Posted on 05/16/2006 1:07:48 PM PDT by UB355
It's that time of year when New Yorkers start making their summer vacation plans. Renting a place in the Hamptons? Nah, been there, done that. How about a Parisian jaunt? Noooo. Too many riots. Well, how about visiting a country that's ancient, historic, beautiful and exotic - Iraq? Sure, there's a little war going on there, but when you look at the violent death statistics in the world, it's safer than a number of other popular travel destinations. Believe it or not.
I happened to catch Rep. Steve King, a Republican of Iowa, on C-span last week and he rattled off some startling figures that demonstrate how off-base journalists are when it comes to reporting on the war in Iraq. According to Mr. King, the violent death rate in Iraq is 25.71 per 100,000. That may sound high, but not when you compare it to places like Colombia (61.7), South Africa (49.6), Jamaica (32.4), and Venezuela (31.6). How about the violent death rates in American cities? New Orleans before Hurricane Katrina was 53.1. FBI statistics for 2004-05 have Washington at 45.9, Baltimore at 37.7, and Atlanta at 34.9.
(Excerpt) Read more at nysun.com ...
Spring Break, Iraq style!
Stupid straw man argument.
Until the US Military is deployed in the mentioned American cities, that's a dumb stat. to use.
As for U.S. cities, it's just not fair to include locations controlled by Democrats.
Going to Baghdad would be 100% terrorist-on-American. And they wouldn't even shoot you for your wallet - no, they'd keep you around for a 'haircut'.
Good points.
I think it makes the point that the situation in Iraq is not as dire as the media portrays. I don't think it was meant to be taken as a perfect parallel.
I think the idea that Iraq is a vacation paradise in the making was a bit tongue in cheek. The main point is to show Iraq is not nearly as violent nor the situation there as dire as the media portrays. I think it was merely meant to give some perspective and to provide a relative comparison. Clearly we do not have "civil war" in Iraq as some in the media claim when violent deaths are less than even those in Iraq than in your average large US city. That's the only point. I don't think she's actually giving travel advice.
One small aside...clearly any American walking the streets of Baghdad without an armed escort would over time become a terrorist target. But it must be pointed out the violence in Iraq is not 100% terrorist on American. No, indeed Iraqis have suffered the most casualties at the hands of terrorists, both civilian and military, than have Americans by far. Somewhere along the lines of 20,000-25,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed by the terrorists, and 6,000 Iraqi military and police personnel have also been KIA. So in reality Arab on Arab violence is probably close to the same percentage as black on black violence is in the cities the author of this article names.
Not really. The liberal nutjobs are saying things are so much worse over in Iraq since we got there. These stats show that things are better with our military there than they are here with the liberals running the show. (Notice that the cities mentioned are largely under liberal 'rule'.)
Yep, the media makes it seem like car bombs are going off on every corner. This refutes that.
While the mayor of Baltimore called Bush a terrorist because some 9-11 funds were being reduced, children in his own city were being beheaded.
Please don't confuse the U.S. media by giving them facts. It gives them a headache.
I'm not so sure considering that the bulk of urban city deaths are Males 16-25 YO killed by gunfire and are based on ethnic and territorial conflict (gang turf) issues. Sounds alot like Falluja to me.
Why? The stat is the number of violent deaths per 100,000 people, and it's being used as a gage of how dangerous it is to be in that area.
They're looking at how dangerous it is there now, not how dangerous it would be in a different circumstance.
Your argument is more of a Straw Man argument than theirs.
Interesting article. Too bad the congressman and 'journalist' aren't qualified to pass grade 4 math. Note, there are ~27 million Iraqis (CIA factbook). A violent deathrate of 25.71/1e5 works out to 7000 deaths a year. More Iraquis police and military alone, are killed than this number according to icasualties.org. This site shows media reports of violent deaths, which only includes politically motivated killings, not robberies, honour killings, etc., etc. has a violent death rate of 50/year. Only Columbia, with an active civil war, and highly recommended not to visit, has more total killings than politically motivated death in Iraq. (Note total population of Iraq also includes Kurdistan, where it is in fact safe and reasonable to travel, furher skewing the numbers.)
Just to add this statistic to my previous post, the violoent death rate for Americans in Iraq is probably close to 530.
130,000 military +20,000 civilians / 800 deaths.
(I pulled the civilian presense in IRAQ out of my ass, so I may be off by a bit but not a factor of 20)
ping
Is it really a "straw man" argument? I'll agree with you completely if the quoted Iraqi death rates do NOT include civilian deaths (e.g. Iraqi on Iraqi.....or should I say, Arab on Arab?). If the death rate numbers quoted for Iraq DO include those numbers............then there's nothing "straw man" about it.
What I find most interesting is the quoted rates for American cities; e.g. the percentage of black on black murder / mayhem (all of the mentioned cities have HEAVY black populations). This is one of the most under-reported stats in America due to political correctness.
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