Email Going Around: Lies, Lies, Lies

A reader sent this on:

If you consider that there have been an average of 160,000 troops in the Iraq theater of operations during the last 22 months, and a total of 2112 deaths, that gives a firearm death rate of 60 per 100,000.

The rate in Washington D.C. is 80.6 per 100,000. That means that you are about 25% more likely to be shot and killed in our Nation's Capitol, which has some of the strictest gun control laws in the nation, than you are in Iraq.

Conclusion: We should immediately pull out of Washington D.C.

No, that's not the conclusion. The real conclusion is that dead Iraqis don't count as people. If you counted 30,000 to 50,000 dead Iraqis--conservative figures--you would conclude that the cities of Iraq are so dangerous we should immediately pull out of Iraq.

Or you can reduce this to common sense: Where would you rather spend the holidays ---Baghdad or Washington? Thought so.

Here's another email that readers keep sending:

1. There were 39 combat related killings in Iraq during the month of January. In the fair city of Detroit there were 35 murders in the month of January. That's just one American city, about as deadly as the entire war torn country of Iraq.

2. When some claim President Bush shouldn't have started this war, state the following: FDR led us into World War II. Germany never attacked us: Japan did. From 1941-1945, 450,000 lives were lost, an average of 112,500 per year. Truman finished that war and started one in Korea. North Korea never attacked us. From 1950-1953, 55,000 lives were lost, an average of 18,334 per year. John F. Kennedy started the Vietnam conflict in 1962. Vietnam never attacked us. Johnson turned Vietnam into a quagmire. From 1965-1975, 58,000 lives were lost, an average of 5,800 per year. Clinton went to war in Bosnia without UN or French consent Bosnia never attacked us. Clinton was offered Osama bin Laden's head on a platter three times by Sudan and did nothing. Osama has attacked us on multiple occasions.

3. In the two years since terrorists attacked us, President Bush has liberated two countries, crushed the Taliban, crippled al-Qaida, put nuclear inspectors in Libya, Iran and North Korea without firing a shot, and captured a terrorist who slaughtered 300,000 of his own people.

The Democrats are complaining about how long the war is taking, but...It took less time to take Iraq than it took Janet Reno to take the Branch Davidian compound. That was a 51-day operation. We've been looking for evidence of chemical weapons in Iraq for less time than it took Hillary Clinton to find the Rose Law Firm billing records. It took less time for the 3rd Infantry Division and the Marines to destroy the Medina Republican Guard than it took Ted Kennedy to call the police after his Oldsmobile sank at Chappaquiddick, killing a woman.

Readers ask: What shall I respond? I say: Don't respond at all. Making sense with people who think like this is like making sense with Loose Canon--it ain't gonna happen in this lifetime.

But to make a small start: Clinton helped Bosnia to stop a genocide in progress. There are no nuclear inspectors in North Korea, nor in Iran. And the Libya deal was in the works with Britain and other EU countries; Bush did not do that one. Afghanistan is slipping away from us, Iraqis seem to hate us even more than they hated Saddam, and if you could judge by the screams of the detainees, our methods of torturing the innocent would sound like duplicates of the screams of Saddam's victims. And as for those "combat-related killings," pray tell how the 30,000 to 50,000 Iraqis died?