This never gets old baby...

Florida and California vs Iraq

http://victorhanson.com/articles/hanson041206.html

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,20716640-1702,00.htm

What is disingenuous about it? This isn't a before and after story for the Lancet, it is a story comparing the murder rate in Iraq for the year 2006 to the murder rate in some American cities from years gone by. Since we have the claimed number of deaths and the high number was used plus a good guess of the population of the country and it equals 56.49 per 100,000 residents, you could take those numbers and compare them to any place in the world with the same population. Doing so I suspect that you would discover that there are many places in the world that are much more violent than Iraq was in 2006.

I wish that the so called "liberals of peace" would compare these numbers to those in countries like Venezuela, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Somalia, Ethiopia and even Cuba.

The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price,
peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of
soft living, and the get-rich-quick theory of life.

Theodore Roosevelt

Please excuse me if I didn't smell the sarcasm in your posting...

That's quite a disingenuous use of statistics. You don't mention the death rate prior to the war, which it should be compared to, NOT american crime rates.

And the MSM isn't being disingenous about their number reporting? I feel that if Iraq's death rates are lower in WARTIME than DC's death rates are in PEACETIME, it speaks volumes about the disservice the MSM provides our lemming-based population. Is it possible that if Saddam's death squads were still on the loose, their peacetime rates might be higher than they are now?

When you start abusing statistics like that, what's to keep one from pointing out that in the history of the US there have been fewer than 3500 deaths to terrorism but over 3000 people die EACH YEAR from fires. Statistically, shouldn't we be spending billions more in fire prevention rather than terrorism?

Spend billions on fire prevention? I suppose we may already do that, but I'd rather spend that kind of money elsewhere... Hmmm... Maybe we should spend it on our national borders? Read this GAO report (PDF, new window) for some scary numbers - 55K illegal immigrants in federal prisons, 8 arrests each, 13 crimes each (I believe all within the year 2003). Perhaps 3,000 die annually to fires in our country, but to see how many Americans have been murdered by illegals, you'll have to read page 22 of the report. Put down the matches, and do the math.

And thanks, Tom, for posting this. I plan to share it with many of my MSM-brainwashed friends...

Sorry, kafkakaefer, I basically repeated what you said below. Should have read all the posts before going off.

Kaf, read my comment comparing ALL of NYC in 1990 to ALL or Iraq in 2006, cool your jets, and mellow on the insults.

Certain sections of the Bronx and Harlem in 1990 were likely pretty close to as dangerous as, if not more dangerous than, certain sections of Baghdad in 2006. And it may even be that the violence was more random and spontaneous in the NYC neighborhoods, meaning that the chance of getting killed where you are NOT the intended target in Baghdad could (emphasis could) conceivably be lower.

You might be right about that, but as another poster noted we should consider the death rate of the country prior to the war for comparison, i.e. under Saddam's rule.  Feel free to correct my figures but I understand there were approx. 300,000 Iraqis murdered by Saddam's henchmen over the 20 some years of his "leadership".  That would be 15,000 people a year on average, so roughly the death rates are the same now as prior to Saddam's deposing. 

The point is this, for the average Iraqi, the fear of being indiscriminately killed has not changed.  However, there is one significant difference in this calculation of death, hope of a better tomorrow, whereas under Saddam there was no hope of things ever getting better. 

“The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.” – Marcus Aurelius

BTW if American cities are so dangerous (the most dangerous in the
developed world) why isn't the president sending more troops into these
cities?

Look if you're going to come here and argue politics with Americans, you should, at least, learn something about the US and its constitution.

There's a very good reason why a US President cannot use his military as policemen on US soil.

But I can't be bothered to tell you.

Here's a clue. It begins with Posse - and it don't involve the Lone Ranger or the James Gang.

Proud member of the all-powerful and vast militarist/industrialist/capitalist/zionist-bagelist complex

Ever heard of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878?

Those damned details, huh?

I wonder if you have read my posts word for word. For example, my post RIGHT BEFORE YOURS discusses the MURDER RATE PER 100,000 IN THE US.

What I (and evidently others) are saying is you can't compare a country to a city. If you want to talk about Iraq, compare it to the entire US. If you want to talk about NYC, compare it to Bagdad. How many of those 16,000+ violent deaths occured in Bagdad?

Here's some additional info:

http://www.inblogs.net/rpayne/2006/08/its-good-to-be-king.html

National rate: Iraq 27 (by King's count); US 4
Capital rate: Baghdad 100; Washington, DC 35

"for starters"

You obviously didn't look at the comment I made that compared NYC as if a country (7.3 million peeps at the time) to Iraq the country. Iraq is at war and it had twice the violent death rate as NYC (maybe less, as there are forms of violent death other than murder that may have taken place in NYC, but the Iraq number appears from the AP's report text to be ALL-inclusive).

Someone who has a handle on Baghdad vs rest of country did a post here:
http://gatewaypundit...

So Baghdad's very dangerous, but the rest of the country's rate (17 per thou) is pretty low, I would guess lower than some US states; in fact it's about triple the US rate of 5.6 per 100 thou.

The "amusing" thing to me about all of this is that the AP's numbers originally appeared in dispatches about Hussein's execution, and were very quickly pulled (I know this because the Google News listing would refer to them, but the linked stories didn't have them). The casualty figures were moved into a separate short story like the one I linked. Why? Can't prove anything, but I believe that if it were widely known how relatively small the death and casualty numbers are in comparison to, say, Vietnam, the hoopla and hysteria would be seen for what it is -- hoopla and hysteria. So they were moved to a place less likely to be read.

Your reference to the discredited and laughable Lancet Journal report makes discussing other matters a waste of time. What 655 thou? Yeah, right. Even the Iraq Body Count people can't handle the horsecrap Lancet did.