Truth and Lies in E-mail

I got one of those e-mails today that tried to justify staying in Iraq. While I agree that we should stay, I don't support the use of fuzzy math to pull the wool over peoples' eyes. Here's the e-mail I received:

Subject: STATISTICS

Interesting thought for the day: - Gotta love the logic.

If you consider that there have been average of 160,000 troops in the Iraq theater of operations during the last 22 months, and a total of 2112 deaths, that gives a firearm death rate of 60 per 100,000.

The rate in Washington D.C. is 80.6 per 100,000. That means that you are about 25% more likely to be shot and killed in our Nation's Capitol, which has some of the strictest gun control laws in the nation, than you are in Iraq.

Conclusion: We should immediately pull out of Washington D.C

In God We Trust

(All typos from the original)

It doesn't take a genius to see this was rapidly thrown together by someone who didn't care to check statistics. The given numbers show not the firearm death rate for Iraq, but the overall death rate including accidents. Even then, if you do the division you'll find the stated numbers come out to 1320 per 100,000 over the 22 month period, or 720 per 100,000 over a one-year period.

Of course, it's not fair to add in the non-combat deaths, nor is it really fair to include deaths from the "major combat" phase of operations. After all, we're trying to compare the cost of supporting peace and democracy in Iraq, not the cost of the overall war. We can't change the past, but we can consider the future. So how many Soldiers are dying in Iraq from combat?

According to casualties.org, a mildly anti-war site, there have been 1,604 hostile deaths since the end of major combat, a period of 141 weeks (April 9th 2003 through Dec 17th 2005). And although the number of troops was higher during major combat, and there has been talk of increasing troops strengths back up, the baseline for US troops in Iraq has been 138,000. So, when I do the math I get a hostile death rate of 428.65 per 100,000 troops, per year.

You may have seen statistics that the DC area saw a record 466 homicides last year. Of course, that's the DC area -- Washington DC itself saw a slight decline last year, with only 194 homicides. With a population of 572,000, Washington has a homicide rate of 33.92 per 100,000 residents, per year.

Net result: Your odds of being shot during a one-year tour of duty in Iraq are approximately ten times your odds of being shot in Washington DC during the same time period. A man who lives in Washington DC his entire life, therefore, is far more likely to be killed than a Soldier who deploys to Iraq for a year.

Of course, we can fudge the numbers further if we get into squishy math. Most of the Soldiers deployed to Iraq are men, aged 18-25. The vast majority of homicides in DC are men in the same age group, but our death rate has factored in little children and old ladies. But I'm not trying to split hairs or reach a magic number. I just want to illustrate, without making up numbers, that Iraq is not the den of death that Zarqawi wants Americans to think it is. It's not Vietnam, where in 1968, the death rate was roughly 2894.74 per 100,000 Soldiers, per year.

Oh, and in case you think it's time to leave Washington, Marion Barry was robbed today, at gunpoint. What do you think he did? According to the Washington Post, this was his statement:

"To this young man who did this to me, I have no animosity," Barry said. "I don't even want you prosecuted. I love you. Give yourself up. Call the police. Let them know that you engage in these activities. I will do all to advocate non-prosecution."

Labels: dc, iraq

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