Something to put current events into perspective:

In war by the numbers, expenditures were running at $90 billion/year, which at the time was half the gross national product. In the first two years of war there had been 66,047 casualties, of them 27,566 killed. For the mini-McNamaras lately fascinated with body count analysis, that is about 37.8 deaths per day. The Japanese claimed to have killed, wounded, or captured 1.375 million men, to have sunk 31 battleships (the Navy only had 23 total) and 39 aircraft carriers, and shot down over 5,000 aircraft. These and other boasts set the standard the Iraqi information minister attempted to surpass, and probably did.

[link|http://www.nationalreview.com/robbins/robbins091103.asp|December 7, 1943]