More propaganda on safe, secure Iraq

A few years ago, a claim was made by a right-wing website that Iraq was safer than California based on the number of troops who had died in the conflict. It was done with statistical sleight-of-hand, naturally. California homicides: 2,394. Iraq casualties: 934. What the triumphalist article didn't bother to point out is that California's population is about 34 million, while the number of troops was less than 150,000.

Now another right-wing website cites a Republican Congressman claiming that Iraq is safer than Washington, D.C., Baltimore, and a host of other US cities. But this result, too, comes from fiddling with the numbers-- using only the lowest estimates of deaths in Iraq, including deaths from car wrecks in the US but not in Iraq, and ignoring "the 2,559 or so Iraqi military and police casualties during the same period."

I find it baffling that so much effort is going into selling Americans on the notion that Iraq is a happy, peaceful place. Or for that matter that global warming is a myth in spite of the concensus of the world's scientists. Today's Republican party isn't just out of touch with America-- their official policy is the aggressive denial of reality.