Iraq: Lower civilian violent death rate than D.C.

[pizza]

Iraq: Safer Than D.C.
By Andrew Walden
FrontPageMagazine.com | June 1, 2006

Iraqi civilian death statistics complied by Rep. Steve King, R-IA, indicate that, contrary to the impression made on the evening news, Iraq actually has a lower civilian violent death rate than Washington, D.C., and pre-Katrina New Orleans. Iraq is also substantially safer than several foreign countries. After seeing media coverage of Iraqi violence King said: “I began to ask myself the question, if you were a civilian in Iraq, how could you tolerate that level of violence. What really is the level of violence?”

King calculates an annualized Iraqi civilian death rate of 27.5 per 100,000 based on U.S. military and independent statistical sources.

The remnants of Saddam’s socialist dictatorship in alliance with al-Qaeda are still able to kill Iraqi civilians in sufficient numbers so that their leftist allies in the U.S. can get the video footage they need to blame Bush—but fewer than they killed under Saddam.

As American leftists pretend to decry violence in Iraq, they celebrate the rise of Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez. Pro-surrender activist Cindy Sheehan appeared with Chavez January 29. On the stage at the “World Social Forum” in Caracas, Sheehan noted that singer and activist Harry Belafonte recently called Bush “the greatest terrorist in the world,” and said, “I agree with him. George Bush is responsible for killing tens of thousands of innocent people.” Chavez encouraged Sheehan to run for President of the U.S. and he announced that Sheehan would again be protesting in Crawford, TX.

Ironically, Venezuela has 31.5 violent deaths per 100,000 –14.5 percent higher than Iraq. It is Chavez who is responsible for “killing tens of thousands of innocent people.” The son of a recent Venezuelan murder victim explains, “The president is always saying it's OK to steal in order to eat.”

Chavez often provides justification for violence in his speeches: “The rich are condemned to Hell. Christ himself condemned them. I say it from the heart: to be rich is evil.”

The world’s hand-wringing ‘humanitarians’ should demand that Chavez make Venezuela as safe as President Bush has made Iraq—or face impeachment by the Venezuelan Congress.

Venezuela is not alone in suffering at the hands of left-wing dictators or wannabe dictators: Columbia, hounded by leftist narco-guerrillas, every year looses 61.7 of its citizens to violence per every 100,000.

South Africa, led by an increasingly corrupt African National Congress looses 49.6 per 100,000 to violent deaths every year. In Jamaica—ruled for decades by the socialist People’s National Party—it is 32.4.

In Russia, as the Soviet system disintegrated, the count of violent deaths—outside the Gulags—soared. In 1998 there were 30.6 homicides per 100,000 population. Three years after end of Saddam’s socialist dictatorship Iraq is actually more peaceful than was Russia seven years after the end of socialist USSR.

But high murder rates are not limited to overseas leftist-ruled countries. In the American urban centers—where African-American loyalty to leftist Democrat politicians is ‘rewarded’ with dependency creating social programs—levels of violence top Iraq and Venezuela.

In Washington, D.C., it is 45.9 violent deaths per 100,000. This means civilians living in Washington D.C.—home to many leftist operatives who spend all day scheming to undermine President Bush’s efforts in Iraq—are 63.5 percent less safe than Iraqi civilians.

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

They are all overwhelmingly Democratic.

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. With no sense of irony, corrupt Louisiana Democrats blame Bush for the Katrina disaster.

What about an accounting for the disaster created by Louisiana Democrat corruption over the decades?

New Orleans’ is represented by a typical Democrat dependency plantation overseer, Congressman William Jefferson, D-LA. Jefferson will likely soon be indicted for accepting bribes after FBI agents found $90,000 in cash stuffed in his freezer. He is so far refusing to step down from the House Ways and Means Committee or resign from Congress.

In his response to the President’s State of the Union speech, Jefferson complains about the rebuilding of New Orleans saying: “We need to be at the top of this nation's priorities, not at the bottom.” While President Bush was dispatching Lt. General Russel Honore and the National Guard to evacuate people and clean up the post-Katrina mess, Jefferson made it clear what was at the top of his agenda. According to an ABC News report, Jefferson used two heavy National Guard trucks, a rescue helicopter and several National Guard soldiers for over an hour while he went back into his house to retrieve “a laptop computer, three suitcases and a box about the size of a small refrigerator.” (Or is that a freezer?)

Under William Jefferson and the rest of Louisiana’s corrupt Democrats, New Orleans’ pre-Katrina citizens were 93 percent more likely to suffer a violent death than Iraqi citizens are today. Americans should demand that Democrat politicians stop meddling overseas and make their parts of our country as safe as President Bush has made Iraq.


http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Re ... p?ID=22716

[Ralph]

What good news!

[pizza]

What good news!

Not if you're in D.C.

[Werner]

WHETHER YOU'RE IN dc OR ANYWHERE ON THE iNTERNET - YOU NEED A SANITATION DEPARTMENT TO CLEAR UP THIS KIND OF GARBAGE.

WHO WOULD WRITE THIS SORT OF DRIVEL, OR DISTRIBUTE IT?

[pizza]

I understand how the truth hurts your leftist sensibilities, Werner. When you regain your composure and if you have an intelligent response concerning comparative percentages of violent civilian deaths per 100,000 population, let's hear it.

To answer your question, here is a sample of the author's work. Enjoy!

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/au ... sp?ID=3255

[Werner]

A propaganda hodgepodge of Hugo Chavez, Wiliam Jefferson, Cindy Sheehan (how the manage to capitalize on that poor woman's sad reaction to her loss), the collapse of the Soviet Union, and other tidbits thrown into the mix along with some statistics inspiring no particular confidence cannot camouflage the deceit, delusion, and incompetence that got us where we are today.

[Corlyss_D]

WHETHER YOU'RE IN dc OR ANYWHERE ON THE iNTERNET - YOU NEED A SANITATION DEPARTMENT TO CLEAR UP THIS KIND OF GARBAGE.

WHO WOULD WRITE THIS SORT OF DRIVEL, OR DISTRIBUTE IT?

I know. Rampant perspective tends to contextualize Bush and Iraq so that the Riches and Krugmans look like the ignorant rabble-rousers they are.

[Corlyss_D]

In Washington, D.C., it is 45.9 violent deaths per 100,000. This means civilians living in Washington D.C.—home to many leftist operatives who spend all day scheming to undermine President Bush’s efforts in Iraq—are 63.5 percent less safe than Iraqi civilians.

Note my signature.

[Donald Isler]

This shows how desperate the right is to show us that our effort in Iraq is a big success. Hardly anyone will fall for it. I'll believe it when our resident right-wingers tell us they're taking their families to Baghdad rather than to Washington DC for a vacation because they feel safer there.

[Corlyss_D]

Hardly anyone will fall for it.

People who read only the NYT don't know jack about what's going on.

[jbuck919]

I wonder if it's occurred to anyone else that this was a Republican congressman who could get his staff to come up with a finding that no one was killed in WW II if that's what he asked them to do.

[Donald Isler]

Corlyss,

I may go to Washington this summer to visit family and friends. Do you think I'd be safer in Baghdad? Want to meet me there??

[Werner]

I'd say you two should meet - but time and place TBD.

As as for the poor readers of the right wing sheets, no wonder they're deluded.

[Corlyss_D]

I wonder if it's occurred to anyone else that this was a Republican congressman who could get his staff to come up with a finding that no one was killed in WW II if that's what he asked them to do.

So what about the truth exactly flummoxes you and Werner so? We already know that no one on the left really cares about the American military lives because every chance they get they gut the military. So what exactly gets you so spun up? Oh, yes. I forgot. The left is not in power. When the Democratic president and most Democratic Congressmen and Senators voted that Saddam should be removed from his throne, what was that? A cheer for the opposition in Iraq? A request for a favor from Iran??? Or did they think that should be done only if no one actually did it?

[jbuck919]

I wonder if it's occurred to anyone else that this was a Republican congressman who could get his staff to come up with a finding that no one was killed in WW II if that's what he asked them to do.

So what about the truth exactly flummoxes you and Werner so? We already know that no one on the left really cares about the American military lives because every chance they get they gut the military. So what exactly gets you so spun up? Oh, yes. I forgot. The left is not in power. When the Democratic president and most Democratic Congressmen and Senators voted that Saddam should be removed from his throne, what was that? A cheer for the opposition in Iraq? A request for a favor from Iran??? Or did they think that should be done only if no one actually did it?

Even if all of this was a fair statement of the facts, it still wouldn't make any difference, because these kinds of figures are the equivalent of gerrymandering. Washington has an unconscionably high murder rate but it is related to ghetto living which is still prevalent there. (That is a scandal, and is what we might really be talking about instead of this senseless comparison.) Violent death in Iraq is also, presumably, somewhat localized, and who cares how nationwide it compares with the figures for a (geographically) small city with a relatively huge area plagued by mostly drug-related crime?

I actually put off posting here because, believe it or not, I don't go around trying to find any bit of questionable evidence to support a "liberal" position on the War in Iraq. But I can't sit still forever while the opposite is being done without intellectual justification.

[Holden Fourth]

Where is the actual data to support this load of drivel. All we have is a set of figures that seem to have been magically pulled out of midair. I, too, can write a report and throw in a supposed calculation to back up my theories but that does nothing to prove its veracity. I have neither left nor right leaning tendencies but this piece of highly coloured crap tends to support my belief in the low standards of western journalism.

[Werner]

Well, Holden, we're evidently agreed on the definition of this piece of garbage - but I do beliueve you're hard on Western jounalism as a whole.

The perpetrators of this nonsense are not representative of Western Journalism, but its dregs. For truth and balance I'll still stick with the proven gold standard - the maligned Mainstream Media.

[Corlyss_D]

Violent death in Iraq is also, presumably, somewhat localized, and who cares how nationwide it compares with the figures for a (geographically) small city with a relatively huge area plagued by mostly drug-related crime?

The Legislative Princes, whose staffs get shot up by accident from time to time.

But I can't sit still forever while the opposite is being done without intellectual justification.

It's about proportionality of the MSM/liberal obsession with the body count.

[Ralph]

I am terrified when in D.C. Every car and bus that passes me can blow up sending me to oblivion.

[Lilith]

This thread is nothing new- just another example of Pizza Rubbish.

[BWV 1080]

- the comparison of violent death rates of the whole country of Iraq to a few localities in the US is rubbish. What is the violent death rate of Karbala compared to DC?

- the comparisons to post-Aparthied South Africa, post communist USSR are legitimate (assuming the statistics are accurate). One could imagine how constant reports of acts of violence in South Africa could be spun to support an agenda arguing that abandoning Aparthied was a mistake.

- Any superficial review of history would have shown that the odds of Iraq going through a period of violence, if not outright civil war after the removal of Saddam were pretty high. It is hard to come up with an example of a country, particularly one with multiple ethnic and religous groups, that did not have a full-blown civil war after the removal of an authoritarian regime (look at India, Yugoslavia, Zaire / Congo, Lebanon, China etc.). The difficult question is whether Iraq is better off now or under Saddam. If one uses body counts as the sole metric on whether a particular regime change was a good thing or not, one could easily argue against dismantling Apartheid, Britain granting India independence etc. Iraq had absolutely no hope of a better future under Saddam, now they do.

[Corlyss_D]

Where is the actual data to support this load of drivel. All we have is a set of figures that seem to have been magically pulled out of midair.

I'll write to King's office and see what they have to back it up. I've been successful in such queries before. However, unless you are a wonk given to late nights with tomes like the Statistical Abstract of the US, you probably wouldn't believe them any more than you do King. It's not the figures that arrest readers; it's the relationship of the figures that raise eyebrows.

I, too, can write a report and throw in a supposed calculation to back up my theories but that does nothing to prove its veracity.

Then you will become rich and famous like the Freakonomics author, about whose conclusions I rased the same issue last year. I hope you won't forget us when you are summering in Switzerland and wintering in Palm Springs.

I have neither left nor right leaning tendencies

This is good to know. There's hope for you yet.