Iraq Has A Lower Violent Death Rate Than Washington, Baltimore Or Atlanta
Posted By: RushMan
on 5/18/2006 7:42:40 AM in
PERSPECTIVE
--Spinning The Reality Of Iraq War--
"It's that time of year when New Yorkers start making their summer vacation plans. Renting a place in the Hamptons? Nah, been there, done that. How about a Parisian jaunt? Noooo. Too many riots. Well, how about visiting a country that's ancient, historic, beautiful and exotic - Iraq? Sure, there's a little war going on there, but when you look at the violent death statistics in the world, [Iraq is] safer than a number of other popular travel destinations. Believe it or not. I happened to catch Rep. Steve King, a Republican of Iowa, on C-span last week and he rattled off some startling figures that demonstrate how off-base journalists are when it comes to reporting on the war in Iraq.
According to Mr. King, the violent death rate in Iraq is 25.71 per 100,000. That may sound high, but not when you compare it to places like Colombia 61.7" per 100,000 death rate, violent death rate. South Africa, has a higher violent death rate per 100,000: 49.6 per 100,000. Even Jamaica has a higher violent death rate than does Iraq: 32.4, and Venezuela comes in at 31.6 violent deaths per 100,000. "How about the violent death rates in American cities? New Orleans before Hurricane Katrina was 53.1," violent death rate per 100,000. "FBI statistics for 2004-05 have Washington" DC's violent death rate at 45.9 per 100,000; Baltimore at 37.7 per 100,000, and Atlanta at 34.9 per 100,000. The figure again from Iraq, 25.71 per 100,000, and that includes the war.
So Iraq, I mean, if you're just going to roll the dice and take your chances, Iraq's a much safer place to go than Washington or Jamaica or New Orleans pre-Katrina, or Venezuela!” (Rush Limbaugh 5/16/06)
The New York Sun
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COMMENTS
13 Days, 14 Homicides In DC...
Posted
By: 
RushMan
on 7/14/2006 2:45:43 PM
"The surge in killings started just after midnight July 1 and has barely let up.
A former church usher was gunned down in a courtyard where flowers bloomed. A 24-year-old woman who lost a close friend to gun violence two years ago was herself shot by a neighbor. Two boyhood friends, who were shot at the same time, died days apart. Their cases received little attention compared with the slayings of a convenience store owner, a community activist and an aspiring British politician. But they created the same kind of anguish for the people they knew.
Many of the month's victims, including John Jackson, 26, were shot numerous times.
"I thought it was firecrackers," said Jackson's mother, Shirley Boyd, of the rapid fire -- in a courtyard across the street -- that startled her awake. It was just after 2 a.m. July 7. "They don't shoot with little guns."
There have been 14 homicides this month: Three on the 1st. Two on the 2nd. One each on the 4th and 5th. Two on the 7th. And one each day from July 8 through Wednesday.
As killings go, this is far from the District's worst stretch, nothing like the one starting in 1988 when the city averaged more than a homicide a day for eight of nine years.
Yet after a decade of declining numbers, this month's killings have so alarmed city officials that D.C. Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey declared a crime emergency." (Robert E. Pierre and Michael E. Ruane
WashingtonPost.com 7/14/06)
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Putting Iraq In Perspective
Posted
By:
GOP
on 6/20/2006 5:41:37 PM
"Even though that icon of the Democratic party Bill Clinton argues that our troops belong in Iraq until that country is able to take care of its own security matters, most of the loudest voices on the left continue to clamor that we’re involved in a quagmire. By definition, by the way, a quagmire is any armed conflict either begun or prolonged by a Republican administration.
I happen to believe that we were right to invade Iraq and to rid the place of Saddam Hussein and his vile progeny. At the time we went in, I didn’t know if Hussein possessed WMD, but along with Kennedy, Kerry and the Clintons, I was pretty confident he did. However, I didn’t need that as an excuse to do the right thing. If Hussein didn’t possess the weaponry, so much the better, because it would mean he couldn’t unleash them on our soldiers. To me, it was enough that he was a brutal tyrant; a menace to the entire Middle East; a man who sent $25,000 in blood money to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers; and someone who, unlike the despots in Iran and North Korea, had lost a war, signed a peace treaty and then, thanks to the corrupt and gutless member states of the U.N., ignored its provisions with impunity.
As I say, I was in favor of invading Iraq whether or not Hussein was funding research on a nuclear bomb for many of the same reasons I would have been predisposed to invading Nazi Germany in the 1930s and getting rid of Adolf Hitler, even if I’d been unaware that Werner von Braun and his band of elves were working on the V-2 rocket.
For all the faults that people find with President Bush, a few of which even I acknowledge, his determination to bring democracy to a part of the world where it’s almost as rare as a ham sandwich convinces me that history -- at least history written by the politically unbiased -- will judge him favorably.
None of this should be taken to mean that I don’t take the deaths of our men and women as seriously as do those on the left. No decent person can read the statistics and be unmoved. A roll call of the names of those decent human beings, young people for the most part, their innocent lives cut tragically short, is enough to bring tears to the eyes of even the staunchest conservative.
Knowing that recently, in a single month, nearly 40 Americans were killed in just one city, 400 in a single year, is reason enough for me to join with my fellow Americans in a heart-felt plea: “For God’s sake, Mr. President, please bring home the troops….from Detroit.” (Burt Prelutsky/TownHall.com 1/7/06)
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We Have Lost The War In New Orleans, DC, And Detroit
Posted
By:
Caxy
on 6/6/2006 7:56:22 AM
IRAQ IS SAFER THAN MANY MAJOR U.S. CITIES RUN BY DEMOCRATS...
"Looking at the U.S. troop death rate, from all causes, it's clear that Iraq is far safer than most of our major cities.
Two thousand plus deaths is not a small number, but it must be seen in perspective. The annualized death rate, from all causes, of American troops in Iraq is a small fraction of the murder rates alone in most major U.S. cities.
Public support for the war in Iraq has declined, almost entirely because of the daily pounding of American casualty statistics by the liberal news media. When the death total recently passed 2,000, we were treated to an eruption of protest demonstrations, editorials, and speeches.
Senators Ted Kennedy (the hero of Chappaquiddick) and John Kerry (who, in case you have forgotten, served in Vietnam), along with Representative John Murtha (who used to be claimed by Marines as one of them), have proclaimed that we're mired in a losing war in Iraq and/or that our troops must be withdrawn very soon, if not immediately.
In no way to minimize the importance of every death, Iraqi and American, at the hands of Islamic thugs, let's put the numbers into perspective.
In the 33 months since the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, our average number of troops in Iraq has been roughly 167,800. That number is based upon published reports that we had 130,000 troops initially and raised the total to 180,00 in November, 2003.
Using the average number of troops, we can calculate the annual death rate per 1,000 troops at 4.66. Remember that number includes deaths from accidents, roadside IEDs, direct enemy fire, and suicide bombers. Moreover, the monthly numbers of deaths have been declining since the start of the war, so the 33-month average is higher than the latest monthly rates.
Let's compare that rate to 2002 murder rates, the latest I can find on the internet:
Murders per 1,000 population:
New Orleans--------53.1
Washington, DC---45.8
Detroit--------------42.0
New York City-------7.5
Seattle---------------4.5
U.S. troops, all causes:
Iraq------------------4.7
If we are to accept the logic of liberal-Progressive politicians and media pundits, we must pull out of Iraq because we can't win. Using that same logic, we should disband all of our big-city police forces, because murders keep happening, at a far higher rate than the death toll in Iraq, no matter what the police do." (Thomas E. Brewton/nodnc.com 12/23/05)
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