Posted on 01/03/2007 6:19:30 PM PST by pissant
The Associated Press released an interesting set of statistics (host link stored for future ref) a couple of days ago that I would suppose were designed to suck away any optimism any fools who still support the mission in Iraq might have (bolds are mine):
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Government officials on Monday reported that 16,273 Iraqi civilians, soldiers and police died violent deaths in 2006, a figure larger than an independent Associated Press count for the year by more than 2,500.
The tabulation by the Iraqi ministries of Health, Defense and Interior, showed that 14,298 civilians, 1,348 police and 627 soldiers were killed in the violence that raged in the country last year.
The Associated Press accounting, gleaned from daily news reports from Baghdad, arrived at a total of 13,738 deaths.
Pretty grim, isn't it? And this is for "violence that raged in the (whole) country."
Man, what a downer. I mean, this is an honest-to-goodness Grade A bona fide quagmire.
Oops -- I started digging into US murder statistics, and what I found made me less depressed about Iraq, and more concerned about the US.
Let's put this in perspective. Below are 10 listings for US cities and years. Your mission to accomplish (so to speak), is to guess whether each particular city's murder rate in the year identified was higher or lower than the "violent death rate" in Iraq (which is, from all appearances, all-inclusive). Let's use the Iraqi government's higher number of 16,273 just for the heck of it, even though the Associated Press will "surely" be bothered that I'm exaggerating the level of violence compared to what their records show (somehow, I think they'll get over it). Using the government's figure means that Iraq's violent death rate in 2006 was 56.49 per 100,000 residents (16,273 deaths, and a population per Wiki of 28,807,000).
So here are the US cities and the related years:
1. New York City - 1990 2. Washington, DC - 1991 3. Gary, IN - 2005 4. Detroit, MI - 1991 5. Compton, CA - 2005 6. New Orleans, LA - 2006 7. New Orleans, LA - 2004 8. New Orleans, LA - 2003 9. Atlanta, GA - 1973 10. E. St. Louis, IL - 2004
Try not to peek ahead.
......
...... Done?
SURPRISE -- Every city and year listed had a higher murder rate than Iraq in 2006 -- except (surprise again) New York City in 1990 (Gotham's worst year on record for murder).
The murder rates were as follows (see related graph at UPDATE 2 below):
1. New York City - 1990; 30.7 (2,245 murders; population 7,322,000) 2. Washington, DC - 1991; 83.1 (482 murders; population 598,000 [1]) 3. Gary, IN - 2005; 58.0 4. Detroit, MI - 1991; roughly 60 5. Compton, CA - 2005; 67.1 6. New Orleans, LA - 2006; 67.5 (154 murders; population 228,000 [2]) 7. New Orleans, LA - 2004; 59.6 (275 murders; population 461,115 [3]) 8. New Orleans, LA - 2003; 57.7 9. Atlanta, GA - 1973; 57.7 (271 murders; population 470,000 [1]) 10. E. St. Louis, IL - 2004; 63.4
Does this mean Iraq is a walk in the park? Of course not.
Does this mean that Iraq is a hopeless quagmire that cannot be won? It would appear, at a minimum, that anyone who believes that carries a heavy burden of proof.
And to personalize it, dear reader, unless you've gone on record in favor of abandoning the residents of the cities listed above to their own devices at the times they were (or are) extremely dangerous places to be, it would seem that you have no basis for contending that we should do that to the people of Iraq.
Yes it is. It can happen easily. I almost got whacked by an M1 Abrahms in the dead of night doing about 45. missed me by about 5 feet
Good one!!
I'm sure it approaches quagmire numbers.
Yes. Mambe we can suggest a Mumia Parkway for Baghdad.
I saw an officer in Afghanistan say that he lost more men to motor vehicle accidents stateside then he did in battle.
The guys are cutting up and celebrating being home. They feel invincible because they've lived through a war zone
Jihadis may be pawns, much as soldiers from WWII were pawns. But you usually have to kill alot of pawns before you get to the King. OBL may still be alive in a cave somewhere, but his butt buddy saddam wasn't so lucky.
Do we have a Patton in the military?
omg...how did it miss you??!!!
I mean thank God it did!
Yikes! That would be a quick death.
L0L when your driving this stuff around in the dead of night with lights out wearing night vision googles with one lens focused on a map and a GPS and the other lens focused on the horizon, sometimes you dont see the tank that comes blasting out of the bushes across the road.
a couple other fellows ran their hummvee into a ravine, it was on its nose. 10 feet away, in that ravine right against the wall was a signal brigade headquarters tent. Several narrowly missed serious injury or death over an accident. Shit happens
Yep, drink like fish, drive fast, chase the wrong women....lotsa hazzards.
Which guy?
Yessir. And the MSM counts those who succumb to disease, Heat and anything else you can think of as KIA
The article's assertion is false. According to the Strategy Page web site, the 2006 Iraqi death toll was 11 times the U.S. murder rate and two-thirds of the American death toll (per capita) in the worst year of World War II, 1944. Go to:
http://www.strategypage.com/qnd/iraq/articles/20070103.aspx
Deport illegals to reduce domestic crime 25%.
Anything to tarnish the job that these men are doing.
He is comparing the Iraq to large cities, not the US as a whole. So his point stands.
I'm with you on that one.
Hear hear. And yet it's a FR favorite. I imagine Rush will be bloviating about this tomorrow for like the fifth time.
US cities vs Iraq the country is like apples and oranges comparison.
How about America the country vs Iraq the country for a more fair evaluation?
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