Iraq Statistic
Regardless of where you stand on the issue of the U.S. involvement in Iraq , here is a sobering statistic:
There has been a monthly average of 160,000 troops in the Iraq theatre of operations during the last 22 months, and a total of 2,867 deaths. That gives a
firearm death rate of 60 per 100,000 soldiers.
The firearm death rate in Washington D.C. is 80.6 per 100,000 persons for the same period. That means that you are about 25% more likely to be shot and killed in the U.S. Capital than you are in Iraq.
Conclusion: The U.S. should pull out of Washington.
1 comment:
This "Iraq Statistic" is neither a statistic nor is it Political Humor. This "sobering statistic" is "logically flawed" and greatly diminishes the risk to which US ground troops are exposed every day in Iraq.
The "Iraq Statistic" writer attempts to compare the MONTHLY death rate of military personnel per 100,000 troops in Iraq to the ANNUAL murder rate per 100,000 inhabitants in Washington, DC. Does anyone see a flaw in this argument???
I pulled up some stats for the number of military fatalities and the number of ground troops in Iraq from March 2003 to September 2007. The highest number of military deaths for any 22-month period since the war began was the most recent 22 months from Nov-05 through Aug-07, in which 1,810 died. During that period, there was an average of 145,000 US ground troops in Iraq. This gives a death rate of 56.86 military deaths per month per 100,000 troops deployed, or 682 military deaths per year per 100,000 troops deployed.
In 2005, the most recent year that I could find statistics for, the District of Columbia had 195 murders and a population of 550,521 for a murder rate of 35.4 per 100,000 inhabitants per year. The highest rate between 1960 and 2005 was 80.6 murders per 100,000 inhabitants in 1991. This was 16 years ago, but is the statistic being quoted here as being current.
Even if the writer's facts were correct and logic was correct (not comparing months to years), his math is still wrong, 80.6 is 34% more than 60.
HERE IS THE SOBERING STATISTIC!!!
The average GI on the ground in Iraq is over 19 times more likely to die in Iraq than the average Washingtonian from murder in DC.
Let's not diminish the risk that our troops are exposed to every day in Iraq. The safest place for US troops is at home in the USA, even if they live in Washington, DC. US Military deaths in Iraq now number more than 3,780.
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