A Counter to the Conservative Viewpoint

I listened to a stand in for Rush Wednesday, and he was ranting about liberals (what's new?) with the following argments:

The liberal media is not reporting the full story in Iraq, they are focusing on the daily soldier killed story, but not one word about how more water and electricity are flowing than ever occured under the Hussein regime.

This is so pathetic I want to scream. This propagandist is so callous that he thinks the loss of soliders is a secondary point to the great military campaign that is being executed in Iraq. He wants the conservative faithful to focus on the positive things going on, and forget about the daily atrocities, which are a true reflection of how Iraq's citizens feel about the US presence in their country. This clown was even criticizing Fox news because they were reporting the daily kills and not the good news water supply story. More importantly, he did not attribute his source for the good news about water supply, so why should anyone even start to believe it?

The loss of soldiers is regrettable, but LA would love to have such a low murder rate, and the loss is still below what the military lost in accidents last year

Being logically deficient is a conservative trademark. The critical point in pushing percentages, is what base comparision you choose the percentage for. Obviously the Rush show has read "How to Lie with Statistics" and internalized it.

Los Angeles has about 1000 murders per year in a city of 3.6 million for a rate of .02% of its population.

The military is losing about .3% of its force at the current rate. What the murder rate is depends on whether you compare the loss of soliders against the total force present in Iraq (the .3% number), or as a percentage of Iraq's population, or even better yet, as a percentage of the population that they are in close proximity to.

At any rate, comparing the military loss as a percentage of the population(s) of Iraq is faulty logic. A more appropriate comparision is to compare the loss to the KIA of police officers in LA.

The figures for this are:

LAPD/LA 194/3600000 = .005%
US/Iraq 350/27000000 = .001%

The problem with these numbers, is the 194 police deaths in LA includes all officers over all years (I couldn't find the yearly statistic). I would estimate the LA number to be more like 5 per year (I roughly averaged the total over the 50+ years of reporting), so the LA number is more like 5/3600000 = .0001% or 10 times less than what our military is experiencing.

So I'd like to know from the Rush Clone, why would LA want its murder rate increased tenfold?

I am sure we have all heard the Mark Twain quote "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics."

I think it is a worthwhile exercise to go into this kind of detailed analysis. (I am glad you do not share my own laziness in this regard) We know the con pundits listen to each other. I could easily see a statement like this becoming a talking point.

More murders in LA than soldiers killed. How about Murders in Iraq not just soldiers killed or How many police killed in LA compared to how many soldiers killed in Iraq. When you compare total number of murders with just the amount of soldiers killed and not total amount of deaths in Iraq you are being dishonest but what else is new with Rush?

If we hadn't fought a needless war in the first place, all those soldiers would still be alive and at home with their families. I guess that point is just too much to ask of the cons. How can they not admit that Iraq was not a threat to us? That point was clear to me before the war. It should be crystal clear to everyone now.