Reply #6: "Non-hostile shooting" [View All]

According to the story, that includes suicide and accidental weapon discharge (such as during a cleaning). Now, I'm no expert on guns, rifles and other instrumentalities of mayhem, but aren't you supposed to unload a weapon before you clean it? (This is a serious question, I really don't know.)

But more than that, at the bottom of the article are these two paragraphs:

The latest death brings to at least 50 the number of US service personnel to have died in accidents or other non-combat-related incidents since May 1, when the United States declared an end to major combat operations in Iraq.

At least 33 more have been killed in attacks.

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That's a total of 83 dead since May 1. According to Bartcop today, there are a total of 224 fatalities for the whole shebang, from invasion through yesterday's figures. That means we've passed the halfway point of all the deaths during "major combat operations." I'm not a pessimist, but I have to believe that the level of hostility towards the troops in Iraq is only going to increase, and we've hit the halfway mark (death-wise) in less than three months since Chimpy's cock walk on the USS Abraham Lincoln. Even at this rate, it will be October 1 when the post "major combat" deaths outnumbre the "major combat" deaths, and it could easily happen before then.