Posted on 01/17/2008 4:54:33 AM PST by Oshkalaboomboom
Memo to New York Times Public Ed itor Clark Hoyt: Your urgent atten tion is needed on the slanderous 7,000-word front-page article published last Sunday about homicides allegedly committed by US veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns.
We say "allegedly," because the article lumped those merely accused of a homicide with those who've already been convicted. But that was the least of the piece's problems.
As our colleague Ralph Peters so adroitly demonstrated on these pages Tuesday, the article embraced the hoariest of overwrought clichés - the US combat vet as psychotic killer.
But on what evidence?
None at all.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Next we need to know how many servicemen have returned from Iraq or Afghanistan. A definitive number is no doubt available, but the only hard figure I’ve seen is that as of last October, moe than 500,000 U.S. Army personnel had served in either Iraq or Afghanistan. Other sources peg the total number of personnel from all branches of the military who have served in the two theaters much higher, e.g. 750,000, 650,000 as of February 2007, or 1,280,000. For the sake of argument, let’s say that 700,000 soldiers, Marines, airmen and sailors have returned to the U.S. from service in Iraq or Afghanistan.
Do the math: the 121 alleged instances of homicide identified by the Times, out of a population of 700,000, works out to a rate of 17 per 100,000—quite a bit lower than the overall national rate of around 27.
But wait! The national rate of 27 homicides per 100,000 is an annual rate, whereas the Times’ 121 alleged crimes were committed over a period of six years.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives2/2008/01/019533.php
"That estimate is borne out by University of Pennsylvania political scientist John DiIulio, who notes on the Weekly Standard's Web site that 749,932 veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan had been discharged by the end of 2007. Apply that to the 121 killings cited by the Times, and the homicide rate works out to 16.1 per 100,000 - over the entire six-year period."
ping
They need to run a comparison of violent crime statistics between Vets and Police Officers.
about homicides allegedly committed by US veterans
Why is it almost no one ever talks about the thousands and thousands of people killed each year by drunk drivers.
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