I got a "DC is worse than Iraq" email at work just now. My reply involved facts.

> Regardless of where you stand on the issues of the U.S. involvement in
> Iraq,
> here's a sobering statistic...
>
>
>
> There has been a monthly average of 160,000 troops in the Iraq theatre of
> operations during the last 22 months, and a total of 2,867 deaths
>
> That gives a firearm death rate of 60 per 100,000 soldiers
>
> The firearm death rate in Washington D.C. is 80.6 per 100,000 persons for
> the same period. That means that you are about 25% more likely to be shot
> and killed in the U.S. Capital than you are in Iraq
>
> Conclusion: THE U.S. SHOULD PULL OUT OF WASHINGTON...

At the risk of sounding grim, the numbers here are a bit misleading.

Washington DC does not have a firearm death rate of 80.6 per 100,000 per year. In 2003 the deaths due to firearms in CD was 26.9 per 100,000 (http: //www.statehealthfacts.org/comparemaptable.jsp?cat=2&ind=113)

By the way, there were 195 homocides in DC in 2005. That comes out to a 35.4 manslaughter rate (which includes unintentional manslaughter). In comparison, Houston had only 16.3. (http: //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_cities_by_crime_rate)

The 2867 US troops killed in Iraq killed in a 22 month period average out to 130.3 per month. Assuming there really were 160,000 troops in country during that time (the real number is a little lower than that) that means a death rate of 102.3 per 100,000 per year--or about four times higher than the DC death by firearms rate.

Except that the DC death rate counts civilians. If we count civilians killed in Iraq, then there have been 76,000 documented cases of Iraqis killed by violence in the last 4 1/2 years, or about 17,000 per year. For a population of 27million, than means 63.3 per 100,000 population, which includes the parts of Iraq like Basra and Kurdistan that the president keeps assuring us aren't very violent at all. Of course that's also counting bombs, RPGs and beheadings. I don't know if we keep stats on beheadings in Washington DC. I'm pretty sure there's not enough of them, however.

Of course if we just count US troops being killed in Iraq, that's like only counting cops killed in DC each year to figure out how big the violent death rate is. When you count metro police, US park police, and the Capital police force, last year all armed police forces in DC had a death rate of 0 per 100,000.

Interesting......

It is a WAR, there will probably be a few deaths. If
you don't like the e-mail the delete key works on most
computers.

Larry, I liked the email, I just corrected a few facts.

I also am a big fan of the guy who sent the email. He's pretty pro-facts himself. Stubborn things.