Which is Worse. Washington D.C. or Iraq ?
John Hinderaker, one of the guys at Powerline, has posted some interesting statistics on the casualties in Iraq.
...the violent death rate in Iraq is lower than that in a number of American cities, including Washington, D.C. And, while the terrorists have killed far too many innocent Iraqis, civilian deaths in Iraq from 2003 to the present are only one-sixth the civilian deaths in Iraq during the period from 1988 to 1991. (So much for being "better off under Saddam.")
Here's the money quote.
A total of 2,471 servicemembers have died in Iraq from 2003 to the present, a period of a little over three years. That total is almost exactly one third of the number of military personnel who died on active duty from 1980 to 1982, a comparable time period when no wars were being fought. Until very recently, our armed forces lost servicemen at a greater rate than we have experienced in Iraq, due solely to accidental death.
The article referenced is at How Bad is Iraq ?. Click the links here and give Powerline a read.
Gatewaypundit has much more on the same subject with charts and links. The article is here at So, How Bad Are Things in Iraq Really?. Drop by, follow the links, and don't forget to read the comments. In blogging, comments are where it's at. Much good information is offered by the commentors. Sometimes you have to wade through some garbage to get to the good stuff but, that's blogging.
Newsmax is a news service that can be a bit over the top on some things but I think this is a good article on the same subject.
"I began to ask myself the question, if you were a civilian in Iraq, how could you tolerate that level of violence," he said. "What really is the level of violence?"
Using Pentagon statistics cross-checked with independent research, King (Rep. Steve King, R-IA - Larry) said he came up with an annualized Iraqi civilian death rate of 27.51 per 100,000.
While that number sounds high - astonishingly, the Iowa Republican discovered that it's significantly lower than a number of major American cities, including the nation's capital.
"It's 45 violent deaths per 100,000 in Washington, D.C.," King told Crowley (Monica Crowley of Westwood one radio - Larry).
Other American cities with higher violent civilian death rates than Iraq include:
# Detroit - 41.8 per 100,000
# Baltimore - 37.7 per 100,000
# Atlanta - 34.9 per 100,000
# St. Louis - 31.4 per 100,000
The American city with the highest civilian death rate was New Orleans before Katrina - with a staggering 53.1 deaths per 100,000 - almost twice the death rate in Iraq.
The whole article is Iraq Less Violent than Washington, D.C.. Just click on the link.
---Larry Everett
4 Comments:
According to a right wing pundit in the pro-war Wall Street Journal, you are a complete idiot.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110008392
The figure for Iraq, then, is not the "violent death rate"; it is only the rate of violent death from war. (The equivalent figure for the other countries and cities presumably would be zero.) To arrive at a "violent death rate" for Iraq, we would to add in the civil homicide rate...
Furthermore, even if war deaths in Iraq vs. civil homicides elsewhere were a valid comparison, the King figures are a lowball estimate of the former. That's because the numerator--the number of Iraqi "civilian" deaths--excludes soldiers and policemen. But civil homicide rates do include policemen and soldiers murdered in the line of duty--as several hundred of them were on 9/11.
In addition, the comparison with U.S. cities poses a problem of scale. Just as some municipalities here have high concentrations of crime, Baghdad and some other Iraqi cities have high concentrations of military, guerrilla and terrorist activity. A comparison of Baghdad with Los Angeles or a similarly sprawling U.S. city would be more enlightening than a comparison of Iraq as a whole with cities of well under a million people.
Why try to make any sense of these silly attempts of math-deficient bloggers to lie with statistics anyway?
For a dose of reality about the safety of Iraq, just click the Iraq The Model link on the left-hand side of this page and read the following -- written recently by an Iraqi who's actually there, experiencing the relative safety of Iraq. Keep in mind that he's linked by this page -- he's been a strong supporter of the war all along.
"One friend told me the other day that "Iraq is no longer a place for civilians like us, let politicians, militias and soldiers settle their accounts but I am leaving indefinitely". I don't know what to tell these people; I can't advise them to stay and risk their lives with all the violence happening around and I feel sorry they are leaving, sorry for them and for the country; it's never easy for them to leave the place where they were born and had lived their entire life to go start from zero in a place where they'll be total strangers and at it's not possible to build a country without people but at the same time, you can't help your country when you are dead or living in fear all the time."
And while you're at it, check out "Healing Iraq", also to the left. Here's a recent post about how safe it is in Iraq:
"Sorry for the unannounced absence. I had some troubles getting online (still have actually) and, now that summer is here, the electricity situation is worse than ever with less than 4 hours of power a day - and only 2 per day for the last 3 days or so. The deteriorating situation in my neighbourhood is always a very convenient excuse for local generator owners to provide less hours of power (but heaven forbid if someone is late on paying their monthly subscription fee).
It hasn't been very pretty in Adhamiya since my last post. The district looks deserted most of the time, with random gunfire here and there. American Apache helicopters circle the area almost non-stop, and residents are whispering to each other about an imminent assault, as part of the American plan to 'liberate' Baghdad again. But to liberate it from whom? Its residents?
I'm on the verge of quitting my job. I haven't been to work for about a month now and I told my boss flat out on the phone that I wouldn't dare make the 20-30 kms trip to work for the time being. I can't even put my nose out of my doorstep for fuck's sake. Sometimes I'm really amazed that the state still continues to function at all.
Here is a nice shot of yesterday's car bomb explosion between the Ibn Al-Haitham college and Saddam's former palace in Adhamiya: (photo here)
And this is a blurry shot of the Oil ministry fire that broke out about a week ago. Funny that the event did not even register in the news. The fire actually engulfed two floors, the accounts and records floors to be exact. Rumour among Oil ministry employees is that the fire - which went on for over 2 hours - was intentional, apparently to cover up some major corruption scandal. Hardly surprising to hear that. The employees were also told that they should not expect their salaries for some time, since all records were puff, gone. (photo here)"
Or how about Hammorabi, also posted to the left:
"Iraq is dying and sinking in a bath of blood, killing, corruption and mischief. This is not conspiracy but reality existed every day and night."
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