Should the US pull out of Iraq?
 

If you consider that there have been an average of 160,000 troops in Iraq during the last 22 months, that gives a firearm death rate of 60 per 100,000.

The firearm death rate in Washington, D.C., is 80.6 per 100,000. That means that you are more likely to be shot and killed in our Nation's Capitol, which has some of the strictest gun control laws in the nation, than you are in Iraq.

Conclusion: We should immediately pull out of Washington, D.C.

ROTFLMAO... nice one.

^ Teh Winn3r

"Should the US pull out of Iraq?"


depends. has she come yet?

I LOVE it!

not to be a snark...but where does that 80.6 number come from? The national rate is about 15. That seems quite high, even for a metro area.

*Snigger* Excellent.

upon further research. levels have not been that high for some time. 120,000 is a safer estimate, but i'll split the difference with you. let's say 140k.

Now, lets say that we compare apples to applelikeobjects (I assume this is the manipulation used to produce the 80 number, but i have no way of knowing this, since you did not show how that number is produced). Total homocides to total KIAs. Firearm deaths are deceieving because tons of our troops are getting blown up by IEDs. Doesn't happen much in DC, no matter how hoody you think the town is.

Okay.

1644 (current deaths) / 140,000 (# of troops) is set equal to x over 100,000

Solve for x, and you get 1174. That's not 60. It's not even close. And that calculation is the deaths per 100,000 ratio. That's for two years, so divide by two if you want the annual rate. The first year will be a bit under 500 per 100,000, and the second year will be over 500.

Making light of the danger our troops face is not supporting them.

now i'm starting to get really ticked off.

more research at http://icasualties.org/ which is usually cited as the source for the data behind that joke.

applying the filter for deaths caused only by Hostile Fire or sniper attacks, and exluding IEDs, car bombs, suicide bombs, all friendly fire incidents, suicides by gun, gunfire deaths that may be included with ambush deaths, and all that.... you still get about 500 deaths. Do the math, and that's an absolute mininum 170 gunfire deaths IN COMBAT per year. That number is a complete lowball by the way that i calculated it (leaving out other causes of death, and only including certain categories of death)...and somehow this 60 number is getting tossed around. Incredible.

Go to icasualties.org and search around. It's a sobering experience, and one that does not leave me feeling like telling jokes.

Martinguerre, thanks for taking the time to do this. I was all set to post pretty much exactly what you posted, but you beat me to it.

When I read the joke my first reaction was WTF? ? ? ? the numbers are completely wrong, isn't it obvious? Are the numbers being purposely skewed in order to make a cheap political shot? And that seems to be exactly the case.

As you say, incredible.

This thread has been officially robbed of whatever humor value it held.

Good job.

Have you ever been in combat? I have. I hold 2 bronze stars and a purple heart with oak leaf cluster. I was a special operations engineer with the 5th U.S. Army Special Operations Forces. I served in several theatres of operation from 1979 to 1984. Do not presume to tell me how to support our troops.

You need to recognize that humor is a coping mechanism, and that it helps us get through those hard times. Prayer is good also, I prayed a lot, but not everybody does.

This is a joke, that's why it is posted in tilted humor and not in some other board. Lighten up.

Sorry to kill the joy, but deceits about American losses just don't strike me as funny. They strike me as downright disrespectful.

No, i have not. But i won't acknowledge that I am not entitled to an opinion as to the moral implications of a joke like this. Especially because it is an oft repeated trope about the war that deceives the home front about the realities of what is happening over there. I've heard this one from a lot of chicken hawks, and it bugs me to no end to hear them spout off about how safe it is. Some of my friends have gone over there, and none of them laughed about this one.

To be honest, i did not notice that this was posted in humor until after i had responded...i saw the thread title only in the new posts search. I think i would have responded slightly differently had i noticed, but not much.

I didn't say you weren't. What you are not entitled to do is tell me how to be supportive. You have no idea what it means to be in combat, and you have no idea what the guys in the field are going through.

If you're that concerned about being supportive, then you should do something supportive, like write a letter to "any serviceman", or send a care package to "any serviceman." Since you are clearly religious, you could pray for our servicemen. I do.

Unfounded bitching about a stupid joke is not supporting our troops.

That is your interpretation, it is not everyone's. The joke is that you are safer in a combat zone than in some parts of our nation's capitol. I've spent considerable time in both places, and it is, unfortunately, the true state of affairs. Probably also for other major cities, but funnier with DC.

Like I said, lighten up.

Isn't one of the rules here to just click the Back button if you don't like something? Like SirLance said, it is a joke. Lighten up.

Hahahaha!

Man, these posts sure did hit MY FUNNY BONE...

I think I'll wander over to Tilted Politics and see what kind of humour they are printing over there...

/returns from Tilted Politics
Oh shit. That wasn't much different.

To make this thread funny again:

A patient is lying in bed with an oxygen mask on and mumbles to the nurse:
"Are my testicles black?"
The nurse replies, "What!?!"
The patient repeats "Are my testicles black?"
The nurse then lifts up the blanket and picks up his testicles to have a good look and replies "No, there're not black, they are normal in colour..."
The patient then takes off the oxygen mask and says "That was very nice, but are my test results back?"

Thank you! This gave me a good laugh.

martinguerre - lighten up dude, you are way too uptight. This is not the first thread I have seen you ruin with your negativity.

As for the joke, I thought it was pretty funny.

I have been told to lighten up in another thread recently closed. However...look, not to kill the joy or anything. But I just think people should know. So you tell this joke with kinda way off statistics to make it seem funny. OK, ok, fine no problem. But what if the people end up "mis-informed" and start believing the wrong stuff?
I wouldn't mind these kinda jokes if after that, maybe you explained that these numbers were wrongly used..and whats the real deal.
I mean I almost freaked out when I read that (being not very smart or savvy with national statistics and all).
So yeah. thats just my humble opinion.

Oh, God, I can't stop laughing.

For some reason that reminded me of the old Bill Cosby routine about the trip to the dentist where he's trying to tell the dentist that his lip is in his lap...

"My-be lip-be.... my-be lip-be..."

"What?"

"MY-BE LIP-BE! MY-BE LIP-BE IS IN MY LAP-BE"

"What?"

Hysterical. Ah, well, at random do the fire synapses...

I don't agree. Does everything these days need a damn disclaimer? "This is a joke, and these statistics may have been made up for humorous purposes?" C'mon, we're taking this WAY too seriously.

This is TILTED HUMOR. You can't take this stuff as factual.

Well, if it's disclaimers you want, here are a few amusing one's I've stumbled accross:

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