Comparing civilian victims, even in D.C., our war zone if you will, to occupying soldiers is ridiculous. How many of the D.C. fatalities were wearing body armor, carrying M-16s and on alert to being attacked? What is the death rate of Iraqis, in Baghdad, outside of the Green Zone compared to before our invasion? Their desperation is showing.

To be fair, they said "at least" 20. "at least" 10...

Soon . . .

~OGD~

One thing the two cities DO have in common:
"Georgie" and Dick "The Monster" Cheney wouldn't walk down the streets of EITHER without being surrounded by "protection!"

The issue here isn't to refute that viral email bullshit, because it's patently bullshit: the apples/oranges comparison of 'soldiers in Iraq' to the general population, the not-very-veiled implication that DC should be abandoned (one thing wingnut middle-Americans know about DC is that it's a black city), etc.

Trying to refute the shoddy comparisons wastes time. It's just 'trolling'. What matters is who's doing it.

Where do these circular emails come from? What's their origin and distribution? Is it someone transcribing Limbaugh? I doubt it: it sounds too literate. Is it some 501(c)(3) wingnut welfare organisation churning them out? That seems more likely. I'd speculate that it's a bunch of pasty Young Republican interns who'd shit their pants at the thought of serving in Iraq.

Just google "Iraq Safer than Washington D.C."

It's all over the web, including debunkings.

Nice to read you Mr. Johnson. This nutso stuff has been around for years, and is absolutely ridiculous.

The rabid right wing has never troubled to let facts get in the way of it's negative propaganda.

CSPAN junkies visit http://spannerbackup.ipbhost.com

I make it a point when receiving these viral e-mails to 'reply all' so that everyone on the wingnut's distribution list gets a copy of my response. If Snopes debunks it, I include a link and relevant text. If it is otherwise debunkable, I debunk it, citing reputable sources and logic. I then call the sender something on the order of "an easily misled dumbass". That, and always send it from an e-mail address that the sender doesn't know is mine. That way, I stay on the mailing list for the next piece of right-wing drivel. It drives 'em crazy as their only choice is to stop sending the stuff or continue to be embarassed.

Larry, the distortion you've highlighted is worse, literally by an order of magnitude, than you indicate.

In fact, the DC numbers are per year. The 60 per 100,000 in Iraq is per month.

That is, it's off by a factor of 12.

Exactly right JJF. As a corollary, the number of military deaths as a result of combat in Washington D.C.: 0

If more than 1000 civilians a month were being shot and killed in D.C., well, let's just say there would be no long waits to get into the Air and Space Museum.

Let's pretend Iraq is a big school system, and all the seventh graders in a large city, say, Washington DC are our soldiers.

Over the last five years, every seventh grade class in the city has had at least one student killed, and at least three more lost arms, legs, faces, body functions, and probably five more are mentally shattered by the trauma of their experiences.

And if the civilians are the other grades, K-6 and 8-12, the entire kindergarten has been wiped out, and grades 9-12 have fled the school system.

If this were the case, would you say the schools were safe?

The right wing and their ilk are forever trying to ameliorate American dead in Iraq by comparing those that died in other wars, or as Britt Hume of FOX did when he compared those who die in traffic accidents in Calif with troops who die in Iraq.

Bush and his right wing cohort got us into the killing fields of Iraq and now they try to trivialize the consequences.

Ever ready to send others to war, they hide beneath their desks when the call to arms sounds.

I despise these people, cowards that they are.

It goes on and on, coming up with failiures in the parallel, and you all hit plenty of theme, so just a couple more. Those who survive in DC did not have the benefit of a walled compound, military vehicles, close convoys, and body armor. Civilians in DC mostly have electricity. Few have gone into exile. A fair number, even in black America under Bush, have jobs.

Anhow, makes you wonder why, if things are so hunky-dory, the wingnuts are so sure that if we leave, it'll be a disaster and a triumph for Al Qaeda. Suddenly they get in touch with the reality-based community when they need it to score illogical points.  

John

http://www.haberarts.com/

Their desperation is showing.

They've been doing these phony comparisons since the beginning, as other have pointed out. Their desperation has always shown, like a flare by a car wreck.

What I don't like is the effect these kinds of things will have on the length of the war. When the soldiers read them, I'm sure they won't want to come home. I'm sure they're all begging for "more tours of duty, more tours, anything, but please don't send me home where I'm sure to be killed. BTW could I get my wife and kids over here too, where it's safe?"

Someone should really update this entry. As franklyo stated just above, the story is wrong by a factor of 12. they are comparing yearly deaths in DC to monthly deaths in iraq.

That is on top of the already bogus comparison of all civilian violent deaths in DC to US military deaths in iraq. the proper comparison to support the conclusion of "pulling out of DC" would be police and government violent deaths in DC, which i'm sure is a small fraction of the number they cite.

Point of arithmetic: a quick calculation shows that the 60/100,000 in Iraq is a monthly rate. Since the population of DC is a bit less than 600,000, a firearm death rate of 80/100,000 per month would translate into roughly 5500 deaths per year. If true (of course it isn't) this would be incredibly high: in the entire US there are around 30,000 gun related deaths each year (~19,000 suicides, ~10,000 murders, a few hundred accidents) which is itself appalling in an international context.

Four suicide bombers struck nearly simultaneously at communities of a small Kurdish sect in northwestern Iraq late Tuesday, killing at least 175 people and wounding 200 more, Iraqi military and local officials said.

Here's a clue you might use, Ellen: Baghdad is not a community of a small Kurdish sect in northwestern Iraq.

Squeaky,

It's an honest mistake. In scanning the news, you wouldn't think, "That must be a different four suicide truck bombers." The death toll from this one is now at 250 and could double to 500 killed. And what does it say that these bombings are not even the top headlines in the papers or lead stories on the nightly news? We don't see the pictures of the 50 to 100 Iraqis that are tortured and killed daily. The death and destruction is reduced to abstract numbers and even the numbers are distorted.

The tragic irony of this myth about DC being more dangerous than Baghdad--particularly the point about firearms--is that US soldiers are killing themselves with firearms at alarming rates.

Army Suicides Highest in 26 Years

WASHINGTON — Army soldiers committed suicide last year at the highest rate in 26 years, and more than a quarter did so while serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a new military report.

The report, obtained by The Associated Press ahead of its scheduled release Thursday, found there were 99 confirmed suicides among active duty soldiers during 2006, up from 88 the previous year and the highest number since the 102 suicides in 1991 at the time of the Persian Gulf War.

The suicide rate for the Army has fluctuated over the past 26 years, from last year's high of 17.3 per 100,000 to a low of 9.1 per 100,000 in 2001.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20070815/army-suicides/

The definition for depraved indifference would fit these men:

From the November 28, 2006 broadcast of Premiere Radio Networks' The Rush Limbaugh Show:

HEDGECOCK: They're calling it. In other words, it's like Florida for [Democratic presidential candidate Al] Gore. This is -- you know, this is -- they're calling the election. It's now a civil war. Boy, I'm glad we've clarified that. Let's see. Did they call Bosnia and Kosovo a civil war? Huh?

Did they -- did they call what's going on -- and by the way, the murder rate -- whatever you hear, whenever you hear a story about Baghdad about blowing up, about -- you know, today two car bombs went off in the entire country. The murder rate in Baghdad, the people being killed in Baghdad, is lower than the murder rate of Washington, D.C. Is Washington, D.C., in a civil war? NBC has not called it, so I dare not say.

http://mediamatters.org/items/200611300002

(1) Bush/Cheney and their dead ender AEI/Republican sociopath supporters are not losing any sleep over The Decider's divisive decision to start the Decisive 21st Century War To Save Civilization.

(2) Don't give the Neo-Cons any ideas about IED's going off in DC, remember who got the anthrax letters, and who started taking anti-anthrax CIPRO a week before the first anthrax letter was mailed.

While on the subject of suicide though:

Iraq Slogger - August 13, 2007
Suicide: 3% of US Deaths in Iraq
118 Troops Took Own Lives in Iraq,
an Unknown Number After They Returned Home

Oops, Kudos to Amos Anan, franklyo, social liberal and Andy McLennan, too, for pointing out that this right wing math is ridiculous!

"I'm willing to take a little time to correct the information in those which have comments columns, and I bet a lot of other readers here are, too. Maybe even link back to your column here."

That's a good idea, 'amike'. After pointing out the errors in this horeseshit at NoQuarter, I added comments at some other websites I found through google, too. But pls don't link to Larry's story, because he gives a very misleading answer to the spin, not recognizing that the math is totally fraudulent. Better use this answer by DailyKos blogger 'puroprana':
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/8/15/0429/70402

Also, you can find my try at debunking, plus some other good links at http://caffeinesoldier.blogspot.com/2007/08/dont-fall-for-spin-iraq-is-more.html

For finding websites that spread this spin, use a google search like this one:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22The+U.S.+should+pull+out+of+Washington%22&btnG=Google+Search

Not bad, but where does it say 80.6 per year? It says, in 'the same period', and that's 22 months. However, actual yearly homicide rates for DC are about 30/100000.

The 'correct' comparison (but still using the mysterious numbers) would be 1320/80.6=1637% (because 1320=(2112/160000)*100000).

Hello? Wake up! This is a fraud! Check the math!

I'm more than a bit shocked to see how naively many commenters here discuss this piece of horseshit as though the anonymous writer at least made a valid point. NO, he didn't! And, I have to say, it is absolutely foolish to take such spins at face value without checking the math and the numbers. You really should know better by now, after all those years of shamelessly lying by right wingers. :-(

In this case here, as commenter 'tan15' rightly pointed out, the math is totally screwed up. The anonymous author compared the monthly rate of casualties in Iraq per 100,000(and very old numbers!) with an alleged 80.6 deaths by armed violence /100,000 in DC in "the same period" (= 22 months). We don't know where he got that number, nobody so far has been able to find anything even remotely high in the last years. However, by messing the comparison up, he is actually comparing one apple with 22 oranges. This is obvious, and it is a bad surprise so many people don't notice it right away.

Correcting the fraudulent calculation (but still using the mysterious numbers), we can find that the 'correct' comparison is 1320/80.6=1637% (because 1320=(2112/160000)*100000).
So, even if 'anonymous' got his numbers right (that is questionable!) Iraq is more than 15 times more dangerous than Washington DC!

One last point: I'm totally disappointed about Larry who is helping the anonymous writer in spreading his spin by posting his story in at least 3 blogs (No Quarter, Booman Tribune, and here). Larry read the comments at NQ, so he knows that the real problem with this fraud aren't the IED casualties, but that the numbers don't compute. But he hasn't posted a addendum pointing this out at any of his stories yet. So, he's responsible for numerous more readers now believing that the numbers are at least comparable and that Iraq isn't much more dangerous than DC. You should be ashamed for letting this stupidity stand uncorrected, Larry!
:-(

P.S.: Anybody who does a fast google search on this shit will find it has already been debunked, for instance in November 2005 by Brad DeLong. Only lazy bloggers wouldn't notice that.

P.P.S.: Sry for being maybe a bit harsh, but that serious bloggers are still discussing this shit, without noticing the fraud, really p***es me off. Of course, everybody can have a lazy day once in a while and fall for this spin, but why the reluctance to correct the error? |-(