Heinous Lying Email: "Overview of Military Deaths Past 26 Years"

[Bolo Boffin]

I can't even believe this. My brother is stuck in South Alabama, surrounded by crazy Republicans at work. They sent him an email on the subject, Bush Lied, People Died???

The email itself has been reproduced at a stupid right wing site that I found. Here's the link:

http://scaredmonkeys.com/2008/01/29/an-overview-of-military-deaths-in-the-past-26-years/

Bet you didn’t know the following! I surely did not.

These are some rather eye-opening facts: Since the start of the war on terror in Iraq and Afganistan, the sacrifice has been enormous. In the time period from the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 through now, we have lost over 3000 military personnel to enemy action and accidents. As tragic as the loss of any member of the US Armed Forces is, consider the following statistics:

The annual fatalities of military members while actively serving in the armed forces from 1980 through 2006:

1980 ……… 2,392
1981 ……… 2,380
1984 ……… 1,999
1988 ……… 1,819
1989 ……… 1,636
1990 ……… 1,508
1991 ……… 1,787
1992 ……… 1,293 ———-
1993 ……… 1,213
1994 ……… 1,075
1995 ……… 2,465 8 Clinton years: 13,417 deaths
1996 ……… 2,318
1997 ……… 817
1998 ……… 2,252
1999 ……… 1,984 ———-
2000 ……… 1,983
2001 ……… 890
2002 ……… 1,007 7 BUSH years @ 9,016 deaths
2003 ……… 1,410
2004 ……… 1,887
2005 ……… 919
2006………. 920 ———-

If you are confused when you look at these figures…so was I.

Do these figures mean that the loss from the two latest conflicts in the Middle East are LESS than the loss of military personnel during Mr. Clinton ’s presidency; when America wasn’t even involved in a war? And, I was even more confused; when I read that in 1980, during the reign of President (Nobel Peace Prize) Jimmy Carter, there were 2,392 US military fatalities!

These figures indicate that many of our Media & Politicians will pick and choose. They present only those ‘facts’ which support their agenda-driven reporting. Why do so many of them march in lock-step to twist the truth. Where do so many of them get their marching-orders for their agenda?

The email goes on to link to an actual military documents and blithely tells you to go verify the numbers, if you want.

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL32492.pdf (pdf)

Well, I did. The email is pulling those numbers out of Cheney's dark, polluted soul.

Here's the actual death figures of Active Duty Military for ALL the years, not just the ones this email selects. It's on page CRS-7 and CRS-8 (pages 10 and 11 of the pdf).



As you can see, the numbers under Clinton have undergone some revision. As in, some idiot Republican ran them through a Diebold machine.

Those are deaths from all causes, suicide, homicide, hostile action, terrorism, undetermined -- the whole lot. As you can see, the numbers drop steadily under Clinton. Truth be told, it's continuing a clear trend line from Reagan and Bush (the numbers bop around, especially for Operation Enduring Freedom in 1991, but you can draw a general slope).

But Dubya throws the numbers right up there again. And how did he do it?

http://www.publicintegrity.org/WarCard/

The story beneath the story is BUSH LIED, PEOPLE WERE MAIMED FOR LIFE.

The PDF shows that World War 2 had a 1:1.7 ratio of Death to Wounded. That means for every one death, 1.7 people were wounded.

Vietnam was 1:2.6.

Korea was 1:2.8.

Operation Iraqi Freedom, as of February 2007, was 1:7.8. It's right there on page CRS-9 (page 12 of the pdf).

Those vets are coming back injured in the service of their country. Guess what Bush is doing to their health care?

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/351170_veterans14.html?source=mypi

He's got to get that budget balanced somehow.

So when your favorite Republican coworker flings this piece of elephant dung in your face, do you want some real fun? Here's a nice little question.

Guess how many people the military classified as dying due to Hostile Action during the entire eight years Bill Clinton was President?

ONE.

They will start screaming Black Hawk Down!!!! The Somalia deaths was considered a terrorist attack by the military. TAKE IT UP WITH THEM. If they start yelling about how Clinton juggled the numbers, tell them that's where Reagan stuck the Lebanon Marines. There they are: 1983, all 241 of them. (the number says 263 because there were a few more throughout the year. If two more had died that day, it would have tied the first day of the Tet Offensive.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Beirut_barracks_bombing

Total deaths because of terrorist attacks under Bill Clinton? 76. All eight years. Including Somalia. Including Kosovo.

165 less than Reagan in a single day.

How many active duty died in Kosovo? ZERO. NADA. EL ZIPERINO, if you're not into that whole brevity thing.

Of course, Clinton didn't lie about Kosovo, did he? He lied about a sex act.

And NOBODY DIED.

The email is a Total Lie, and links to an actual military document as if it proves their point. Wow. Just wow.

[AZCat]

1. What's really sad...

is how little work you had to do to check the numbers in the email, yet whoever sent it to your brother didn't bother to do the same.

[Bolo Boffin]

2. It's incredible, isn't it?

The link is right there in the email. "Go ahead and verify it!"

:eyes:

[AZCat]

3. You wonder what...

the person who created the email was thinking.

[bunkerbuster1]

21. Simple. "I'll tell a big-ass lie convincingly."

And I don't see a whole lot of daylight between those who make up the lie and those who spread the lie, frankly. Any idiot could see that this email is bullshit.

Any. Idiot.

[ck4829]

4. Guess that means Reagan was a butcher of American Troops then

[AZCat]

6. He was nothing...

compared to that bastard Lincoln! During the Civil War (lasting ~4 years) there were approximately 360,000 Union dead, for an average of 90,000 per year.

[Thothmes]

14. How Many Did

Presidents Wilson, Roosevelt, Truman and Johnson get killed.

[AZCat]

18. I was using the wiki page for U.S. casualties of war.

It appears that Roosevelt might be worse: WWII had ~400,000 deaths over ~3.5 yrs, so FDR gets about 115k/yr (Truman of course shares part of that). Korea and Vietnam had considerably less deaths overall (36k and 58k, respectively) over similar or longer periods (~3 yrs and ~9 yrs).

[Bolo Boffin]

7. Oh, yeah.

........Total...Average per year

Reagan--17201-----2150.125

Bush I---6223-----1555.75

Clinton--7500------937.5

Bush II--8792-----1465.33


Reagan was Sweeney Todd compared to any of them. Bush I almost beat Clinton with four years to Clinton's 8.

And Dubya's Number 2 with a bullet. That's only six years of figures for him.

[BleedingHeartPatriot]

5. Graphs, pie charts and arrows, the new purveyors of truth.

In powerpoint.

more like :-(

[lolly]

8. This is what the "Reply All" button was made for!

Hope you used it wisely and well!

[Bolo Boffin]

9. I hope my brother does!

That's his call, but he probably will.

[mvccd1000]

10. One thing everyone seems to have missed....

... is that the military was what - four or five times larger under Reagan? Hell, the Navy was approaching 600 ships, and now they are scrambling to keep 200.

The Army has cut the number of brigades to a fraction of what they were.

Hard to look at raw numbers without the comparison of total size...

[Bolo Boffin]

11. That's in the PDF as well.

And the comparison seems to hold up. The largest the military got under Reagan was 2,359,855 in 1986. The lowest was under Clinton in 1999. It was down to 1,525,942. That's a 35% drop in personnel.

But deaths dropped by a lot more: 1,984 deaths v. 796 deaths. That's a 60% drop in mortality.

[mvccd1000]

13. Much better answers.

Thanks for the additional info. I've seen this thing so many places lately that I have to confess that I didn't go to the source link you posted.

I'm going to guess that has to do with the quality of people retained by the military. During most of the RIFs in the 90s, they got rid of people who had been floating around in their particular rank for quite some time - possibly an indicator that those personnel were not the best suited for their jobs.

By retaining the top people and newest equipment, safety was bound to go up - definitely a nice side effect of an otherwise miserable time to be in the military.

[onethatcares]

12. thank and bookmarked, because

I know my rightwing boss, who's becoming a fundie, is going to send this to me.

[Bolo Boffin]

15. It's definitely making the rounds.

Glad to be helpful.

[AlertLurker]

16. Wow - * really IS like Reagan. Who knew?

[chat_noir]

17. U.S. ACTIVE MILITARY DEATH TABLE 1980 - 2006

http://siadapp.dmdc.osd.mil/personnel/CASUALTY/Death_Rates.pdf

[Bolo Boffin]

20. Thanks! That's exactly what's on two pages of that PDF.

Thanks for the graphic!

[flamin lib]

19. I haven't seen this one yet, but thanks for preparing me for a

replyall with links and facts.