Rep. Steve King (R-IA) and others have claimed that living in Iraq is less dangerous than living in Washington DC. King claimed on the House floor, “my wife lives here with me, and I can tell you, Mr. Speaker, she’s at far greater risk being a civilian in Washington, D.C. than an average civilian in Iraq.”
King has always been wrong. A new study by the British medical journal Lancet exposes the extent of his error. According to Lancet, 601,000 people have died in Iraq over the last three years due to violence related to the March 2003 invasion. Here is how violent deaths in Iraq over the last three years stack up to the violent death rate in Washington, DC:
The statistic for Washington DC is from the FBI’s Crime in the United States 2005.
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