How many US soldiers do you think have deserted since 2003?

[LynnTheDem]

100?

1000?

More than 9,000?


http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1740986,00.html?gusrc=rss

[madeline_con]

1. More than 9000.....

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=2191899&mesg_id=2191899

[LynnTheDem]

2. Hey you're

a cheater! :p

:D

[bliss_eternal]

3. Good for them!

...and thank you to Canada--for knowing what it really means to "support the troops." ;)

[Journeyman]

4. How does this compare to the pre-Iraq period? . . .

It's a somewhat meaningless number without comparative data.

[Berserker]

5. I would like to

shake hands with everyone of them and listen to their stories.

[cali]

7. It was higher then

and that's precisely the problem with posting only part of a story.

[Journeyman]

10. Thank you. . .

Post #8 has a link for comparative numbers.

I suspected it might have been higher pre-attack. Soldiers usually think less of themselves and more of their comrades when under fire.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

11. Do you have a link to support your claim?

[Journeyman]

12. See post #8 . . .

[Media_Lies_Daily]

13. Where are the figures for 2005? I get the sense that the numbers...

...are on the way back up based on the way the Iraq fiasco is being handled.

[Journeyman]

17. And yet, the numbers we see belie such speculation. . .

Army rate down first by three-quarters, then to a half of pre-attack rates. Air Force numbers neglible no matter which year you look. Navy unavailable. And Marines seem to hold steady in the first three years of Bush mis-use. To have a "sense" that the numbers are rising based on how you see the war progressing is hardly an objective assessment of potential conduct by men under arms in a volunteer force. I imagine they very well are rising, but its all idle speculation without better data. What we can see are numbers that put the 9000 figure in a less alarming light.

You are of course aware that government statistics for a preceding year will be slow to be released, no matter the political agenda or ultimate picture they'll paint. Nature of a bureaucracy.

[mandyky]

6. Is there a definition of how they deserted?

I know the technical definition, but I bet none walked off the battlefield and just slunk away as cowards...

[hack89]

8. The rate is actually going down.

http://usmilitary.about.com/od/justicelawlegislation/a/desertionrates.htm

[Media_Lies_Daily]

14. Numbers for 2005? Numbers for the first part of 2006?

[LynnTheDem]

18. Rate for Marines is going up.

Interesting.

[BrotherBuzz]

19. What happened with the Marines in 2000 to cause that huge spike?

:shrug:

[BrotherBuzz]

9. In perspective, I heard on NPR radio today...

there were 500,000 deserters and draft evaders during the entire Vietnam war. 9,000 deserters for this war, not including draft evaders, sounds about right to me when you consider we are only three years into this damn bombastic crusade war.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

16. There were also a lot more troops cycled through Vietnam from....

...1954 when Ike sent the first advisors until 1974 when Ford ordered the last troops out of Saigon.

At the zenith of the Vietnam conflict in the mid-1960s, we had more than 500,000 troops in Vietnam. They were being rotated in and out of Vietnam about every 13 months. We've already incurred more fatalities in Iraq in three years than we had in the first 9 years in Vietnam.

[paul_fromatlanta]

15. Volunteers have much lower desertion rates than draftees but not zero

I'd bet many of the desertions were National Guard who didn't expect to go to war, particularly not for an extended time.