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March 22, 2005
Fake Statistics
Michelle Malkin has an excellent post on "The Myth of Black Soldier's Dying Disproportionately" in Vietnam, the Gulf War, and the Iraq War.
We've all heard the claim that black soldiers are frontline fodder in Iraq and are being killed disproportionately.I've heard this before, but it needs repeating every now and then. Kudo's to the New York Times for having the courage to take this issue on.In fact, as this New York Times op-chart makes clear, the truth is just the opposite. White and Hispanic soliders are overrepresented among military personnel killed in Iraq, whereas African American soldiers are underrepresented. (Blacks account for 18.6 percent of military personnel in Iraq, but account for only 10.9 percent of military personnel killed.)
The same was true in World War II, the Korean War, and the 1991 Gulf War. In Vietnam, sometimes referred to as "a war fought by black men against yellow men on behalf of white men," blacks accounted for 12.5 percent of all combat deaths versus 13.1 percent of the young male adult population of fighting age.
Check out the article on Vietnam stats, it's well worth reading. Among other things, you'll learn that
- The oft-cited "statistic" that one-in-three Vietnam vets suffered from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is not even close to the truth (although PTSD is itself very much real)
- Suicide, homelessness, and drug abuse rates for Vietnam vets are about the same as for the rest of the population.
- The incarceration rate for Vietnam vets is lower than that for the general population.
- Two-third of those who served in Vietnam were volunteers.
Don't believe the crap you read in the liberal-left media about the number of civilians killed in Afghanistan or Iraq. The numbers they cite are mostly false. (hat tip USS Neverdock)
The Johns Hopkins study, published in the British medical journal Lancet, claimed that 100,000 civilians were killed as as result of U.S. and coalition actions in the invasion of Iraq. This is usually used in an attempt to discredit the invasion.
Slate completely debunked this study last October, and Instapundit has more last week. Both Slate and Instupundit get into details on statistical analysis that I am not qualified to comment on, but I can read plain English. And the story in Slate spells it out:
Readers who are accustomed to perusing statistical documents know what the set of numbers in the parentheses means. For the other 99.9 percent of you, I'll spell it out in plain English—which, disturbingly, the study never does. It means that the authors are 95 percent confident that the war-caused deaths totaled some number between 8,000 and 194,000. (The number cited in plain language—98,000—is roughly at the halfway point in this absurdly vast range.)Some reader comments posted on Instapundit:This isn't an estimate. It's a dart board.
andAre we honestly to believe that twice as many non-combatants have died as a result of the liberation of Iraq as were American combatants in 8 years of VietNam? In a war designed and fought to minimize civilian casualties with things like GPS guided bombs?
Please, you have the power to unleash the internet on this wholesale fabrication with a call to factual arms. This fraud cannot go unchallenged or in 30 days from now, it will simply be cited as irrefutable “fact” that “George Bush killed 100,000 Iraqis.”
There's no need to debunk the 100,000 civilian casualty figure being cited so often by war opponents. In progressive circles it's an article of faith that pre-war sanctions killed 5000 Iraqis per month. Cost of the war two years later? 20,000 Iraqi civilians saved! And counting...Surely civilians have been killed. And, as I said in my post on Discrimination in Just War Theory, we are required to try and protect the lives of civilians. But we don't have to put up with fake statistics.
Posted by Tom at March 22, 2005 1:27 PM
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