I. Shaw McElhinney quotes Rush Limbaugh on the violent death rate in Iraq. If you were to rely only on the impression given by the mainstream media, you would believe that Iraq is the deadliest place in the world. Certainly, the number of terrorist attacks that kill innocent bystanders, local security forces, and coalition soldiers is bad, but is the worst? Not by a long shot.
According to [Rep. Steve King of Iowa], 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. 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. [Rush Limbaugh]
Technorati Tags:crime, Iraq, politics
bk_keywords:Iraq, insurgents, terrorism, Rush Limbaugh.
Sorry, but I’m not taking Inter Press Service’s word for it. Nor am I taking antiwar.com or icasualties.org.
The byline on the IPS story says “by Brian Conley” followed by “with Isam Rashid.” Do you know what the generally means. It probably means that, like most Western reporters in Baghdad, Conley files his reports from the hotel where all the reporters stay based on reports fed to him by stringers like Rashid.
I’ll admit that Rep. King’s number quoted by Limbaugh may be suspect too. After all, neither Limbaugh’s site nor the original source for the quote from King say where he got the numbers. But I’m more inclined to think that a member of Congress got a reliable number.
After all Conley’s/Rashid’s numbers are estimations based on whispered and hurried claims by anonymous and scared morgue employees about death squads and executions.
Just because you can’t believe it doesn’t mean it isn’t true. Can you offer evidence for your assertions to counter King’s numbers or is your gut-feeling all you have to go on?
What are the numbers if King is wrong?
Why don’t we hear about the deaths in Bosnia? Are their none? Why isn’t there a hew and cry about redeploying our troops currently serving there? Weren’t they supposed to be there only for one year?
Could it be that because Clinton decided to intervene in the former Yugoslavia that criticism of this deployment is off the table?
Isn’t it about time that South Korea handle their own self-defense after 50+ years? Oh, right, a Democrat president sent our troops there.
I agree with what Charles has so clearly explained. I would add that Iraq is still not as urbanized a country as the US so the violent death rate is in general going to be much lower compared to the United States, which has a violent death rate generally an order of magnitude higher than other countries of similar demographic composition and political stability.
I live in New York and Vermont. the death rate is much much higher in New York, yet I do not in any way feel unsafe in New York
I was thinking that we could take a collection up and allow Rush limbaugh to repeatedly visit new York, and Iraq and wander around exploring and see which place he gets killed in first. Of course to make it scientific we would have to do the same thing for a statistically significant number of people who believe it is safer in Iraq than New York
Quickly in response to M. McC
on website http://www.aiipowmia.com/other/hostilechron.html
there have been no US military casualties in Bosnia. Although The New york times noted 2 non combat deaths and one from a mine ( that might be counted as a combat death)