Anyone else get this e-mail?

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 firearm death 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.

This wouldn't be funny even if the math weren't so bad. According to D.C. Metropolitan Police Dept. statistics, there were 177 murders — not murder by firearm, but overall — in Washington, D.C. from Jan. 1 to Nov. 30, 2005. Given the population of 572,000, that's a rate of about 30.1 per 100,000 people ? not 80.6 ? or a little less than three per month per 100,000 people over those 11 months.

Now, if you divide 2,112 U.S. deaths in Iraq by 1.6, given the population of 160,000 soldiers, the result is 1,320 deaths per 100,000 soldiers. Divide 1,320 by 22 months and you get 60 deaths per month.

Unless they've changed the rules, 60 is more than 3.

I don't mind propaganda so much as I mind this much smoke being blown up my ass.