FACT CHECK: Baghdad Has 13 Times More Murders Than Philadelphia
FACT CHECK: Baghdad Has 13 Times More Murders Than Philadelphia
In a post this morning, Wizbang blogger Alexander K. McClure compared the homicide rate in Philadelphia to the situation in Iraq:
Without looking at the URL or the headline at the top, try to figure out which city this is. Each red dot represents a murder in the past year. Isn’t that a quagmire? Isn’t it time to consider pulling out?
The city McClure pointed to is Philadelphia. It had 337 homicides between Jan. 1 and Oct. 31, 2006.
In Baghdad, the Brookings Institution’s Iraq Index estimates that 5,320 people are killed a month, meaning there were 53,200 murders between Jan. 1 and Oct. 31, 2006. are projected to be killed this year, meaning Baghdad had 13.2 times more murders than Philadelphia.
This number vastly underestimates the number of civilians killed in Baghdad because it applies only to people with mortal gunshot wounds. (Brookings also 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.”)
Rep. Steve King (R-IA) has also tried to claim that living in Washington, DC, is as dangerous as living in Iraq. Comparing the murder rate in any U.S. city with the situation in Baghdad only underscores how out-of-touch some conservatives are from the real situation on the ground in Iraq.
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60 Responses to “FACT CHECK: Baghdad Has 13 Times More Murders Than Philadelphia”
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I believe you meant to say that the Baghdad murder rate is 160 times the rate in the city of botherly love.
November 14th, 2006 at 3:49 pmOnly 16 times greater? That’s swimmingly.
November 14th, 2006 at 3:50 pmMcKlure should be ashamed of dissing Philly that way.
November 14th, 2006 at 3:50 pmI can’t wait to hear his next blog from the heart of Baghdad, at the Sunni Daze motel.
The most perfidious way of harming a cause consists of defending it deliberately with faulty arguments. - Friedrich Nietzsche
November 14th, 2006 at 3:52 pmIMO, it’s sad how they make light of all the death and destruction in Bahgdad.
November 14th, 2006 at 3:53 pmBut, but, that can’t be…….Philly has “black people”, right trollies??
November 14th, 2006 at 3:59 pmWizbang gets it’s daily talking points straight from worldnutdaily.
November 14th, 2006 at 3:59 pmMe fail math? That’s unpossible!
November 14th, 2006 at 4:00 pmI agree it’s time for you to consider pulling your head out Alexander
November 14th, 2006 at 4:03 pmI don’t think these particular conservative mouthpieces are out of touch. I believe they are deliberately dishonest.
November 14th, 2006 at 4:03 pmThe people slaughtered in Philly are generally adult and male with a sparsity of young and female victims through stray shots. Each of these stray victims is considered a tragedy by the media. Why not in Iraq, where approximately 45% of the victims are female or children (male and female) under 16.
November 14th, 2006 at 4:13 pmA nit. To call these rates, you should normalize by the number of people and express as the number of murders per 100,000. The point is the same but some wingnut who got through high school algebra will claim that he refuted your argument.
November 14th, 2006 at 4:13 pmNovember 14th, 2006 at 4:20 pm
McClure needs to take math lessons.
November 14th, 2006 at 4:21 pmdoes this moron think that 150 people could be kidnapped in broad daylight in philadelphia and theyd get away with it too?
give this guy a choice. a week in philadelphia or a week in baghdad. i wonder which he chooses.
November 14th, 2006 at 4:28 pmI think it’s time to for America to realize it’s mistake, put Saddam back in charge, and get it’s young men back home. No wonder he killed so many of his people. How else to control these savages.
November 14th, 2006 at 4:28 pmThis guy graduated high school? Did they not have any math requirements?
November 14th, 2006 at 4:35 pmJizbang was a pretty humorous site before the elections.
Now it’s mostly hair-rending, and kneejerk bigots talking about anything they can think of to get their mind off politics.
Still mildly amusing, but a little sad and pathetic.
November 14th, 2006 at 4:39 pmPeter King (R-New York) said Baghdad was just like downtown Manhattan.
November 14th, 2006 at 4:45 pmIf it’s so safe, why don’t all the wingers move there?
November 14th, 2006 at 4:46 pmLast time I was in Manhattan, I didn’t see any roadside bombs, secterian violence, dead bodies in the streets, overrun morgues, vehicles on fire, etc., etc…
November 14th, 2006 at 4:46 pmThe population of Baghdad is approximately 2.5 milliom people. The Population of Philidelphia is approximately 1.53 million people. mashing all of those numbers together yeilds a murder rate of 97 times greater in Baghdad then Philly.
November 14th, 2006 at 4:52 pmMove there? Are you kidding? They won’t even fight there! I’m fairly certain that, until massive Chee-to reserves are found in Iraq, these members of the 101st Fighting Keyboarders will remain in mommy’s basement, pretending that they’re tough guys.
November 14th, 2006 at 4:56 pmPhiladelphia population, 2005 (est): 1,463,281 (1)
Murders, 2004: 337
Murder Rate (est): 23 per 100,000 (10 months)
Baghdad population, 2004 (est): 6,554,126 (2)
Murders, 2004 (est): 53,200
Murder Rate (est): 812 per 100,000 (10 months)
Different by a factor of 35.
(1) http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/42/42101.html
November 14th, 2006 at 5:02 pm(2) highest estimate cited on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baghdad
[…] The stupid! It burns me! […]
November 14th, 2006 at 5:03 pmAnybody who says Baghdad is safer than any American city should be kidnapped (rendered), flown to Baghdad and dumped out of a moving vehicle OUTSIDE the Green Zone. These Repukes disgust me.
November 14th, 2006 at 5:04 pmI go back and forth on whether these guys are just not that intelligent and therefore believe that it is comparable to compare something like that without considering per time period, per person type adjustments, or whether they know their audience is not that intelligent and so they won’t notice.
November 14th, 2006 at 5:15 pmMcClure’s argument is obviously insane. However, Amanda, I am not sure your 53,000 murders this year number is a correct application of the Brooking’s data. The crime related death rate numbers shown in the table at the top of page 12 are annualized rate numbers per 100,000. So, the total number of murders should be 95*(6M/100K) = 5700. Since the next table shows that a total of 15,000 police and civilians have died in Baghdad since the start of the war through 1/1/06, the 5700 figure seems more consistent with that number as well. That still is 17X as many total murders (not adjusted for population size), and the Baghdad number only includes gunshot wounds, not IEDs etc.
November 14th, 2006 at 5:20 pmI wonder what a map of Baghdad with 53,200 little red dots would look like?
November 14th, 2006 at 5:26 pmSo the murder total in Philly for ten months equals that of about 46 hours in Baghdad. Yeah, things are going just great.
November 14th, 2006 at 5:27 pmWhat the “conservatives” do is pretty simple, and pretty stupid. They take the number of US soldiers who have died in Iraq over a given time period, and compare that number to the total number of people who have died in an American metropolitan area. The above analysis pretty devastatingly refutes that idiocy.
A more appropriate comparison, which is perhaps more illustrative of how frakked we are in Iraq, would be the number of US soldiers killed, PLUS the number of Iraqi soldiers and police killed, compared to the number of police killed in a given American region, over the same time period. So if 67 US soldiers died last month in Baghdad, along with 600 Iraqi soldiers/policemen, you might consider how many cops died in Washington, DC or NYC over the same time period (you can in fact ignore population normalization, because the disparity is so huge).
If you can imagine a major US city, in a state of martial law, suffered hundreds of police deaths each month, that’s the appropriate comparison.
November 14th, 2006 at 5:43 pmWhat is their fascination with comparing Baghdad with U.S. cities? Why do they hate America?
November 14th, 2006 at 5:46 pmAmerica’s Least Wanted
#24 -yourneighborhoodstatsdroid,
November 14th, 2006 at 6:00 pmYour Philly estimates are from the 2000 census. your Baghdad numbers are from before the March 20, 2003 invasion and are maximums. Since the occupation, 35% of Baghdad’s population have been forced to vacate the “Green Zone”, mostly Sunnis who are/were historically native there. These people are moving the the west of Iraq, Jordan or Syria in order to merely survive.
Thanks for all your fact-checking and number crunching. We have updated the post to reflect correct numbers.
November 14th, 2006 at 6:06 pmSo I wonder: Given the choice, Baghdad or Philadelphia, where do you suppose most military folks would prefer to be posted?
November 14th, 2006 at 6:58 pmPhiladelphia - but only if they can carry an AK-47. But I’m POSITIVE Phildelphia has NO murder rate - It is run by Dems ….and Dems have been running that place for years…….
November 14th, 2006 at 7:28 pm#32 - WaltTheMan
The Philly estimates are extrapolated from the 2000 census figures, and are for 2005.
I took the maximum in order to err on the side of caution. Also note that the high estimate comes from the 2006 Lancet Report, and is cited “in 2004″. I don’t argue with you that millions have fled Baghdad and Iraq, and used this (therefore) high estimate in order to give a lower bound on the murder rate.
Also, it might be that Baghdad is a destination for refugees as well as a source of them (1). I’m not sure I read it right, and who knows how “Baghdad” is defined in all these surveys. The population problem isn’t so easy, though.
Anyway, in light of the x10 mistake in the original Baghdad numbers, it’s sort of a moot point. Here are some more meaningless numbers:
Philadelphia population, 2005 (est): 1,463,281 (2)
Murders, 2006 (est. year): 404 (3)
Murder Rate (est): 27.6 per 100,000
Baghdad population, 2004 (est): 6,554,126 (4)
Murders, 2004 (est. year): 5,320
Murder Rate (est): 81 per 100,000
Different by a factor of about 3. I choose Philly.
(1) http://www.reliefweb.int/ rw/ RWB.NSF/ db900SID/ LSGZ-6VACHL?OpenDocument (which estimates 6.7 million in 2006)
November 14th, 2006 at 7:30 pm(2) http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/42/42101.html
(3) 404 = 337 * (12/10)
(4) highest estimate cited on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baghdad
So, if you look at the statistics for homicides in America you’ll see that the murder rate for the entire US is at its lowest since 1973. From these statistics we learn that there were “about 6 murder victims per 100,000 persons in 2005.†Given the US has 300 million people, that’s about 18,000 people murdered per year. You can also notice that the murder rate in the US has never been as high as the current murder rate in Iraq, and the murder rate is almost continually dropping (while Iraq’s is accelerating/increasing).
There are the estimates of 50,000 to 150,000 (and more) murders in the 3 years of the Iraq war so far. This means that even at the low end, Iraq has an identical or greater number of people murdered per year as the US A country with more than 10 times the population. Normalizing Iraq’s murder rate to America would result in levels of murder 10 times higher than the highest rates ever seen (late 70s/early 80s). We’d go from 18,000 people murdered per year to 180,000.
November 14th, 2006 at 7:55 pmFunny, I can’t remember the last time that 150 people in Los Angeles were abducted from their place of work.
Though the local news seemed very, very concerned today about three college kids whose laptops were stolen at gunpoint at a Starbucks, I’m not quite sure it’s really comparable.
November 14th, 2006 at 8:15 pm“Last time I was in Manhattan, I didn’t see any roadside bombs, secterian violence, dead bodies in the streets, overrun morgues, vehicles on fire, etc., etc…
Comment by Janeane The Acerbic Goblin ”
Well, you haven’t been to the Hampton’s during Summer Season then! A madhouse I tell ya!
November 14th, 2006 at 8:23 pmThe other issue is that deaths in Baghdad are being compare to deaths in US cities.
As a non-US based person, it is a bit of a giggle. The US has massively higher murder rates in absolutes & on per capita basis than most western nations due to lax gun laws.
Compare this with Sydney, Australia which is about the same population as Philly. Murder rates are 1.0 per 100,000, or approximately 50 people per year.
I’m sure you can find some euro cities that are even lower.
The US is no measuring stick about murder rates. It certainly is no pinnacle to aspire to.
=my2c
BC
November 14th, 2006 at 9:00 pmI live in Iowa. Steve King is an idiot. The only reason I’m glad that Steve King is in DC is that he makes the Democrats look like we’re super intelligent.
November 14th, 2006 at 9:45 pmThe morgue rate in Baghdad is on average 45 per day. At 365 days per year - that works out to about 16500 reported dead per year. Because of fear and Islamic tradition, the unreported toll is estimated at from 60 to 70 deaths per day. Taking the lower number, that works out to about 22000 unreported deaths per year. The sum yeilds 38500 deaths per year out of a population of 2.5 million (There are 8 million Sunnis in all of Iraq (They don’t all live in the same city, the Shi’ites live in Sadr and the Kurds live in the north.).).
November 14th, 2006 at 10:04 pmRep. King needs to stay in Sadr City rather than the green zone the next time he visits Iraq. No armoured vehicles for him either.
November 14th, 2006 at 10:31 pm“What is their fascination with comparing Baghdad with U.S. cities? Why do they hate America?”
no no, you see, it’s a compliment. baghdad is a paradise on earth, things are going great: somebody built a school at some point i think.
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!
we just need the military to enforce the same kind of civil success in our own american cities! and get our metro violence down to baghdad levels, apparently.
November 14th, 2006 at 10:55 pmNobody is asking the most pertinent question for comparision: Would anyone in Baghdad ‘boo’ Santa Claus?
November 14th, 2006 at 11:08 pmLots of the dead bodies have holes drilled into them or show other signs of torture; decapitated girls have dogs’ heads sewn onto them etc. Do any Philly murders display such depravity?
November 15th, 2006 at 12:32 amI wrote on another blog that I’m going to Philly for a family wedding later this week; I wouldn’t go to Baghdad to receive a Nobel Prize/
Bushwacked,
November 15th, 2006 at 11:39 amYou’re correct… but not neccessarily on topic. The point isn’t the statistical math itself but the blatant lie perpetuated by Rep. King and others who believe Bagdad is somehow on par when contrast with the dangers of U.S. cities.
A sterile debate. Now that the dems are in power the murders in both countries will cease, and if not it will be entirely the fault of Bush.
November 15th, 2006 at 1:19 pmSafer than Philly?
Don’t you love statistics. I can prove that the terrorist threat is a bit overstated. If we assume that Bin Laden declared war on us starting with the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, he and his boys have managed to kill less than 7,000 americans including Iraq and Afganistan casualties. During the same period approximately 42,000 americans died per year in traffic accidents. That would be about 588,000 from 1993 through 2006 inclusive. We are 84 times more likely to be killed in a traffic accident than to be killed by terrorists. We should be fighting the Global War Against Cars. They are the real threat.
November 15th, 2006 at 2:16 pmOh yeah? So why won’t “Lost” be on again until February?
November 16th, 2006 at 12:27 amIt’s hard to believe that the murder rate today is lower then in the 1970’s. In Atlantic City area in the past couple of days the police department ran across 4 women that were all shot in the back of the head. After a day went by they said, they were going to treat this as a murder case. You Think! Murder is not something normal people like to talk about, but if we as a nation don’t face up to this problem, by putting murderer’s in prison and never let them out. We also had a 34 year old women, murder a 3 week old baby boy by cutting and throwing the baby around. This also took place in the south Jersey area.Open up the mental hospitals. The goverment had it right in the 1950’s. The crime rate was a lot lower.Take Care, H.J. Dunning
November 22nd, 2006 at 3:44 pmSPC: I have actually read posts at Freeperville that cite these very statistics, in all seriousness, as proof that the war in Iraq is a) no big deal in the grand scheme of things and b) not really costing us too much in American lives. After all, those traffic accident victims died essentially for nothing, while our soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen (not counting all the Iraqis, of course) have the consolation of having died to keep freedom on the march around the globe.
November 27th, 2006 at 4:12 pmIf a winger makes this kind of comparison, then simply claim that you’re glad that he finally agrees that our troops are no longer needed in Iraq and should be brought home.
November 27th, 2006 at 4:42 pmOh, I get it. We sent the wrong guys to do the job in Iraq. Instead of the Army, Air Force and Marines, we should have sent in the Philadelphia PD.
November 28th, 2006 at 12:18 amI see a lot of bad statistics cited above. These numbers can show anything you want when you compare apples to oranges (remember the “gun homicide rates” cited by Mr. Moore?). The atrocities cited are horrible; it’s too bad that it doesn’t count as homicide when the nations own dictator orchestrates the same acts of violence. I suppose the homicide rate will disappear when Iran and/ or Syria take the reins. These “events” will be government sanctioned so that the U.N. can talk until they are blue in the face about how nice it would be if it were to stop.
December 1st, 2006 at 7:09 pmSamuel Preston, a demographer at UPenn, showed that the mortality rate among US soldiers in Iraq is actually lower than that of African American men 20-34 living in Philadelphia. I’m not certain why he has’nt published these results in a journal, but I could hazard a guess… Check out the link below.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ wp-dyn/ content/ article/ 2006/ 08/ 25/ AR2006082500940.html
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