Another Smear E-Mail in a Never-Ending Series: Iraq Safer Than Chicago

Another pathetic attempt to make is seem like all is going well in Iraq, children are singing, birds are chirping, dogs and cats are happily coexisting and that if Barack Obama wins the Presidency, the US will become one major "combat zone" just like Chicago and worse than Iraq - oh yeah, and Obama's from Chicago.

Here's the ridiculously inane e-mail (as received):

The US should immediately pull out of Chicago!

CHANGE CHICAGO NOW!!!

Body count. In the last six months 292 killed (murdered) in Chicago, 221 killed in Iraq .

Sens. Barack Obama & Dick Durbin, Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., Gov. Rod Blogojevich, House leader Mike Madigan, Atty. Gen. Lisa Madigan (daughter of Mike), Mayor Richard M. Daley (son of Mayor Richard J. Daley).....our leadership in Illinois.....all Democrats.

Thank you for the combat zone in Chicago . Of course they're all blaming each other. Can't blame Republicans, they're aren't any!

State pension fund $44 Billion in debt, worst in country. Cook County ( Chicago ) sales tax 10.25% highest in country. (Look'em up if you want). Chicago school system one of the worst in country.

This is the political culture that Obama comes from in Illinois, and He's gonna 'fix' Washington politics?

Well, well... where to begin?...

As usual, the originators of these types of e-mail don't link it to any pertinent information to verify these numbers. The author doesn't specify what "six months" he's talking about. The number of US military casualties from January through June is 2008. The number for the year to date is 270.

Since I don't want to spend too much time on this, I was not able to find a homicide rate for Chicago for the current year. The total homicide rate for Chicago in 2007 was 442, a 6.2% from from the 2006 total of 471.

So let's just assume that the year to date number of 292 for 2008 is an average and close to correct. Is the author then trying to equate military deaths in Iraq to civilian deaths in Chicago? If we are acting as a police force in Iraq, shouldn't the author equate the military deaths in Iraq to police officer casualties in Chicago? If that were the case, then year to date the number would be US casualties - 270, Chicago Police - 2.

And if you're going to use homicide numbers in Chicago, shouldn't you use the Iraqi civilian casualties? Or do those innocent civilians not count?

The death toll of Iraqi civilians has been very sketchy depending on who's counting. From the Congressional Research Service updated on August 27, 2008:

...For some time, the United Nations attempted to release comprehensive statistics on Iraqi civilian deaths. From August 2005 to March 2007, the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) published a series of quarterly reports on human rights in Iraq that included sections on Iraqi civilian casualties. On April 25, 2007, however, the Iraqi government announced its intention to cease providing civilian casualty figures to the United Nations. Ivana Vuco, a UN human rights officer, stated, “[Iraqi] government officials had made clear during discussions that they believed releasing high casualty numbers would make it more difficult to quell unrest.”

...In an interview with the Boston Globe, Rear Admiral Gregory Smith, the chief U.S. military spokesman, said Iraqi ministry civilian death tolls estimates have risen from a low of 568 in December 2007 and 541 in January 2008 to roughly 721 in February 2008 and 1,082 in March 2008. “There was somewhere on the order of a 25 or 30 percent increase in the number of civilian casualties when you consider March compared to February,” Smith said, although “the numbers are still nowhere near what they had been last summer.” The New York Times reports that the Iraqi Health Ministry lists a total of 865 civilian deaths for July 2008 and 975 deaths for June 2008.

So, 975 Iraqi deaths reported in June as opposed to a claim of 292 deaths in Chicago for an unknown six month span. Kinda blows that e-mail out out of the water, doesn't it? And you'll forgive me if I believe that these "official numbers" aren't exactly accurate. With the reluctance of the Iraqi government to release their casualty numbers, the zealousness of the Bush administration to tamp down the numbers and use the surge as an end-all-be-all for success in Iraq, who knows how many Iraqi civilians have been killed?

Here are some other estimates of Iraqi civilian deaths from the same congressional report:

Iraq Body Count - March 19, 2003 - August 22, 2008: 86,661 - 94,558
Iraq Coalition Casualty Count - April 28, 2005 - August 22, 2008: 43,099
Brookings Iraq Index - May 2003 - August 14, 2008: 113,616
The Associated Press - April 2005 - February 13, 2008: 34,832 dead - 40,174 wounded
The Iraq Family Health Study (the “WHO study”) - March 2003 - June 2006: 151,000
The Lancet, “Mortality after the 2003 Invasion of Iraq” - March 19, 2003 - July 31, 2006: 426,369 -793,663

And finally, this number from Just Foreign Policy.Org:

The estimate that over a million Iraqis have died received independent confirmation from a prestigious British polling agency in September 2007. Opinion Research Business estimated that 1.2 million Iraqis have been killed violently since the US invasion.

As for the tax rate and the debt, the national debt $10 TRILLION and a yearly budget deficit of over $400 billion, but I'm not going to get into that portion of this stupid ass e-mail because for me, the main issue was the ludicrous idea that Iraq is safer than Chicago.

Maybe the originator of this e-mail should take a walk down a Baghdad street and compare it to a walk down a Chicago street. If given the opportunity, I'd bet my house they would pass on it.