Tallying the Number of Conscientious Objectors

Despite its unpopularity, the number of official conscientious objectors to the war in Iraq may seem surprisingly low even with an all-volunteer army.

New figures released by the Government Accountability Office show that there were 425 applications for conscientious objector status between 2002 and 2006. For reference, the Vietnam war had about 200,000 such applications.

Thus far, 224 have been approved and 188 denied.

UPDATE: Here's one reason applications might be down.

UPDATE 2: A couple of people have mentioned that of course there was a draft during the Vietnam era. My reason for calling the numbers 'surprisingly low' was not because of the obvious difference between 425 and 200,000, but because when you compare the number of men who were eligible to be drafted during the Vietnam War with the current size of the armed forces, the relative number of conscientious observers is about 50 to 100 times greater during the Vietnam era than now. Would any number crunchers like to figure out if there something else going on besides the non-existence of the draft?