Sherri Byrand column: Figures don't lie: Iraq is a very unsafe place

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.sheboygan-press.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060924/SHE07/609240337/1109/SHEopinion


I just met with an Iraq war veteran I've known for the last four years. We hugged as we did on his return, with my arms trying hard to show how much I appreciated him. We've talked briefly about how proud he is of his service, and rightly so. We've talked about how glad he is to be home alive, that he knows it could easily have been otherwise. He mentioned the soldier from Two Rivers recently killed, of his sister knowing that kid's grandma, of the loss and despair felt all around.

We talked about his taking his son to his first day of school, lamenting how big the boy's gotten and then realizing how lucky he is there to hold hands in the first place. "I'm so glad I've got two arms to hold my son with, two legs to walk him to school with …" he told me today.

And he told me today how he was, like me, ticked about some misinformation being spread.

It started with Rep. Steve King of Iowa and has made the rounds with Rush Limbaugh and more, all reporting that Iraq is safer than Washington, D.C.

Well, Iraq is a country and D.C. is a city, but that's the least of the problems one finds with this fallacious comparison.

[Journeyman]

1. Even Byrand's comparisons are fallacious. . .

She compares overall numbers and death rates per 100,000, when a truer comparison -- at least in regards the US involvement -- is to look at these numbers in terms of law enforcement.

Here's how I describe Iraq to those who see it as "less dangerous than (such and such city or region in the US)" . . .

Iraq is approximately the same geographic size as California, has roughly the same population (25 million), and about the same number of foreign troops as California has law enforcement (~150,000). For the past three years, the foreign occupation troops (that would be US) have functioned as the law within Iraq.

Would anyone in this country be complacent if -- on average -- 2.3 policemen were being killed in California every day? If 2700 police officers had been killed in California in the past three years, would anyone feel this was anything less than total anarchy? Would any pundit scoff and compare California to, say, Darfur, and conclude that the situation's acceptable because it could be much worse?

And this doesn't begin to include the even larger toll of Iraq policemen killed since the American attack, or the heart-wrenching toll of civilian dead. Who believes that carbombs and IEDs, dozens of citizens dead in the streets on a daily basis, thousands kidnapped and hundreds assassinated, beheadings, churches bombed and clergy hacked to death with machetes, undrinkable water, people freezing to death in the dark . . . who believes such a total disintegration of civilized society in the most populous State of the Union would warrant a shrug or a smirk or a dismissive wave of the hand? Who would send snarky emails about such Left Coast chaos? And how long would a politician -- any politician in any state or at any level -- how long would they last in office if they made smug and condescending comments about how well the true situation is in California? How obscene would observations about school paintjobs be in such a crisis?