What is a soldiers chance of surviving war in Iraq?

Question

I heard the casualties are increasing in number.
And do you think the war will be over once there is a new president elected?
When do you think the war will be over?

Answer 1

99.3% of soldiers return home alive. There is some bad math below. The equation is: # of deaths divided by number of years we've been there divided # soldiers deployed there at a given time (which requires a bit of averaging.)

It's probably more dangerous in New Orleans. The death rate there has soared in the last year. It's up 50%. Perhaps we should withdraw from New Orleans.

Answer 2

Survival is dependent on so many factors that it is really tough to pin down an individual soldier's chances. More do come home alive then otherwise. The kind of medical services available to the military today helps to increase survivability, though sometimes with a disability.
This particular war is chiefly a matter of occupation, or maintaining a military presence in Iraq as the country attempts to build a government and armed forces of its own. The actual U.S. involvement in combat should, over the next year or two, slowly diminish, but U.S. soldiers will be stationed there for a long time. As an example, World War Two has been over for 62 years and we still have troops in Germany and Japan. There are also many U.S. tropps in South Korea as a buffer against any attempt form the North to invade.
The war itself is actually over and has been over since the objective of overthrowing the Hussein Regime was accomplished. Now it is really peacekeeping and even a new president is unlikely to change the situation much in the near future.

Answer 3

At around 1000 combat casualties per year, one's chances of survival are very good, but that's not much comfort to people who have friends and family there right now.

Current military leaders are projecting a withdrawal of troops from Iraq starting next year, so who the President is, whether Democrat or Republican, really doesn't matter.

When the war will be over? I think once we leave Iraq, a civil war will follow, and Iran will invade Iraq. Furthermore, many of the foreign terrorists currently in Iraq, will turn their attention to our forces in Afghanistan in increasing numbers.

The barbarians are at our gates . . . we are fighting for our lives, and not many people realize it. Things could get very bad if we don't see this thing through.

Answer 4

Here's a little math you can do to figure the odds...

Since 2003, we have rotated about 1 million soldiers through Iraq. Of those, 3500 have been killed. Figure the percentage.

Casualties are increasing for two reasons. One, we're working more with the Iraqis than we ever have. We live in their nighborhoods, dismount patrol their streets and openly engage in conversation with key players (sheiks, council chairman, Imams, etc). Two, we are pushing the insurgents and militia harder than ever and they are fighting back desperately. That will raise the casualties.

What we must remember is that we have more resources, more access to manpower, and the support of the Iraqi people in general than Al Qaeda or the JAM has. The regular Iraqi people want us to stay until there is security. That could be 5 years from now or that could be 25 years from now but the bottom line is, we need to help these people. That's what we're here to do.

Answer 5

People take casualty rates out of context. Let me explain. 85% of the army is combat arms, these are soldiers whose job it is to engage the enemy in direct combat. The remaining soldiers are support. Their job is to support the cobat mission. So being a soldier is not an automatic sentance that you will be shot at constantly. The army is much like a civil corporation, there are many different jobs that need to get done. Not all soldiers are trained to the same degree as far as combat goes, specificly because thier jobs would not usually put them into harms way.

Saying that, the chances of a soldier surviving, taken on the whole is about 99%, but slightly less if you consider only those whose job it is to engage with and destroy the enemy.

Answer 6

I don't know about increasing numbers, but you have to realize we have about 120,000 troops in Iraq, but you only hear about the ones hit by IED's in the news. Iraq is dangerous right now, so every soldier is at risk, some more than others.

I don't think the war will end once a new President is elected, neither side has said the war will end. The new President may withdraw our troops, but the war will not be over.

This is a never ending war, the difference now is we are taking the fight to them, rather than us waiting for them.

Answer 7

I know that the air head of a president we have (im so sorry to say that but it's just my opinion), will not end that war until he "THINKS" that the Iraqies won't attack the country anymore. But until we have a new president that stops the war, people will continue dying in Iraq for no reason whatsoever. That war was so uncalled for, if he stopped the war a while ago, we would have had enough money to make airport security the best. And you know what else??? If the war never even started, almost everyone in the country would have enough money to buy a Mercedez- Benz!!!! That war is just a waist of money and also a great loss of people. Those soldiers have families!!!! Instead of putting his attention in the war he should think about HIS country, before something worse than 9/11 happens

Answer 8

It's a pretty easy math problem:

Take the soldiers killed, divide by the total number:

3570 / 150,000

= 3% roughly.

So, about 97% chance of survival. Now, there are many variables. Namely, what is the soldier's occupation? A dental tech would have a much more likely chance of escaping unharmed. Also, troops rotate in and out. A better calculation would only consider troops that had served an equal amount of time in Iraq...but none of us has that data.


Also, you might be interested in this link on soldier mortality rates. It's a scholarly paper.

http://repository.upenn.edu/psc_working_papers/1/

The war will never be over. Bush opened this Genie out of the bottle, and now we can never put the cap back on. If anyone here thinks otherwise, they are operating under a delusional mindset.

Answer 9

statistically speaking we have the best survival rate for military personnel in the world, more soldiers have been mortally wounded and yet returned,willingly I might add, to service than ever in our history.The war how ever will only end when the Islamic extremist quit targeting America and that position is dictated by the American hating imams of Saudi Arabia and Iran,this war will end when those children ,now men, that were taught in the hate madrases are dead and gone and the Countries of the middle east are fully democratized or devastated,the later being most likely. My opinion not hopes only..........

Answer 10

There was some research out there on that.. again it depends on the job... but on average, you have a better chance of being killed in detriot than you do iraq. in the past 5 years we have been there, there has been well over a few million people there with rotations and what not counting people that have been there two 3 4 times.

Answer 11

chances of survival are good, things are heating up but the percentages are low, if you have 100 people killed in a month (still a bad answer i know) out of 100,000 the percentage is really low approx 1 in 1000 getting killed (numbers are est), the war will not be over with a new president, 9/11 started this mess and then Madrid then London and now London again, as long as people want to hate each other for different reasons there will be a war like this, it just takes some one to realize it can either be on our door step or theirs, i do not agree with the death of anyone for any reason but if your gonna hate me and my family and want to kill them and i have to choose either you or them its you. this war will never be over it may just have different fighters in it see above people want to be ignorant and hate....it doesn't matter that the US is the 3rd largest contributor to the middle east they just want to hate us because of our religion...(not all of them there are some moderates and really nice people) so it will never end we will never do enough we will never do the right thing it will never end, there will be more bloodshed until we all can just say enough is enough and until that happens we need hero's (there are still some in the US military) to defend us