Posted on 01/14/2008 4:15:04 AM PST by Impeach98
January 14, 2008 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Mary Pearson: (916) 4416197 or Email: mary@moveamericaforward.org
SACRAMENTO- Move America Forward (website: www.MoveAmericaForward.org), the nations largest grassroots pro-troop organization, today announced that after vetting the numbers cited by The New York Times in their Sunday, January 13, 2008 story, Across America, Deadly Echoes of Foreign Battles, it became clear that the Times had engaged in demonstrably erroneous and false reporting.
It took seven New York Times researchers to find 121 cases in which veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan committed a killing in the United States, or were charged with one, upon returning home to this country.
The Times made the false conclusion that: Taken together, they paint the patchwork of a quiet phenomenon, tracing a cross-country trail of death and heartbreak.
The Times documentation of 121 potential killings out of more than 1.5 million veterans of Operation Iraqi Freedom (Iraq) and Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan), divided by 6 years of conflict results in a murder rate of just 1.34 incidents per 100,000 veterans per year.***
That murder rate is far lower than the murder rate for the general population, demonstrating that the experiences of military service including having served in Iraq and Afghanistan actually made it less likely for returning veterans to commit murder once they returned home, than the general population.
Given a census-estimated population of the United States of 300,000,000 persons in this country as of October 2006, and FBI-compiled statistics of 17,399 homicide offenders for 2006, the murder rate of the general population was 5.80 offenders per 100,000 on average and a rate of approximately 7.67 per 100,000 for men.
Since all but one of the veterans cited by the Times who committed a killing in the U.S. was male, the comparable rate is approximately 7.67 incidents of murder per 100,000 people among the general male population, compared to just 1.34 incidents per 100,000 returning Iraq and Afghanistan veterans (of both genders).
Its obvious that the New York Times has an agenda of undermining the missions of our troops in the War on Terror, so much so that they are willing to resort to demonstrably false statistics to support their anti-troop bias, said Melanie Morgan, Chairman of Move America Forward.
The slander of our troops and veterans by the New York Times is unfortunately all too familiar. We heard this kind of nonsense about our returning veterans from Vietnam. Its the same insult, different war.
Perhaps the shameful staff of The New York Times has run out of war-time secrets to publish for Americas enemies to read, because now theyve resorted to an all-out smear campaign of Americas finest men and women, who have served this country bravely and with distinction, Morgan said.
In place of hard data to support their premise, The New York Times was instead forced to devote almost the entire portion of 6,321 word hit-piece to anecdotes of wrongdoing by individual veterans.
The New York Times even went so far as to trace back the phenomenon of murderous veterans to Greek mythology to back up their assertions of their report.
The real mythology is the reporting by The New York Times, Move America Forwards Melanie Morgan concluded.
NOTE TO REPORTERS/BLOGGERS: Melanie Morgan and a delegation of staffers from Move America Forward have just returned from a 10-day trip interviewing U.S. troops in Iraq and Kuwait.
To schedule an interview with Melanie Morgan or the other members who traveled to Kuwait and Iraq including: Gold Star Mom Debbie Lee (mother of first Navy Seal killed in Iraq), MAF Communications Director, Danny Gonzalez, and MAF Deputy Executive Director, Mary Pearson, contact Ryan Gill of Move America Forward at: (916) 441-6197 or via email at: mary@MoveAmericaForward.org
>> You can link to this report, which is published at the Move America Forward website, at this location: http://www.moveamericaforward.org/index.php/MAF/MAFNews
*** Note that the central statistical measure is how many instances of alleged killings take place per 100,000 Iraq/Afghanistan war veterans who returned home. The New York Times might argue that our statistics are incorrect since the 1.5+ million Iraq/Afghanistan veterans have not been home during the entire 6 years of the war (especially since in the early onset of Operation Enduring Freedom troops were just arriving into the war zone).
However, Salon.com reports that as of January 31, 2005 there were 1,048,884 Americans who had fought in Iraq or Afghanistan. One can then calculate statistics from that point onward. Lets give the New York Times the leeway of saying their alleged 121 incidents of killings by veterans occured during just the three years that elapsed since that time to the present. The murder rate per 100,000 people would still be approximately 3.5 incidents of murder per 100,000 returning Iraq/Afghanistan veterans.
yeah, FOX wants the credit themselves
They may have actually done some work on it, but the conservative media likes to leave out the pajamahadeen on their credits!
The big problem is not the actual beloved readers of the NY Slimes. The problem is that your local newspaper picked it up and ran it, as will every local newspaper across our nation and every newspaper around the world.
That is the big problem.
The problem is that your local newspaper picked it up and ran it, as will every local newspaper across our nation and every newspaper around the world.
Which is why a lot of milblogs and bloggers have posted the MAF email on their sites. Spread the coverage out.
Thanks for the ping!
Bless you for the ping, am glad to see they are outted so to speak.
Great pic....am saving that one!
Yet antother planned attacked on our military who are serving with honor to protect this kind of ilk.
Bump for later
121 for the numbers involved isn’t much - if a person were to stop and think.
Oops - “stop and think” - we ain’t supposed to do that. That’s the self appointed task of our illustrious news media.
Keep QUIET, willya.
Wow, great expose!
[Mr] T
WHAT? The MSM skewed their story? Why....I can't believe it. (wink)
The New York Slimes....Those dirty RATS
in the past, Vets of Vietnam, Korea and even WW II were accused of the same thing...Glad to finally see a study which disproves that terrible allegation. Thank you Melanie and Thanks for posting this Impeach98..
Now, let’s turn it around and know that the MSM and especially the NY Times slander America’s veterans..Shame on them, they are disgracefully un-American journalists who would stoop so low...
Our troops who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan can hold their heads high because they helped defend the liberties of this country. We Thank you.
(Same goes for Hollywood.)
The best weapon we have is to use our $'s as smart weapons. We refuse to spend a penney on those mediot outlets who trash our troops and America.
Then. we turn that money into contributions to Free Republic to expose the lies and get the truth out there.
Not really. The local paper is doing very poorly as the large ones. They raise their rates, cut the size of the paper and have nothing but junk in it, so people are dropping it like crazy. They keep calling two or three times a week asking you to take the paper. If they have to call that much, they have to be in trouble.
BTTT, nice post IMPEACH98
Aside from the Times blatant distortion of the facts, I have to also question if all of there 121 were really vets. After Vietnam, it was common for punks in trouble with the law to claim they were that way because of the war. Many of them never even served in the military let alone in Vietnam.
It would be an interesting exercise to do some background checking on those 121, because you know damn well that the Times didn't do it.
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