If they want to make a direct comparison, they should stop hedging.
Austin, I completely understand your objection to my numbers in post 19, but I am not playing with figures (as my Econ professor says, "figures don't lie, liars figure") just pointing out that the number of deaths occurring one month after hostilities concluded in Germany was substantial, and this was just one example. I also agree completely with what Ragtime wrote in post 20. The environment in Iraq is tougher than in post-war Germany, and our soldiers are performing superbly. It is only a matter of time before all the dead-enders meet their dead-end. Read an email from a Green Beret Colonel if you still have an open mind, which I doubt.
It is no surprise that you are having trouble adjusting to the post-9/11 era. In the fall of 1945, General Groves (director of the Manhattan Project) told a congressional committee that it would be "20 years to never" before another nation would be able to develop a nuke. The Soviet Union had one in five years. The CNO of the time said that if another nation came up with one, they would need to deliver it by ship. Some airpower advocates said blockbusters would remain the weapon of choice because they were more precise, and our enemies would know we wouldn't use the bomb in any situation less drastic than avoiding the invasion of Japan was. You might want to learn from another piece of history while we're at it: Mogadishu. We fled out of Somalia like scalded dogs after 18 deaths. On the "Smoking Gun" tape, Osama detailed how this convinced him that thousands of deaths on our home soil would defeat us completely. If we pull out of Iraq now, will we be hearing some jihadist punk talk about how he decided to detonate a dirty bomb in DC because we bugged out of Iraq with a little more than 200 total casualties? We live in the age of asymetric warfare now, and we have to take the fight to the terrorists. That will cost lives, but it will save many, many more. If you can't cope with the post-9/11 era, move to Fiji.