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Hi: I just noticed the recent postings on US casualty tolerance on your website. For those of you who are interested, RAND published a major study of mine in 1996 that looked at public support for WWII, the Korean, Vietnam, and Gulf Wars, Panama and Somalia with an accent on the role of casualties in support for each. I found that support was related to beliefs about the stakes (e.g., the importance of the interests and values that were engaged in each situation), the prospects for success, and the likely and actual costs in casualties, and that each of these beliefs was influenced by the positions taken by national leaders. In a related vein, the willingness to accept losses was associated with beliefs in the importance of the stakes, and the prospects for success. That study, Casualties and Consensus, is available at http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR726. In another study, I looked at one additional case (Bosnia) and found that the same basic relationships held up. That study, Air Power as a Coercive Instrument, is available at http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR1061. In the present case of Iraq, my reading of the data is that it looks much as it did during the 1991 Gulf War: a majority of Americans probably would accept fairly substantial casualties (into the hundreds, perhaps even the thousands) to depose Saddam, and eliminate his WMD programs. Best regards, Eric Larson --------------------------------------------------- Eric V. Larson, Ph.D., Senior Policy Analyst RAND, 1700 Main Street, Santa Monica, California 90407 Tel: 310.393.0411 X7467 Fax: 310.451.7067 Email: larson@rand.org _______________________________________________ Sent via the discussion list of the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq. To unsubscribe, visit http://lists.casi.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/casi-discuss To contact the list manager, email casi-discuss-admin@lists.casi.org.uk All postings are archived on CASI's website: http://www.casi.org.uk