Average age of military deaths in Iraq and natural causes?

[Zaelath]

We get The News Hour here on the multicultural free-to-air channel (SBS), and they often have a quiet rememberance of those killed in Iraq. The caveat is they need full names and old photos before they can put them up.

The limitations of the sample not withstanding, the average age of the people listed appears to be about 23. There are a lot of 19-21 year olds, and the very occasional 40+ year old.

I'm just wondering how a significant proportion of those that have died in Iraq could have been by natural causes as has been claimed on here before. I'll give you a few of the young people would have killed themselves driving, but not a statistically significant number of the 150,000 over there.

For example, if I give you a massive benefit of the doubt and allow you 5,933 teenagers died on the roads in the us in 2002 of some 250+ million people, you would have about 2.5 deaths from a population of 150,000.

[Avryce]

I'm sure more serious accidents occur in factories with heavy machinery than in your average office building. These soldiers aren't working in an office building so expect figures to be skewed slightly.

Also consider our rate of death due to auto accidents is taken in a situation with policed and maintained roads.

That being said I doubt the majority of deaths are due to natural causes/accidents.