More UK troops killed by the US

In Skypeland, one man from the UK claimed that more soldiers from the UK had been killed by US soldiers in friendly fire incidents, target practice, intentional attacks, etc than had been killed in combat with the enemy. I asked him what his evidence was. He said he heard this in the news. We asked him for references. He told us to do our homework. Several people in the room searched for this evidence, unsuccessfully. Finally someone from Ireland found this news item, which supposedly provided evidence for this claim:

http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90777/6215944.html

Unfortunately, this news item makes the statement that a greater proportion of people from the UK have been killed in Iraq than troops from the US. I pointed out that this was irrelevant and was like comparing apples to oranges. Someone else from the UK also claimed to have found evidence that UK soldiers were mainly being killed by US troops, and presented us with the following link:

http://search.bbc.co.uk/cgi-bin/search/results.pl?scope=all&edition=i&q=friendly+fire&go.x=0&go.y=0&go=go

Again, these articles are completely irrelevant and do not provide evidence for the claim. When the people from the UK were confronted with the fact that they were making irrational irrelevant and unsubstantiated claims, they were unrepentent...

There are of course all kinds of friendly fire incidents in a war. Here is an example of a US soldier killed by a UK security firm:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,2201538,00.html

One man from Scotland over and over asked why the US needs UK military assistance. It was pointed out to him repeatedly that it was mainly for public relations purposes, because the size of the UK forces are not really large enough to make a significant difference. However, he just repeatedly brought up the same issue, over and over and over. He tried to bolster his argument by claiming that several single states in the US had more population than all of the UK, and claimed that the US was 50 times larger in area than the UK, so they did not need the UK for its military assistance. (Although I told him repeatedly he was incorrect, he persisted in repeating this. Of course, the population of the United Kingdom is 60,776,238 [July 2007 est.] according to http://www.worldstatesmen.org/United_Kingdom.html
and the population of the most populous US state, California, is 37,700,000 [2007 estimate by US Census Bureau: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California#Population] The second most populous state is Texas, with 23.5 million, followed by New York at 19.3 million and Florida at 18 million: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_population. Obviously, the Scottish man's claims about the population of US states are wrong, even though he repeatedly refused to acknowledge this, undercutting his position quite badly.

The area of the United States is 9,826,630 square kilometers, and the area of the United Kingdom is 244,820 square kilometers, so that the United States is about 40 times larger in area than the UK. However, only 9,161,923 square kilometers of the US is land, and the area of Alaska is 1,717,855 square kilometers [mainly uninhabited wilderness], so the lower 48 states really have a land area of about 7,400,000 square kilometers, or about 30 times the size of the United Kingdom. This is far different than a factor of 50, but in any case the area of the country is irrelevant in this context; after all, Canada has an even larger area [9,984,670 square kilometers] and this does not mean that Canada should be expected to have a larger military than the US.

The military budgets of the countries are probably far more relevant. The US has a yearly military budget of about 553 billion dollars, and the UK has the world's second largest yearly military budget, spending about 69.8 billion dollars. The European Union spends about 300 billion dollars per year on its military:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_federations_by_military_expenditures

By this measure, the Scottish man looks like he is just plain full of nonsense. The UK has a substantial military, which is not burdened and diluted by international commitments as the US military is.

Also another problem is that if the US acts unilaterally, people complain that the US is acting alone internationally. And if the US acts in concert with other countries, then people like this Scottish man complain. It seems like people complain no matter what. Some in the room also complained that the US should have worked through the UN, but I and others pointed out that the UN is not a panacea and not always the best solution. After all, where was the UN in Kampuchea? In Rwanda? In the former Yugoslavia ? What is the UN doing right now in Darfur? What did the UN do to stop Hizbollah in Lebanon? )

Well this does show exactly what sort of reasoning exists out there in the general populace I guess...