Other: Murders stats in the US, Comparing US and Iraq dangers

Nationally in the USA, murders rose 4.8 percent, meaning there were more than 16,900 victims in 2005 (this is from FBI crime statistics)

USA ware casualties in Iraq in 2005 were 846 dead which was about the same as in 2004. (This is from icasualties.org which gets statistics from news reports for civilians and from US military releases for military casualties)

Adding up all Iraq police, military and civilian deaths gets close the US murder total

The Iraq death rates are higher than the US murder rate since the US has ten times the population. The national US murder rate is 5.6 per 100,000. (FBI statistics 2005 again)

The Iraqi death rates appear to comparable to the US cities with the highest murder rates (from wikipedia US cities by crime rate)

Statistics show that Iraq appears to be safer than pre-Katrina New Orleans (From the Hawaii Reporter)

Crime statistics from 1960 to 2004 (Disaster center)

One is almost three times more like to die in a traffic accident than to be murdered (Victoria Transport Policy Institute is an independent research organization)
transportation risk statistics, motor vehicle safety (Bureau of Transportation statistics 2002)), and fatality rates by statefrom NHTSA’s Research and Development site. Louisiana still seems to have the worst rate of combined murders and traffic fatalities.

Louisiana was more dangerous than Iraq for the general population. (based on the above statistics and population from wikipedia and algebra)

In Louisiana:
50 or so per 100,000 murder
16 or so per 100,000 traffic fatality (16-20 years old 33 per 100,000..in some states as high as 59)
35 or so per 100,000 katrina

US soldier death rates
500 per 100,000 (projected 2006, 700 out of 132000)
600 per 100,000 (2005, 850 out of 132000)

Therefore, it was still more dangerous to be a US soldier in Iraq than someone who lived in Louisiana in 2005 by 5 times. (unless you drove a motorcycle a lot)

Motorcycles are about 17 times more dangerous than cars. (Bureau of Transportation statistics 2002)

Related Articles:
An online analysis of world murder rates from various sources by Ben Best

Ben Best has an analysis of causes of death other than murder

National Safety Council table of what are the odds of dying

Page 7 and 8 of the National Vital Statistics report has the fourth column with the number who would die at that age out of 100,000. eg. at age 59, 835 out of 100,000 die before reaching 60