The New York Times continues to set the tone and theme of reporting in America despite its diminished stature, loss of prestige, slumping circulation and grim financial outlook. Newspaper across the country take their cues from the Times regarding national and international stories. The internet has brought a breadth and depth of criticism the elites there never expected to suffer. One would think these new developments would somehow bring to bear a new commitment to accuracy and a sensitivity to appearances of objectivity.
Any hope for those sorts of epiphanies was dashed once again on Sunday with the publication of a major piece titled Across America, Deadly Echoes of Foreign Battles. This is presented as the first in a “series of articles and multimedia about veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who have committed killings, or been charged with them, after coming home.”
Philip Carter is an attorney in New York City, a U.S. Army officer, a veteran of Iraq and publisher of the blog, Intel Dump. Carter is not a conservative and has been publicly critical of the Bush administration’s execution of many aspects of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. He brought this Times article to my attention and his destruction of it carries far more weight than I can deliver.
So, basically, the reporters went trolling on Lexis-Nexis and other databases to find “murder” within the same paragraph as “veteran” or “soldier,” and built a front-page story around that research. They compared the pre-war numbers to the post-war numbers and found that, voila!, there’s a difference. And then it looks like they cherry-picked the best anecdotes out of that research (including the ones where they could get interviews and photos) to craft a narrative which fit the data.
The article makes no attempt to produce a statistically valid comparison of homicide rates among vets to rates among the general population. Nor does it rely at all on Pentagon data about post-deployment incidents of violence among veterans. It basically just generalizes from this small sample (121 out of 1.7 million Iraq and Afghanistan vets, not including civilians and contractors) to conclude that today’s generation of veterans are coming home full of rage and ready to kill.
I’ve got a one-word verdict on this article and its research: bull***t.
I want to bring the false premise and destructive focus of these articles to the attention of as many as possible. New York Times stories are copied, quoted and repeated on air daily in this nation as if they enjoyed the infallibility of a divine edict. This effort on their part is clearly an attempt to establish the narrative of returning combat veterans as helpless, emotionally crippled and violent victims of a war mad Bush Administration. Hysterical hyperbole and dishonest rhetoric about our veterans obscures the reality and distorts the discovery of those in real need of help.
Mark Danziger (Armed Liberal) at Winds of Change blog points out the following facts on the murder rate of veterans and the that of the general U.S. population:
From the October 1, 2001 start of the Afghanistan war, that’s about 26,000 troops/month. To date (Jan 2008) that would give about 1.99 million.
That means that the NY Times 121 murders represent about a 7.08/100,000 rate.
Now the numbers on deployed troops are probably high - fewer troops from 2001 - 2003; I’d love a better number if someone has it.
But for initial purposes, let’s call the rate 10/100,000, about 40% higher than the calculated one.
Now, how does that compare with the population as a whole?
Turning to the DoJ statistics, we see that the US offender rate for homicide in the 18 - 24 yo range is 26.5/100,000.For 25 - 34, it’s 13.5/100,000.
See the problem?
Damn, is it that hard for reporters and their editors to provide a little bit of context so we can make sense of the anecdotes? It’s not in Part 1 of the article. And I’ll bet it won’t be in the future articles, either.
Because it’s not part of the narrative of how our soldiers are either depraved or damaged.
Filed Under Front Page ·
Comments
19 Responses to “The Facts Always Get In The Way”Search
Our Sponsors
Poll
Loading ...LST Book Club
-
Defending Identity: Its Indispensable Role in Protecting Democracy
by Natan Sharansky -
Fear No Evil
by Natan Sharansky -
The Case For Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror
by Anatoly Shcharansky -
The Jewish State: The Struggle for Israel's Soul
by Yoram Hazony -
Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There
by David Brooks -
Snobbery: The American Version
by Joseph Epstein -
A Conflict of Visions: Idealogical Origins of Political Struggles
by Thomas Sowell
Texpat, great article, and comments. It isn’t in the agenda of the NYTimes to be factual, or have excellent statistics. It doesn’t fit their agenda. Are we sad the NYTimes is a dying newspaper? nope.
Whenever the NYTimes or any other liberal news rag throws-up on a piece of paper and reports on it as news I just look at their declining subscribership and laugh.
Since they will never have a Road to Damascus experience, we can only pray and wait for the inevitable Road to Bankruptcy experience. Liberalism, treason is they name.
Any story what-so-ever that has this as the basis:
Poll = News
is and INSTANT turn off. About 95% of what NBCCBECNNABCMSNBCNYTLATIMESWASHPOST and even Fox report now, is someone taking a “poll” and the results are reported as “news”.
The results of a “poll” AREN’T news!!!
And the results of “digging” for stats will result in one thing. Stats!! NOT the reason (if there is one) behind any “statistics”.
Way to aggravated to type any more on this without getting banned!
But they count on - for good reason, unfortunately - on an uneducated, uninformed, uncaring, unreasoning public that simply accepts this pablum without considering if it is (a) truthful (b) honest in its intentions or (c) good for them or for the country.
Like politics, we get what we deserve, and if people accept this and give the MSM “authority” by default, these kinds of misleading articles will continue to appear. Dammit.
TexPAt–thanks for the article; the two well-placed supportive comments make it gold.
Just like the media seeming to get a thrill out of being able to add the tag line “Viet Nam Vet” to either someone that is homeless or that has committed a crime.
But not a peep about jihadi murder and mayhem. They don’t even have to make up numbers for that… Working twice as hard as they have to to make the good guys into bad guys.
They’ll try and make them all into homeless psycho murderers, like they tried to do to the Vietnam Vets.
#9 Faster
That is exactly their plan. It’s the old Nam Nuts template. Things have turned around in Iraq so now it is time to move on to the next phase.
This right here is a perfect reason that a real liberal is still far worse to have in office than a shaky conservative.
Thank you very much, jimb.
I recall the NY Times for decades proclaiming how high the PTSD percentage was amongst Vietnam vets. Then low and behold, with little fanfare, this came out a couple of years go: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/18/health/policy/18psych.html?ex=1313553600&en=f93cfa601b2b9c88&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
Reminds me of the “Agent Orange” scam of the Vietnam War era and the “Gulf War Syndrome”
Figures don’t lie but liars figure!
One theme in the movie ‘No Country For Old Men’ is that Viet Nam vets are killers: ‘The sheriff tells Moss’s wife that “he’s goin’ to wind up killin somebody,” to which the wife responds, “He never has.” The sheriff points out, “he was in Vietnam,” and the wife says, “I mean as a civilian.”’
The U.S. Military man is a walking killer appears to be a new anti-war theme the pink purveyors of disinformation are perpetrating on citizens.
Tex06, Agent Orange was no scam. Dioxin is a killer. Every vet that got exposed to agent orange still sweats every time he gets a rash anywhere on his body. Admiral Zumwalt was one of the chief architects of Agent Orange…which later killed is son who served in Vietnam. I don’t know enough about the Gulf War syndrome to make an intelligent assessment. I suspect there is something there. Likely we blew up some of Saddam’s chemical stockpiles and the wind carried it.
But Agent Orange being a scam. No sir:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_Orange
I never had any on me. My brother had it all over him. He was a tunnel rat, has two purple hearts, and he fears every time he gets a rash.
Britt Hume on his Special Report program on FNC sunk the Times story tonight.
One might hope that more folks watch FNC than read the NYT. Of course that doesn’t keep other news organizations from picking up the Times stories and running with them without any critical analysis.
Milbloggers, rightfully so, are going nuts over this—and calling shenanigans on the NYT and it’s obvious spin job.
OPFOR is a case in point:
http://op-for.com/2008/01/vets_gone_wild.html
Thisis not new, I first posted on the trend back in November:
http://www.fauxnews.org/blog/2007/11/20/last-resorts/
The “soldier as victim” is a favorite meme of the left, most notorious in recent days when Jackiepoo Murtha declared a squad of Marines had been turned into “cold blooded murderers” because the war had stressed them into it in Haditha before there was even an investigation.
Se–
he Left “knws” these things. They don’t NEED proof, but they know that other folks DO—so they make it up.
Two million troops go to a war zone and 121 come back and commit murder?
I wonder how carpenters compare in this category.
I’m willing to bet that soldiers do a lot better.
Sarge - or 18 wheeler drivers armed with their instruments of death!!
I can tell you for certain that troops here in Hawaii returning from deployment are encouraged to seek counselling and are not looked down on. Their spouses (wives and husbands) are also encouraged to come forward if they spot problems to help our their military spouse ASAP and not let things fester. My wife and I talk to military wives daily in our building, at work, at the dog park, in the grocery store. As Sarge said, this isn’t 1972, and the spin in 1972 was a fabricated myth by the left that never existed. But then, they’re very good at lying to achieve their own ends.