I was just over at
Tacitus reading a couple of threads where I saw a guy say "IT's safer to be in Iraq than Alabama." We have seen comments of this sort from all over the place, including from
the Secratary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld. Others have done a great analysis of comparing the US murder rate to the US military death rate, but I have yet to see a full risk evaluation.
So I did one over at my blog, Fester's Place and using a very conservative set of assumptions, the age adjusted risk factor of dying in Iraq is at least 2.6 times greater than if a soldier was in the United States. The full analysis is over there, but the sensitivity analysis does not include any measure of severe wounding risks, and it is extremely sensistive to the age distribution of the US Army in Iraq. I think that my modelled force is too old, so if it is younger, then the risk goes up dramatically.