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While I wholeheartedly applaud the message of your post, Kenley, I have to admit that I am one of those that believe the IBC's numbers are painfully low. Since they only rely on information from English speaking and Western sources, huge undercounting is going to be inevitable. I've both read and heard reports recently that the number is anywhere from 650,000 to over a million.

LTOR - you absolutely correct in your assessment of IBC's numbers undoubtedly being an undercount.

According to their site, "Iraq Body Count does not include casualty estimates or projections in its database. It only includes individual or cumulative deaths as directly reported by the media or tallied by official bodies (for instance, by hospitals, morgues and, in a few cases so far, NGOs), and subsequently reported in the media. In other words, each entry in the Iraq Body Count data base represents deaths which have actually been recorded by appropriate witnesses - not "possible" or even "probable" deaths."

Again, my intention here was not to minimize the loss of life and the suffering in Iraq and Afghanistan. As an activist, most days of the year I agonize over the war and the suffering in Iraq and other places. So, for at least one day (and I hope more) I wanted to remember our veterans.

I'm fully on board with your post, Kenley. I deliberated with myself whether or not it was appropriate to comment but ultimately felt compelled to highlight a possible discrepancy.

Sorry for the distraction. I as well believe that much more attention should be focused on these returning men and women, many of them scarred (physically, mentally and spiritually) for life. They deserve much more than they are getting from the current administration.

a statistic i just learned:

11% of the United States population are veterans.
25% of them are homeless.

11% of 300 million = 33,000,000 veterans

25% of 33 million = 8,250,000 homeless veterans

Evan-
HUD estimates homeless population for the entire US to be 800,000.
And Ed Numchenk was booted off the Post for being a loose cannon???

please check my math...it was never my strong suit.

perhaps i missed a critical term: veterans are 11% of the general adult population. i used 300Mil because that's the total U.S. population. at any rate, the percentages are good per a number of sources. this one says that up to 200,000 veterans are homeless on any given night. sorry for the overinflation...but that's still a LOT.

thanks for doing and sharing your research from HUD...i wish we could dialogue without the namecalling!

I think the correct stat is that 11% of the U.S. populations are veterans, but 25% of the homeless population is. 25% of 800,000 = 200,000.

According to Information Clearing House (ICH), there are well over one million civilian deaths and two to four million displaced people. This is genocide and simple destruction of a whole country to save our lifestyle. I would think deaths would go down because the people are killed off or driven off; it's a marvel that they fight on against the Empire. We are all complicit to some degree in the mass (media too) denial of this crime (ala 83,000 government paid for propaganda). The karma machine will grind us all for millenia over this unjust carnage until it spits us out.

Just had an execellent roast beef dinner with all trimmings at the American Leagion Hall. Some good conversation with some vets too.