Don’t know much about basic addition
Oh dear. Mark Noonan is trying to kill me:
[A]s a bit of evidence for this success on the ground in Iraq, a trip over to Iraq Casualties shows that the number of deaths for American troops and for Iraqis has fallen dramatically in the past few months..reaching lows not seen since early 2006.
Say, let’s take a look at the numbers for “the past few months,” shall we?
Number of US deaths in Iraq, by month:
September 2007: 60
8-07: 84
7-07: 78
6-07: 101
5-07: 126
So over the past five months, 449 American troops have died. To compare apples to apples, let’s look at the data from May 2006 to September 2006:
5-06: 70
6-06: 61
7-06: 43
8-06: 65
9-06: 72
By my calculations, that’s 311 soldiers who died over the same period in 2006. Ooops!
And hey, let’s test Mark’s claim that casualties over “the past few months” have “reached lows not seen since early 2006.”
Casualty figures from January 2006 to May 2006:
1-06: 62
2-06: 55
3-06: 31
4-06: 76
5-06: 70
That’s a grand total of 294 soldiers. Oops!
Mark, buddy, if you want to make completely bogus claims about data in the future, you would do well to not actually link to the data in question.
And hey, just for kicks, let’s look at some of the headlines posted on today’s Iraq Coalition Casualties report:
–Truck bomb destroys bridge in Al Shifaa area in Mosul
–Gunmen kill Iraqi Christian in Mosul
–Mortar bomb kills journalist in Mosul
–Gunmen kill 2 people in Hilla
–Militants attacked Sunni Arab tribes wounding 6 in Jurf al-Sakhar
–Hawija police chief’s assistant dies from wounds
–Iman killed in Mosul
–4 civilians wounded in clashes between Iraqi army and gunmen
–Car bomb kills 4 policemen in Mosul
–Bodies of 8 suspected insurgents delivered to hospital in Samarra
–Five bodies found in Baghdad on Friday
–Sectarian Violence Kills 18
–U.S. confirms Baghdad air strike
And those are just today’s headlines! But hey, at least the Kurds have a swingin’ casino up and running!
UPDATE: Re-reading Mark’s post, I think he might have been trying to say that this has been a super-successful time for the Iraq because coalition casualties have dropped for the past few months. Which is even stupider, frankly. Casualties also dropped “dramatically” from October 2005 (94) to March 2006 (31) before booming back up again throughout the summer. Like most wingnuts, Mark has zero idea how to interpret statistical trends. Completely embarrassing.
U.S. Deaths By Calendar Year
2007: 798
2006: 822
Considering that 2007 is only 3/4 finished, if I were a betting man I would bet there will be more deaths this year than any other.
Then again, maybe next month the Democrat party will surrender, then there will be no more deaths. You liberoracists would love that!
Carry the One, My Wayward Son!
Maybe the Nooner got his figures from one of the 8.5 million Gathering of Eagles members who marched against those 9 war protesters.
Oy.
I….
geebus.
And the comments are filled with the usual brownshirts going nuts about it.
Chreebus mcjebus fuckstick christ.
diff Brad- no, I know, it’s depressing. It’s like trying to reason with 9/11 Truthers.
I dunno, truthers at least have the advantage of tending to be adolescents, leaving hope they’ll grow out of it with time.
These GoE folk are old men who never grew up, if keefer is any indication. There’s a certain point past which if you haven’t developed self-awareness, you’re never gonna.
These people’s mostly dead mothers should be ashamed.
Is Insuffrable Grammarian around? Noonan can’t even get an ellipsis right.
-Truck bomb destroys bridge in…
[…]
…Baghdad air strike
No worse than a typical Friday night in Akron, Ohio.
(Psst, Brad, up and running??)
It’s pretty absurd to measure ‘success’ by US casualties, if you’re Mark Noonan — because the way to be the most ‘successful’ would be to withdraw immediately, reducing casualties to zero per month.
As far as Iraqis go, measuring mortality trends via news reports is so deeply flawed as to be essentially useless. You’re measuring the ability of the media to accurately notice and report fatal incidents. A drop in reported incidents would also occur if, for instance, violence rose to such a level that the media were unable to do their jobs.
DIE Gadget Gadget trackback DIE!
i dunno kathleen, i agree with the spamtracker–unknown did write an interesting post today!
Not that he deserves it, but to be fair to Noonan, he is right that the last two months, taken individually, show casualties on a par with months in early 2006, rather than, say, previous months this year.
It’s still the stupidest way one can measure “success” in war, but there is a perspective from which his math is not actually entirely inaccurate. (Of course, this is the same madness-inducing perspective that is forced upon one when first encountering the cyclopean stones of the immense, ancient city of R’lyeh rising from the sea, heralding the devastating return of Cthulhu and the other Great Old Ones. But still….)
My favorite part of these little Noonan Blarghs is how he always manages to work in reference to how “the left” is divorced from reality regarding Iraq. Mark Noonan the Iraq War Truther who claims we found a whole bunch of WMDs in Iraq and that we’ve won and continue to win (oh, and by the way, Iraq is not in the midst of a civil war–but the U.S. is!) claims everybody else is divorced from reality. It’s like he’s trying to break every ironymeter in the world.
Kityon is one strange website.
Wait, that GadgetGadget.info thing was posted on December 31st, 1969! Time traveling hippies have come to support us! Look out, Kevin!
I’m waiting for David Kane to show up and tell us that the higher number of casualties so far this year just means that we’re due for a lot of anti-casualties for the rest of the year.
“his math is not actually entirely inaccurate”
…a leg here, an arm there, and pretty soon you’re talking…surge – surge – surge…splurge – splurge – spurge…wonderin’ if georgie gonna end up mcnamara-like wandering the globe tryin’ to wipe the stink of blood from his hands.
2+2=whatever Mark Noonan needs it to be.
Say four and you’re just being negative.
When US casualties decline, I always figure they’re getting more Green Zone R & R on orders from the White House. And now that they’ve officially extended the war till April or June, the poor mooks will be ordered back into Pandora Bush’s quagmire. So I’ll wait 60 days to see if this mini dip holds.
Speaking of mini dips, anyone seen Alberto Gonzales lately?