U.S. Contractor Deaths Soaring in Afghanistan

[Liberty Star]

175% increase in last one year and they go mostly unreported.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2010/07/us-contractor-deaths-soaring-in-afghanistan.html

[Zippyjuan]

From the same article:

These numbers include armed private security contractors, as well as those working on development programs, who are American, Afghan and third-country nationals working under a U.S. contract.

However, since there could be as many as 120,000 to 125,000 contractors in Afghanistan, 521 deaths comprise only a small percentage of total contractors in Afghanistan, roughly 0.4%.

[Liberty Star]

Ok, so it's no big deal. Only few hundred killed in last year.

BTW, 120,000 to 125,000 is a big number, what are so many contractos doing there exactly. Even half of them had been working on stoping the Oil spill, it probably would have been stopped months ago.

[Liberty Star]

From the same article:

BTW, since we thinking in terms of percentages now, wondering if anyone calculated and reported percentage of US population killed in 9/11 attack?
If it was a "very small percentage" of total people in America, should people have taken it more lightly?

[Zippyjuan]

People die in wars- and not just soldiers. Sad but it happens. 3000 people don't normally die in one event in a US city. That is why one is shocking and the other is not. By previous war standards, the death totals in Iraq and Afghanistan are very low. But that does not mean that any of the deaths is good or a desired outcome.

More people died from flu related causes (even if you exclude the over-hyped H1N1) just last year in the US than have died in the entire Afghan and Iraqi wars. Why no big story on that? Because that was "normal". 33,000 died on the nation's highways last year too. http://fastlane.dot.gov/2010/03/traffic-fatalities-drop-again-but-the-work-remains.html These are not shocking because they are "normal". 9/11 was not what you would consider "normal" which is why the reaction to it was different.

[Liberty Star]

Ofcourse it was not normal. And naturally different shock values.

But if you're accepting wars as "normal" as a state in human societies and people getting killed/maimed does not register as tragic shock, you have a different outlook on life than I do.


In other news:


Army reports 32 suicides in June, highest number since early 2009
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, July 17, 2010

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/16/AR2010071605839.html?hpid=moreheadlines

[cindy25]

many of these are probably Pakistani guards of the convoys

[Zippyjuan]

many of these are probably Pakistani guards of the convoys
Sounds like some certainly are. From the article:

These numbers include armed private security contractors, as well as those working on development programs, who are American, Afghan and third-country nationals working under a U.S. contract.

[Liberty Star]

That does change things a bit if true.

It would be nice if the news reports also gave breakdown of nationalities of contractors killed there, how many American and how many local contractors. Then we can react to the their deaths accordingly.

[Catatonic]

People die in wars- and not just soldiers.

Who are we at war with?

[Liberty Star]

Who are we at war with?

terrorism ?

[michaelwise]

Dead American soldiers are good for the economy. It would be like the end of WW2 where the economy went into a recession because of lower arms sales if we ended the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Arms manufacturers would lose billions, and thousands of arms manufacturing jobs in the US would disappear if we ended the wars. They are the only manufacturing jobs we have left in the US now that we shipped all the consumer manufacturing jobs to China.

The arms manufacturers need the excuse of wars on the bogeyman to continue making profits from the tax payers for their military industrial complex.

To the arms manufacturers, the more dead American soldiers the better.

At least I had the guts to say it.

[Liberty Star]

Are you suggesting domestic manufacturing would collapse even further if wars came to end?
Wow, that's a very troubling suggestion.

[michaelwise]

Are you suggesting domestic manufacturing would collapse even further if wars came to end?
Wow, that's a very troubling suggestion.Oh, come on. Put two and two together.