LTTE comparing Iraq combat deaths to Detroit murders

[PsN2Wind]

and telling about all those unprovoked wars started by Democrat presidents and comparing the casualties. I'm sure you've all received it but I was still surprised to see it turn up as a LTTE here in Klamath Falls, OR., submitted as though it was this lady's original thought. I wrote a letter to the editor pointing out the plagiarism and pointing out that if they Google on "39 combat-related killings in Iraq" they could see where this has been posted innumerable times on the net and rebutted about the same number.
Has anyone else seen this in the LTTEs in their paper or is it only in the backwaters of Oregon that this could get by the LTTE screeners?

[wryter2000]

1. Good grief

What rock do those editors live under? I think snopes has debunked it. You might want to send the paper the link. Maybe it'll embarrass them. If they have any shame at all.

[leftofthedial]

2. astroturf

bullshit

[LynzM]

3. Seen this several times

Check snopes.com for debunking info, and write the paper your own LTTE to suggest they may want to run a check before printing LTTEs as original thoughts...

[zbdent]

4. Every time I'm confronted with this, I point out that the US losses in

Iraq are akin to the loss of police officers in Detroit.

If there were as many police officers killed (and just think about the wounded!) in the same amount of time, then Detroit would be surrounded by barbed wire and probably in line to be just plain nuked.

[GiovanniC]

5. Check Out This Insanity

I've seen "Kerry's Resume" on the local paper's editorial page, as well as the Spam about how "Heinz Outsources", along with the "John Kerry voted against all weapons!" drivel that Zell Miller bought hook, line, and sinker also.

I have caught my local paper printing astroturf about subjects concerning John Kerry, abortion, gay marriage, stem cells, Iraq, the "war on terror", immigration, and the Swift Boat Veterans. By my count, in the last eight months or so, I've caught my local paper printing ELEVEN spam emails as the writer's personal thoughts.

But here's the insanity. About six months or so ago, I read a letter in my paper which was someone's "plan" for foreign policy. It included gems like, "The US will make a strong effort to become self sufficient energy wise. This will include developing non-polluting sources of energy but will require a temporary drilling of oil in the Alaskan wilderness. The caribou will have to cope for a while." and "Ship the UN Headquarters to an island some place. We don't need the spies and fair weather friends here. Besides, it would make a good homeless shelter or lockup for illegal aliens."

I knew I had read that idiocy before, so I looked it up on Snopes. Sure enough, there it was. It's an email that's been circulating for a while, attributed to Robin Williams. But Robin Williams didn't write it. According to Snopes, "this item's debut appears to have been a 20 March 2003 posting to the USENET newsgroup alt.motorcycles.harley, and from there it was rapidly disseminated via e-mail and blogs, credited to either 'author unknown' or no one at all."

Armed with the facts, I informed the newspaper's opinion editor that he had been defrauded by "astroturf" -- again -- and informed him that the idiot who sent this garbage was not the idiot that wrote it. I directed him to Snopes for the rest of the story.

This editor then ran a piece on the opinion page a few days later explaining that I had informed him that they had been "had" and that he called the letter-writer for an explanation. The letter-writer then said that HE was the poster on the USENET newsgroup and thus the original author! It was such a blatant, obvious lie.

[GiovanniC]

6. Response To Detroit Murders Argument

I sent this to a friend back in July when he sent the email in question to me:

There were 39 combat related killings in Iraq during the month of January..... In the fair city of Detroit there were 35 murders in the month of January. That's just one American city, about as deadly as the entire war torn country of Iraq.
You're comparing 39 combat related killings in Iraq to 35 murders in Detroit. The problem with that is that you're choosing to only count AMERICANS that died. Since the war began last year, it is estimated that there have been over 13,000 civilian casualties. That boils down to over 850 casualties per month, and as violent as Detroit may be, there aren't 850 people dying there a month. But if for some reason you think that Iraqi civilian deaths aren't important, then consider that those 39 combat killings come from an American soldier population of about 130,000. If that is compared with Detroit's population of slightly under a million, that would be like if 269 people had been murdered in Detroit in January. You have to compare apples to oranges.


More responses in the same letter:

Liberated two countries.
That depends on your definition of "liberated". In Afghanistan, the capital city of Kabul is about the only place in the entire country that isn't under the control of warlords. Women still cannot go out in public without fear of being brutally attacked or worse. Children, particularly young girls, cannot go to school still. Hamid Karzai, the guy in charge, is owned by the United States and has almost no control over his own government. He is constantly the target of assassination attempts. The majority of the country remains an easy haven for terrorists, and we less troops in that entire country than we have police officers in just the Manhattan part of New York City. And Iraq -- It's still early to say exactly how effective the "new" government will have since we just turned it over a few weeks ago. Still, there are lots of places with no clean drinking water and no electricity -- places where those things existed before we attacked. And despite Iraq's faults, it was still one of the most open-minded Middle Eastern countries regarding women's rights. Not any more, with radical clerics gaining more and more clout. And obviously, most people do not feel "liberated" from the possibility that they will be killed in bomb blasts or other attacks at any moment.

Crushed the Taliban.
The Taliban continue to operate inside Afghanistan. One hour ago (NOTE: this was originally written on July 16, 2004), two Afghan government officials and their driver were killed by Taliban fighters in Qalat. In the past year, the Taliban have attacked and killed over 800.

Crippled al-Qaeda.
Al-Qaeda continues to grow stronger, according to many reports -- partially because Iraq distracted US forces away from pursuing them, and partially because the invasion of Iraq served as a powerful tool to recruit people. Al-Qaeda is still so strong, in fact, that the United States Department of Homeland Security just issued another warning about their plans to attack the United States this summer.

Put Nuclear Inspectors in Libya, Iran, and North Korea Without Firing a Shot
Libya's decision to disarm was widely seen as an effort to allow it to enter European economic markets and ease pressure from the Lockerbie bombing. Iran and North Korea have both admitted to having nuclear programs and neither have announced any steps to disarm.

Captured a Terrorist Who Slaughtered 300,000 of His Own People
Which he did over the course of two decades, much of that time while he was our ALLY against Iran, and some of it with weapons that WE gave him.

He was offered Osama bin Laden's head on a platter three times by Sudan and did nothing.
According to the Washington Post: "The Clinton administration struggled to find a way to accept the offer in secret contacts that stretched from a meeting at a Rosslyn hotel on March 3, 1996, to a fax that closed the door on the effort 10 weeks later. Unable to persuade the Saudis to accept bin Laden, and lacking a case to indict him in U.S. courts at the time, the Clinton administration finally gave up on the capture."

Clinton did not "do nothing" -- he wanted bin Laden. But at the time he was offered, the case against him was flimsy. He hadn't attacked Khobar Towers yet, he hadn't attacked the USS Cole, he hadn't attacked the World Trade Center or the Pentagon. The Saudis wouldn't accept the deal, so Sudan expelled bin Laden to Afghanistan, which is where he had lived when Reagan was giving him money, guns, and training to fight the Russians.