Iraq propoganda email

Eric5273 · #1 10-13-2007, 03:41 PM

I don't know if any of you received this email, but a friend forwarded it to me today:

Subject: This really says it all!!!!!!!!!!!!

Regardless of where you stand on the issue of the U.S. involvement in Iraq, here's 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

It sounds pretty crazy, but I figured it was probably correct until I started to do the math in my head. Here is what I wrote back to her:

Assuming your numbers for Iraq are correct, 2867 killed out of 160,000 is a total death rate of 1792 per 100,000 over the entire period. Divide that by 22 months and you have a monthly death rate of 81.4 per 100,000 persons, not 60.

As for the Washington numbers, in 2006 there were 169 people murdered in Washington DC out of a total population of 581,530. That calculates to a total death rate of 29.06 deaths per 100,000 for the entire year. Divide that by 12 months in the year, and you have a monthly death rate of 2.42 per 100,000 persons.
(Source: http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/dccrime.htm)

So the real numbers are:

Iraq: 81.4 per 100,000

Washington DC: 2.42, per 100,000

So you are 33 times more likely to be murdered in Iraq than in Washington DC.

I wouldn't be shocked if this one is listed somewhere on Snopes, but I didn't check. It really is crazy the progoganda and lies that people will spread to sell this war to the public.