We lost more troops during Clinton's term?

Question

How can we lose more soldiers during the 8 years Clinton was in office & we weren't even in any wars then we have in before or after even when in two full scale wars? Obviously it goes to show how media on both sides are biased and pick & choose what they report. We had more terrorist attacks and as a result more civilian deaths then during recent years even though we were never at war during Clintons reign. We had Somalia but that wasn't a war nor on the level you could call Iraq, afganstan, or even grenada or Panama yet we still lost more troops in those 8 years then in the current 8 years even when you throw in non combat troops. And people want another inexperienced anti military anti patriot to lead? Judge for yourself. I knew we had more attacks and more civilians die during him then before or since but I didnt know that we also had more troops killed even without counting noncombat accidents & I knew he was a coward in protecting us, our freedoms, and our soldiers but I didn't know it was as bad as it seems but you judge for yourself. I vote for Pedro neither party should win.

http://www.factcheck.org/askfactcheck/did_more_soldiers_die_during_bill_clintons.html

Answer 1

You are as bad as the press, misrepresenting your own souce.  You did not read the answer, only the email the answer countered.

ANSWER:  Actually, even counting non-combat fatalities, more military personnel died during the first six years of George Bush's tenure than during the entire eight years that Bill Clinton was in office.

Most of the numbers in this e-mail are completely made up. We were particularly amused by its bravado in providing a supposed source for the information – but anyone who bothers to check that source will find that it contradicts the information presented. The truth is that more military personnel died during the first six years of the Bush administration than died during the eight years Clinton was in office, even counting military deaths in the U.S. from accidents, murders, suicides and natural causes.

According to the Congressional Research Service report that the e-mail cites, the breakdown of fatalities by race during Operation Iraqi Freedom is more-or-less accurate, but the breakdown of total military fatalities by year (which counts both combat and non-combat fatalities) is wildly inaccurate. Here are the actual numbers in graphic form:

As you can see, the e-mail grossly distorts the numbers in several years. For instance, the e-mail claims that 2,465 military personnel died (of all causes) in 1995, but according to the CRS report (which obtained its numbers directly from the Department of Defense), you have to go all the way back to 1980 – when the military was nearly 50 percent larger than it is currently – to get close to that figure. The true figure is less than half what the e-mail purports. In point of fact, 7,500 troops died during Clinton's eight years in office. During Bush's first six years, the number was 8,792. And that excludes the 899 combat deaths in 2007, which was the deadliest year of the Iraq war for U.S. troops. (We don't yet have figures for total deaths for that year.)

Flunking Arithmetic

Even if the numbers in the e-mail were correct, which they are not, its author adds them up improperly. The eight years of Clinton's term run from 1993 to 2000, so according to the numbers the e-mail presents, Clinton's tally should be 14,107, while Bush's six years (not seven, as stated) total 7,033. That's dismal arithmetic, especially from somebody who uses these fake numbers as a basis for accusing others of lying, twisting the truth and publishing "agenda-driven reporting."

Fruit Salad

We should also note that the message is artfully worded and invites a false conclusion. It argues that the loss of U.S. military lives "from the two latest conflicts in the Middle East" is less than "the loss of military personnel" under Clinton. Thus, it attempts to compare only the deaths due to the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts with all military deaths during Clinton's eight years. That's not even comparing apples with oranges. It's really, to use a fruit-salad metaphor, asserting that George Bush's apple collection is smaller than Bill Clinton's collection of apples and oranges.

Why So Many?

It may surprise many to learn that there are so many military deaths during peacetime. But this is just the law of averages at work. In 1993 the military had 1.7 million men and women in uniform. During that same year, 1,175 of them died from accidents, homicide, suicide and illness. That makes the 1993 non-hostile death rate for military personnel 69.1 per 100,000. That's actually fairly low; the rate for all Americans age 20 to 29 is about 97.5. Today's military is considerably smaller, with just under 1.4 million personnel.

To make an apples-to-apples comparison, we would need to separate combat and non-combat deaths. According to the CRS, during the Clinton administration, one person in uniform died as a result of hostilities and another 75 died as a result of terrorist attacks. By contrast, during the first six years of the Bush administration, 2,596 troops died from hostilities and 55 from terrorist attacks. Looking at the non-hostile deaths (i.e., accidents, homicides, suicides and illnesses), we find that an average of 947 military personnel died each year during the Bush administration compared with 913 during the Clinton administration .

Soldiering has never been a particularly safe occupation. But it is absurd to suggest that soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines are somehow safer during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan than they were during the relatively peaceful Clinton administration.

-Joe Miller

Answer 2

Tell me, bub, did you actually read the article to which you link?  I don't see how you could have, because it actually says precisely the opposite of what you are claiming.  The first part of the article, the part in the gray box, is what the email that you probably got is claiming.  The rest of the article proceeds to explain how that information is wrong.

More American soldiers have died during the Bush adminstration, even as of the end of 2006, which is as far as the figures in the link go, than in the Clinton adminstration.  Almost as many died in the four years of the first Bush's adminstration as in the eight years of the Clinton administration, and more than twice as many died during the Reagan adminstration as during the Clinton adminstration.

As for your claimed "knowledge" that more civilians died during the Clinton adminstration "then (sic) before or since," you're wrong on that score, too.

Look, there are plenty of things to criticize the Clinton adminstration for (the 78-day bombing campaign in Kosovo, for instance), but don't make stuff up, and stop accepting as true stuff that you simply want to believe.  Check it out first before you start spreading it around.