If you consider that there has been an average of 160,000 troops in the
Iraq theater of operations during the past 22 months, and a total of
2112 deaths, that gives a firearm death rate of 60 per 100,000 soldiers. The firearm death rate in Washington, DC is 80.6 per 100,000 for the same
period. That mean that you are about 25% more likely to be shot & killed in the
US capital, which has some of the strictest gun control laws in the US,
than you are in Iraq. Conclusion? The US should pull out of Washington.

nothanks nailed it.

Brian Spence

Here you go …

Taking Baghdad for instance, the Brookings Institution’s Iraq Index estimates an annualized murder rate of 95 per 100,000 Iraqis for that city, a rate more than 2.5 times as high as D.C.’s. (Brookings notes this number may be “too low since many murder victims are never taken to the morgue, but buried quickly and privately and therefore never recorded in official tallies.”)

It may also be too low since things have gotten to be more violent since these stats were tallied (I think they are 2004 figures).

So it is probably safe to say that Baghdad is at least 2.5 times worse and maybe 5 times worse.

Last, the “nature” of the violence is different. Slowly navigating around a “stalled” car in DC is just an annoying little fact of life with urban trafic. Slowly navigating around a “stalled” car in Baghdad is a completely different thing.

First, there’s really no perfect measurement of how many iraqi deaths there have been since the start of the war. DC deaths are a bit more understood.

Secondly, how can you try to match a country’s death rate with a city’s death rate? How about matching the death rate in Baghdad versus DC?

King’s an idiot, but Think Progress should realize that it’s a dumb analogy to begin with.

It would be if the “actual deaths” in Iraq were used in this comparison, which they aren’t here.

veiled racism (that big-city black people will kill you) being used to support outright racism (iraq will be our muslim bugzapper, attracting and killing all the skeeters that would bite us) that’s some proud stuff there, bro.

So I am supposed to trust the National Security of our Nation to this moron?

He doesn’t notice the difference between Baghdad and Washington D.C.?

So if, God forbid, all hell breaks out in D.C. and the level of violence approaches that of Baghdad – I should expect him to say …

“This is okay … why wife and children have managed to be safe with this level of violence just fine. What’s the problem? …”

Some may say – “he recognizes the difference – he is making a distinction between violence in a particular city … D.C. vs. that of an entire nation … Iraq

So this is what I should expect from Rep King in an emergency? Play games with city vs. foreign nation statisitcs? And then declare everything to be ‘all – f#cking – right’ … ?

After reading this – doesn’t it become clear why the Katrina debacle went down the way it did? So much more time spent on “spin” by people like King instead of action and solutions.

After he is done parsing his words and playing games with the numbers and hiding behind the semantics – the fact of the matter is that there is no place in The U.S. that is like this:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14895655/

How the f#ck can King be aware that this is happening in Baghdad and then actually move his mouth to make an ‘argument’ that he hopes will persuade even a single person to agree that the situation in Iraq is “okay” … ?

Some have noted that much of the D.C. violence is drug related. I am familiar with the rough parts of D.C. – and what you say is true.

It is also true is that when someone in the drug trade has a gun to their head – they cannot “opt out” of their execution by declaring their desire to be part of “the national average.” No more than an Iraqi in Baghdad can “opt” to be part of “the national average” when facing death from a rival – religious, or otherwise.

With King’s logic – we shouldn’t even bother having fire departments.

Anywhere.

If a house is on fire – sure – that house may be above 1000 degrees fahrenheit. But if you take the national average of all homes at that moment there is really nothing to worry about … Right? … At least if you think like Rep. King …

Wow.

Rep. King.

What a f#cking putz.

The comparison was between Washington DC actual deaths as a percent of the total population of DC vs. actual deaths in Iraq as a percent of the total population of Iraq.

That is a reasonable comparison.

Just not think that far through eh ? Bit too much of a stretch to not only come up with your point but recognise it when you see it again. Awesome.

I’m not going to look at how they came up with those figures, I’m just going to assume that they are based on the actual number of people killed and not a random sampling of 2000 people which was used to predict how many Americans died nationwide.
That’s be just too dumb to quote right ?
Apparently not.

In fact if you really want to test the statement that Iraq (the country) is less dangerous than Washinton (the state) using Lancet then the proper thing to do would be sample 2000 people in Washington and then calculate how many people were killed nationwide in the US using that sample.

Right now you have a graph comparing actual death figures VS not.