Enjoyed meeting you at the FReep and trading statistics! You pointed out that smoking kills approximately 560 times as many Americans per year as those lost in the Iraq combat:
(CDC statistics:)
Deaths from Smoking: 440,000 annual deaths each year are smoking-associated... 440,000 per year, 36,666 per month, 8,461 per week, 1,205 per day, 50 per hour... An estimated 400,000 deaths each year are caused directly by cigarette smoking.
One of the signboards on the FReep side of the street isn't used often because it is "too wordy" to be seen by passing cars. It cites the number of U.S. deaths from vehicle accidents each year: 43,000, and the number of babies killed in U.S. abortions each year: 1,370,000. Further research reveals that the number of babies killed by legal, reported abortions peaked at 1,429,247 in 1990, and had trended downward to approximately 854,000 per year in the U.S. by 2001.
Kind of puts the Pinko's whines about volunteer and career military deaths in perspective. According to iCasualties.org, the U.S. has lost an average of 782 per year since the onset of the Iraq war in March 2003. (Some of those were due to vehicular accidents or deaths of personnel from other causes that occurred while in Iraq.)
To summarize:
Deaths per year, U.S.
Abortions...................854,000
Smoking-related:.........440,000
Vehicular.....................48,000
Combat in Iraq..................782
It would be interesting to know the total number of deaths of active duty (including National Guard on duty) every year. Although it would probably be a depressing and demoralizing number, it would also put combat deaths in better perspective.
Deaths by murder in America of military age men would be another interesting number.
Probably was a Post photogtrapher. A Post Reporter did spend a lot of time covering things a few weeks back.