More violent, Iraq or U.S? What a silly question!
By Tom Blummer - Newsbusters
The Associated Press released an interesting set of statistics (host link stored for future ref) a couple of days ago that I would suppose were designed to suck away any optimism any fools who still support the mission in Iraq might have (bolds are mine):
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Government officials on Monday reported that 16,273 Iraqi civilians, soldiers and police died violent deaths in 2006, a figure larger than an independent Associated Press count for the year by more than 2,500.
The tabulation by the Iraqi ministries of Health, Defense and Interior, showed that 14,298 civilians, 1,348 police and 627 soldiers were killed in the violence that raged in the country last year.
The Associated Press accounting, gleaned from daily news reports from Baghdad, arrived at a total of 13,738 deaths.
Pretty grim, isn’t it? And this is for “violence that raged in the (whole) country.”
Man, what a downer. I mean, this is an honest-to-goodness Grade A bona fide quagmire.
Oops — I started digging into US murder statistics, and what I found made me less depressed about Iraq, and more concerned about the US.
Let’s put this in perspective. Below are 10 listings for US cities and years. Your mission to accomplish (so to speak), is to guess whether each particular city’s murder rate in the year identified was higher or lower than the “violent death rate” in Iraq (which is, from all appearances, all-inclusive). Let’s use the Iraqi government’s higher number of 16,273 just for the heck of it, even though the Associated Press will “surely” be bothered that I’m exaggerating the level of violence compared to what their records show (somehow, I think they’ll get over it). Using the government’s figure means that Iraq’s violent death rate in 2006 was 56.49 per 100,000 residents (16,273 deaths, and a population per Wiki of 28,807,000).
So here are the US cities and the related years:
1. New York City - 1990
2. Washington, DC - 1991
3. Gary, IN - 2005
4. Detroit, MI - 1991
5. Compton, CA - 2005
Since I’m from Oakland I had to throw this in…
Oakland is ranked the eighth most dangerous city nationwide and the second most dangerous in California after Compton. As of December 19th, 2006, Oakland has had 146 murders [14] — the highest amount in ten years so far, with the majority of victims and/or murderers from an African American background and the average age being 28 years old. [15] (wiki)
Oh and don’t forget this…Murders in Houston Rise to 12-Year High; Mayor Cites Storm
Most of these deaths are young black men. So I’m just curious why you fucken liberals are not screaming about THESE deaths like you do Iraq?
That’s tis just me ranting…anywho, back to the article.
6. New Orleans, LA - 2006
7. New Orleans, LA - 2004
8. New Orleans, LA - 2003
9. Atlanta, GA - 1973
10. E. St. Louis, IL - 2004
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