Bush moves up in the war-monger president ratings...

[kurtyboy]

I've been trying to compile an accurate account of how many servicemen and women have died under each US President. The rankings, which are incomplete, come out this way for the top-10:

1 Abraham Lincoln/Jefferson Davis 623,026
2 Franklin D Roosevelt 357,316
3 Woodrow Wilson 116,708
4 Harry Truman 86,954
5 Lyndon Johnson 35,957
6 Richard Nixon 22,401
7 James K Polk 13,283
8 George W Bush 3,870*
9 William McKinley 2,446
10 James Madison 2,398

*-active

As you can see, GW Bush has a long way to go to catch up to #7, James K Polk. Polk, as you'll no doubt remember, led us into a war on Mexico over, er uh, I dunno, a Hemispheric War on The-Bastards-Who-Want-Their-Land-Back. Later, Congress appoved a memorial mentioning, "A war unnecessarily and unconstitutionally begun by the President of the United States." (Thank #1 on the list, old Honest Abe himself, for that little bomb) Anyhoo, GW better get movin' if he wants to rub a little extra salt in Poppy's eyes (a dismal #13 at 553 KIA).

That said, W now finds himself tied for #1 in one other important statistic--Most Years with 500 or More US Personnel Killed.

1 Lyndon Johnson 5
1 Richard Nixon 5
1 George W Bush 5 *
4 Abraham Lincoln/Jefferson Davis 4
4 Franklin D Roosevelt 4
4 Harry Truman 4
4 James Madison 4
8 James K Polk 3
8 Andrew Jackson 3
10 Woodrow Wilson 2

*-active

The little Bush shares the honor with LBJ and Tricky Dick Nixon, who each spent 5 years justifying the pointless war in SE Asia (although to be honest, each of them might not have made the 500 mark every single year--LBJ started kinda slow, and the Dickster had other troubles in 1974...) No matter, if next year's pace matches this year's torrid upticks (and it will, thanks to a Democrat-controlled Congress), 2008 will have the undisputed warfaring-est President EVER taking over the top slot, sometime around April.

Damn shame--and I knew it was coming in 2000, sometime in December. I locked in on that opinion when he got inaugurated the first time, and I swore it looked just like one of those Nazi rallies Hitler so loved. This piece of doo is also taking over the top ranking for greatest builder of Constitutional crisis, edging out a feckless James Buchanan. I didn't see THAT coming...

But as Lily Tomlin says, "No matter how cynical I get, I find I just can't keep up"

[krispos42]

1. Can you add in the WTC victims?

And Katrina? He let those 1500 people die, just like he's leaving over a hundred thousand American soldiers to face death.

[kurtyboy]

2. A project for another time

Sometime in the future, I'll try to estimate civilian losses on both sides.

And as far as "American" combatants go, a helluva lot of native people lost their lives defending their land--should they count just like I'm counting both side's losses in the Civil War? If so, then Presidents like Andrew Jackson and James Madison and George Washington move WAY up into the ranks--well ahead of W.

[liberaldemocrat7]

5. What about the 500,000 innocent Iraqis killed by the Bush death machine?

Lancet did an estimate of innocent dead Iraqis from the beginning of the Invasion. Shouldn't we include the 500,000 or more innocent dead Iraqis that died thanks to the Bush death machine?



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[Art_from_Ark]

3. Actually, the Dickster was justifying Viet Nam for only 4 years

(as president, that is)

January 1969- January 1973 (when withdrawal agreement was reached at the Paris Peace Talks)

[kurtyboy]

4. Yes, this is true. But the record is ambiguous.

1200 casualties were recorded after 1973, but there is no way of telling which year they died. 447 death certificates were issued in 1978, for example, citing KIA. I don't have the detail to determine which president to charge them against, let alone the year. That being said, Johnson has to move down a rank on the list, because 1964 fell short of the 500 KIA threshold by 296. So, W shares the top of the heap with T-Dick, but Nixon gets an asterisk out of the deal...

And there's this: W is probably the only President in US history to preside over the combat deaths of service personnel in seven consecutive years.

Worst. President. Ever.

[Blueberry_raspberry]

6. Even the Repubs agree that Bush sucks

Worst than all past prez combined.