Asian American Death and Iraq & Afghanistan

by Tracker
10/3/05

The General Accounting Office has recently released casualty rates from our invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. The account looks at casualties as of May 28, 2005, when the death count was 1,841. Presently, the death count as of today is about 2,175, an 18% increase.

Asian Americans accounted for sixty-five dead, four percent of the total. Of the 12,658 U.S. military wounded in these countries, Asian Americans accounted for about three percent, about three hundred eighty (the report did not give exact numbers). These numbers are close to the proportion of Asian Americans in the general population.

African Americans and Latinos each constituted about ten percent of the deaths, 191 and 183 respectively, which is lower than their proportion of the population. However, African Americans were seventeen percent of the wounded, a number higher than their proportion of the population, while Latinos were nine percent of the wounded.

There are some methodological differences between how the census and the military look at race and ethnicity so percentages should be taken as approximate.

The full report (and it's long - 156 pages) is available here.