The right wing has recently been engaged in an effort to downplay the deteriorating security situation in Iraq by suggesting that the violent death rates in Washington, D.C. are higher than those in Iraq. From Newsmax:

Despite media coverage purporting to show that escalating violence in Iraq has the country spiraling out of control, civilian death statistics complied by Rep. Steve King, R-IA, indicate that Iraq actually has a lower civilian violent death rate than Washington, D.C.
“¦
Using Pentagon statistics cross-checked with independent research, King said he came up with an annualized Iraqi civilian death rate of 27.51 per 100,000.

Rep. King’s shoddy “report” has slowly gained greater circulation, appearing in the New York Sun and on the Rush Limbaugh show.

Here’s why the report is deceptive and false:

1) The King report uses 2002 data for Washington, D.C., finding a violent casualty rate of 45.9 deaths per 100,000 people. That number is badly outdated. Using the most recent 2004 data, the violent casualty rate in D.C. is 35.8 deaths per 100,000. There were 198 homicides total in D.C. for the entire year.

2) According to Pentagon’s own data released today, there have been 94 violent casualties per day in Iraq between February and May of 2006. (see p.33). That translates into 34,310 deaths per year in Iraq. For an Iraqi population of about 26.7 million, plus another 150,000 coalition forces, the violent casualty rate in Iraq is 128 deaths per 100,000. UPDATE: The Pentagon data includes injuries as well as deaths so is not directly comparable. The Brookings Institute, however, estimates an annualized murder rate of 95 per 100,000 Iraqis in Bagdad. 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.”

3) Lastly, the King report is trying to conflate the data for one urban area in the U.S. with the entire country of Iraq. As OpinionJournal writes, “The comparison with U.S. cities poses a problem of scale. Just as some municipalities here have high concentrations of crime, Baghdad and some other Iraqi cities have high concentrations of military, guerrilla and terrorist activity. A comparison of Baghdad with Los Angeles or a similarly sprawling U.S. city would be more enlightening than a comparison of Iraq as a whole with cities of well under a million people.”

UPDATE: Sadly No!, has more.

President Bush, on the nomination of Henry M. Paulson as Treasury secretary, 5/30/06:

[W]hen he is confirmed by the Senate, he’ll be a superb addition to my Cabinet. … The Treasury Secretary is the leading force on my economic team and the chief spokesman for my economic policies.

Sound familiar?

On John Snow, 12/9/02:

He’ll be a superb member of my Cabinet. … I’ll be proposing specific steps to increase the momentum of our economic recovery, and the Treasury Secretary will be at the center of this effort.

On Paul O’Neill, 12/20/00:

The secretary of treasury is the chief financial officer of our nation, the successor to Alexander Hamilton. … I found such a man in Paul O’Neill.

Despite the talk, both were pushed out of the President’s inner circle and relegated to the role of administration cheerleader. O’Neill “found himself on the outs after he aggressively pushed an agenda of his own” and Snow “has had little to do but promote policies made by others and wave the flag for economic growth.”

This morning on CBS’s Early Show, host Harry Smith asked Al Gore about “more conservative elements of the press” who say “there is a debate going on” about whether global warming exisits. Gore responded that “in some quarters there’s still a debate over whether the moon landing was staged in a movie lot in Arizona” and debates about whether global warming exists were “in that category.” Watch it:

Gore is right. There is no debate among credible sceintists about whether global warming exists. Science magazine analyzed 928 peer-reviewed scientific papers on global warming published between 1993 and 2003. Not a single one challenged the scientific consensus the earth’s temperature is rising due to human activity.

Instead climate skeptics are forced to make arguments like this one by Holman W. Jenkins Jr., that appeared in today’s Wall Street Journal:

In a million years, the time it takes the earth to sneeze, the planet will likely be shorn of any conspicuous sign we were ever here, let alone careless with our CO2, dioxins, etc. Talk about an inconvenient truth.

In other words, we shouldn’t worry about the world we are leaving to our children or grandchildren. A million years from now none of this will matter.

Of course, this kind of argument can be used to justify any disfunctional policy that will harm people, including ignorning the realities of global warming.

Transcript: Read more

Amir Taheri, “who published an op-ed in Canada’s National Post about an Iranian law that forced Jews to wear a yellow stripe” that turned out to be a fabrication, this week “had a face-to-face with the President as one of a small group of ‘experts’ on Iraq that visited the White House.”

– Letter from President Bush to ten-year-old Emily Shrader of Canaan, Maine, who says she found it “upsetting to see that the war keeps on going on and on and so many people keep on dying.” (HT: Hotline)

for hurricane season,’ according to a new report by Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch. “Due to delays in funding and construction, nearly 20% of New Orleans levees and floodwalls destroyed by Katrina have not been repaired,” and the city’s pump system, “designed to prevent flooding in low-lying areas, has not been tested and repaired.”

Karl Zinsmeister, Bush’s new domestic policy adviser, 3/28/03:

Alas, many of the journalists observable in this war theater are bursting with knee-jerk suspicions and antagonisms for the warriors all around them. A significant number are whiny and appallingly soft. [...] I almost wished there would be a very loud explosion very nearby just to shut up their rattling.

Reuters, today:

With the deaths of two CBS television crew members from a car bomb in Baghdad, the number of journalists who have died in hostile incidents in Iraq has risen to 71 – the same number killed or presumed dead during the Vietnam War.

(HT: Editor & Publisher)

“Today the American people are way out in front of our leaders. “¦ People are coming together and demanding new answers. A grassroots movement is gathering today to promote solutions, like renewable fuels, clean electricity, more efficient cars, and green buildings that use less energy.” Join the effort at KickTheOilHabit.org.