

So where are the calls to pull out of Wyoming?

[1] Wyoming death rate for this period from 2002 data
[2] Wyoming Pop: http://www.infoplease.com/states.html
[3] Mil Pop: http://www.military.com/NewsContent?file=FL_reduce_102303
[4] Wyoming DR: http://wdh.state.wy.us/vital_records/02DATA/4th%20QTR.pdf
[5] Mil DR: http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/10/24/sprj.irq.main/

I've no idea of what the numbers look like now, partly because so many troops have been rotated in an out of Iraq that it is hard to determine what the numbers should be, but the point still holds true: Wyoming was and is far more dangerous than Iraq was for our soldiers. Calls for "pulling out" or that it is a quagmire are complete BS. Regardless of what our feelings about being over there are, the military is handling it just fine and it is just wrong to denigrate them to try to accomplish a political act.

Update (1/12/2007): See my post on Ask Metafilter for more.