I'm an Army reserve component drill sergeant. There are something like four or five army reserve training divisions, each with several battalions worth of drill sergeants (we have about 60 or 70, plus other support personnel.) Our normal war time mission is to mobilize and take over an active duty Basic Training battalion someplace like fort jackson, sill, benning or knox. Well, the army doesn't seem to be interested in that. They also, for some reason, won't mobilize anyone with the drill sergeant identifier. You'd think that because the training of Iraqis is so crucial, they'd have a use for us over there. So far, nothing.

If 11% of the US troops referenced in the data above are female, why does your motto on the left say "and his wife who stands by him." ??

Erik, that's a really stupid question. The motto on the left refers to the specific person who writes this blog. He is male and has a wife.

America's leaders hallucinated wmd in Iraq where no wmd were but completely ignored Iran's ambitions. To make things worse, OIF made sharia, after godless decades, the constitutional rule of law in Iraq again. And under the rule of green zone democracy, Iraq got army and police forces dominated by shiites now, in other words: America created new likely Iranian proxy troops in Iraq and made itself dependent of the peaceful ambitions of the mullahs in Tehran.

The U.S.A. have completely run out of options in the entire greater middle east now, nobody talks of victory in Iraq anymore but how to limit further damages. Before this background, I wouldn't even think about strengthening those shiite proxy troops unless you really want to fight Iran's wars. One word from Tehran and the shiites in Iraq will turn the weapons you gave them against you.

Knowing that time is on their side Iran little by little earns the windfall profits from OIF. Iran's influence along the Fertile Crescent (google that!) has increased dramatically. All of a sudden the US-Army in Iraq has also become a buffer against Iran's sunni rivals rejecting a shiite crescent. From both (fundamentalist) sunni and shiite point of view, Operation Iraqi Freedom could be the overture of the revival of a much larger historic conflict. Only who controls the Fertile Crescent can rule the world. This is one of the oldest laws of war of mankind - from the place where mankind's civilization was born. Already Alexander the Great knew it.

Under almost every circumstances the shiite power and influence should be reduced. Should Iraq be divided, should Tehran expand territory to south Iraq, this could be the casus belli of a real big war in the middle east.

It is the strengthening of Iran that makes the OIF disaster complete and I' afraid that will become even clearer in the near future.

2020 I've completed the above post and keep myself up on the situation as best I can.

Iran DOES NOT scare the beejeebers out of me. But maybe that is just me.

Iran is running a bluff and making the lefties quake in their boots and crap their drawers. Has anyone ever seen the President really concerned with these 17th century baboons? There are enough subs with multi warhead nuc's surrounding Iran to turn it into a sea of glass. They just need to push the wrong button one time to find out they are nothing but a bad memory. North Korea is in the same boat, a loud mouth is all the idiot Kim can muster. He's not stupid enough to turn himself into burnt toast.

If the cowardly left wing in the U.S. congress would do what they have sworn to do, protect the American people we wouldn't have any problems. They're aid and comfort is all that keeps the terrorists going and hoping the dimmi's will surrounder. So far only a couple of dimmi's have shown the guts to speak up. Another terrorists attack on America and the people will assure that the dimmi's no longer exist. We aren't stupid and we know who's endangering us for political purposes. Even the dimmi's will eventually have to admit that and stand up.

If you base the casualty percentage on the extreme pointy end of the stick (infantry) instead of lumping all military personnel together, the percentage is almost exactly 1% killed. Quite a bit larger than the .15% quoted. Even so, I wonder how this stacks up against other conflicts?

I'll bet it's a far lower KIA percentage than the infantry has 'enjoyed' in any past conflict.

Uh..no BenJCarter your wrong. Not only the infantry is there. Maybe they are their in larger numbers but almost all MOS's are available to go. I'm in the navy and we have 5 members on the ground from my unit now over there.

Forgot to say that my posting was an answer to rankin.

I wonder why no one mentions the numbers or percentage of female "troops" killed by hostile action? Could that be because it is so low it embarrasses those who pretend women are put in the same danger, and make the same contributions, as men? I have often thought that the proportion of women killed in Iraq/Afghanistan is likely lower than that of nurses and other female staff killed in Vietnam. But even speculating about such facts is un-PC.
Women will not be "equal" until a number of women equal to that of men have been killed defending our freedoms.

"America's leaders hallucinated wmd in Iraq where no wmd were..."

Bullshit. EOD has found plenty of shells and chemical precursors buried in the desert. I've talked with plenty of the guys that dig this stuff up.

Granted, it is not (nearly) the stockpiles of already made stuff the CIA and foreign nations intelligence services thought, but hallucination? No. But that isn't a sexy headline, is it? Sadam had plenty of shit all buried. They've also found lots of mass graves, but who gives a shit about those right?

I'm on my Fourth Deployment, but as a special operations signal soldier, my deployments are not one year.

SPC M.S.G, US Army.

Please don't feed the trolls. If the Lefties want to believe their bull about WMDs being the reason we went into Iraq, let them.
As mentioned with the Air Force, you have to take into consideration different tour lengths. Marines generally go to OIF for 6 months, so a Marine who has been deployed twice, has actually only been in Iraq about as long as a Soldier who has been deployed once. An Airman, deployed three times, will have the same time in country as a Soldier deployed once. Not that it's any consolation for any of them (believe me I know), but it skews the numbers if you don't take that into account.
As for the pointy end of the spear, the CAB was put in place to recognize the sacrifices that non-infantry MOS Soldiers were making. In our division (4th ID), thousands of non-11B Soldiers were doing straight infantry missions, but not authorized the CIB because they were other MOSs. It didn't mean they weren't doing 11B missions, taking 11B casualties.

Rankin, you must be in the wrong Division. My division, 95th IT, has deployed trainers, DS, to A'stan' Iraq, Sill and Jackson. The ones at Sill are half way through their second year. Plus many mobed in ones and twos to support active duty at Sill, L. Wood, and Jackson plus in secondary MOS slots overseas. Who do you think is running the NCO academy for the Afghani Army?

Bullshark,

I, too, am in the 95th. Yes, I'm aware we have ones and twos mobilized at various posts. Our battalion has a company at Sill right now, though instead of serving as a company, they've been farmed out. I also realize we have soldiers from the 95th overseas as we speak. Several of our battalion's recently returned.

I'm talking about a large scale mobilization. Right now, it's all on a volunteer basis. It simple seems to me that we could be doing a lot of good work over there, as a battalion, not as 2-3 guys here and there.

Question: Does the 1.4M deployed represent individuals or deployments? In other words, if a svcmbr goes twice does this count twice? It would be interesting to compare the number of individual deployers against the total end strength to see what percentage of members have gone.

The reason the USAF deploys in 4-month blocks instead of 1 year is because anything over 180 days of deployment in 1 year means the USAF has to pay lots of extra benefits.

submandave, I'd be interested in that too. How many soldiers have gone twice?

With Marines, their tours are shorter and more frequent, 7 months vs. 12 months, so some of them are on third or maybe even fourth tours.

The USMC and USAF take care of their people a lot better than the Army, too. Seven or four months, even if more frequently repeated, is a lot better than the 12 months, sometimes extended to 16 months that the Army has done.

submandave and observer5,

The 1.4M is deployments, not individuals.

That's why, I'm sure, Greyhawk added the Army Times quote to give you the infomation on individuals.

I'm in A'stan my second time right now.

Who provided the fake intel? Saddam Huessein, who insisted on keeping the impression that he had the WMD -- to the point of shell-gaming the weapons inspectors -- to deter his enemies.

We took him at his word -- the difference this time, from the past ... we acted accordingly.

And ... stockpiles or no stockpiles ... rightly so.

We took Saddam at his word ... and he was lying.

Our current President, OTOH, was good to his word.

Somehow, Unitary Anne, I don't think that you are living up to your namesake denomination ... Unitarians aren't real big on the recompense of sin, from what I see.

However, like a few Unitarians I've heard about, you might just be so open-minded that your brains have leaked out.

The numbers surprised me, the the resolve doesn't.