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.
Is your objection that he is being inaccurate? He is simply comparing per capita deaths in Iraq to those of several US Cities murder rates. He is being up front in the analysis. And just for the record, what happened to all those reports several months back IN EVERY MSM outlet claiming 600,000 Iraqi civilian deaths?
Never mind the savings... when do we get to hang Kathleen Blanco, Ray Nagin and Bill Jefferson? And where can I send a donation of lumber and rope for the gallows? (he said, only half-joking...)
Lol Bush should run for commander of the Army when he retires as President just to piss off the left
That's a good point, if your aim is to conduct a fair evaluation. But when you're already comparing apples and oranges, why not compare a bucket of one versus a truckload of another.
Then you'd have to do the same to LA or New York. Take out the many wealthy burb neighborhoods that have little crime and you end up with a similar murder density in those cities.
LOL! True....
It sure was a lie. That doesn't give us license to invent our own as payback. When the left puts out garbage like the Lancet report, why on Earth would we want to give up the intellectual and moral high ground by publishing nonsense of our own?
... or Hunter's Point (San Francisco) and Parts of Oakland, CA.... Yup.
it's up to 655,000 now? This just begs the question- Wheere are ALL the bodies and how come hospitals in Iraq, which are required by Iraqi law to report deaths directly to the government, haven't reported even a tiny fraction of those numbers? There must be one honking big conspiracy to hide the mountains of bodies from the general public- perhaps the bodies were all scurried away in alien ships.
I did a report on my site linking to a site that absolutely debunked the Fasecious lies that the Lancet report put out- they did such a good job exposing hte lies trhat it was lights out for the lancet report.
This isn't lying. that lancet report was lying. This is a demonstration of how REAL statistics can be displayed any way to show what you want. His point is legitimate. 14,000 dead iraqis does not a quagmire make. Is it a apples to apples comparison he's making - no. But he says such if you read his entier article.
who's giving up ANYTHING? Certainly not us- NO death is to be taken lightly- not even the deaths of innocent civilians in countries we're fighting in HOWEVER, these folks have died for a MUCH greater cause that will in the end protect many many times the amount that have died. War sucks as far as casualties- however, if a nation is not willing to make the necessary sacrifices- evil WILL prevail and that is something that IS TRULY unnaceptable concidering hte high cost to both lives and freedoms
Jean Francois Revel diagnosed the democratic disease perfectly when he wrote: “A civilization that feels guilty for everything it is and does will lack the energy and conviction to defend itself.”
Then perpetuitously you'd have to eliminate the similarly low-crime 'burbs of Baghdad..then omit any other dissimilarities and so on and so on. Might as well throw the "comparison out altogether.
So I leave on this thought. Should you have to choose one, would YOU prefer the level of US city violence in your 'hood or that of Iraq?
Richmond California is no walk in the park either.
Name a major U.S. city that has a murder rate 11 times the national average, given the fact that three-quarters of the U.S. population lives in major metro areas. Fourteen thousand Iraqis died from political violence in 2006 in a country of 26.7 million people. In 2005, there were 14,600 murders in the United States, whose population was 296.4 million. To replicate the Iraqi death rate, for example, the New York metro area would have to have 9,800 murders a year. With approximately half of the metro area's population, As of December 24, 2006, there were 579 murders in New York City year to date.
They probably hide the iraqi bodies in those trucks that went to syria...Oh wait, that was before the war.
Seriously, I dont like one death here, but we are on the verge of success with 2 free elections, an iraqi constitution, federalization, Saddam and Sons dead, prosperity in the vast swath of Iraq,buisness booming, wages and jobs up. I cant see running now
That is why its only good as a general demonstration. The demonstration that Iraq is not a sinking quagmire of total violence as portrayed in the MSM. ANd that is his point.
Well Stated
No, it is not. We try to avoid even thinking Richmond / El Cerrito...
In our previous episode, I noted that New Orleans has 10x the murder rate of the United States.
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