Thursday, May 24, 2007

Statistical Chicanery

From time to time, another blogger (I refuse to link to the jackass) here in the Show Me State performs some statistical gymnastics and tries to “prove” that more active duty military personnel died during the (mostly) peacetime Clinton years than in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Notice that bit of chicanery right there…More died during the Clinton presidency than have perished in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

How fucking stupid does this pund-idiot think we are?

The numbers the way he presents them are technically correct – if you count the accidents and the deaths by natural causes of active duty military personnel during the Clinton years, and compare them to the number of war fatalities since the launch of the war in Afghanistan, it is a bigger number.

Of course, it’s patently dishonest, but about what I expect from this particular jackass.

Does that blogger really expect anyone to believe that deaths by natural causes and accident ceased to occur when we went to war? That military deaths actually decline in a time of war? That is the bill of goods he is selling.

Well, his readers might be that stupid – but mine aren’t.

(And this chart from the DoD proves he is a spin-meister hack and a pathetic lyin' sack.)

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