100% deaths in a 1000 people is a better statistic than 1% of 100 million. War is bad, but statistics can be worse :)

Nice one. Statistics got the truth to it--peace

Nah, my point was that statistics like that are misleading. "10% of the casualties in WW1 were civilians." Data tracking was nowhere near as accurate as it is today AND not to mention that every able-bodied male from the age of 18 to 50 was moved from a civilian status into military service. That's a HUGE chunk of civilian population shifted into enlisted casualty figures. Above also applies to World War 2. And I can't believe for a second that the devastation caused by atomic weapons on the Japanese population is somehow more favourable than cruise missile strikes on a a list of pre-assigned targets EVEN if the majority of those targets are incorrect! The numbers aren't even close. I can't agree that technology is the blame for the increase in civilian casualties in contemporary warfare. The overall death count [today] is considerably less than previous wars AND the military have far greater protection & medical back-up to deal with the weapons aimed at them, which reduces their % in the overall stats of military deaths vs. civilians. The general public are not issued flak jackets. Anyway ... forget Iraq. That was always a situation where the US Government decided to steal an extremely valuable resource from a less powerful country ... under the guise of human rights and World Wide Peace™. Anyway ... Violence [war] driven by greed is the greatest human weakness, whichever way you look at it. Hopefully one day we will evolve, but I doubt it will be anytime soon.

Dan - I understand your point on perspective. Howerver, for the person who loses their son, or daughter, or friend - the only number that matters is one. And I think that's a perspective worth acknowledging. One or one million (or 30 million or so in the case of WWII) deaths is irrelevant at that point. My focus here is the fact that the technology is being sold to the public as acceptible because it's so advanced - but that is clearly not the case and we shouldn't be fooled into thinking that there will be "surgical bombing" where civilians will be missed. My next blog might make my point there more clear.

I'm behind your sentiment 100% no worries there. I think any sane human being would be :) Plus I agree with your comment about propaganda falsely claiming that superior technology makes war painless. Even use of the age-old phrase 'theatre of war' somehow tries to cover up the fact that the whole exercise isn't real. Governments worldwide have so much to answer for. As my Dad said more than once: "Statistics are mathematically proven lies..." ... the news & media are full of numbers which don't actually tell any truths, they just distort the meaning for whatever purpose :)

There is a really fascinating book called "Freakonomics" - which is a very unique view of statistics and sociology.