Combat deaths: Lying with Math

Mike Dunford at The Questionable Authority looks at the latest attempt by right-wingers to lie about the war - this is the "military deaths under Bush aren't much different than the deaths under Clinton, so why is everyone picking on poor Dubya?" spin. It's been taken down several places (as Mike points out and links to), but Mike has - as always - a 'closer-to-the-bone' take on it.

Based on this, it doesn't look at all like the Clinton Presidency - or the 1st Bush Presidency, or the Reagan Presidency - is remotely similar to the current administration when it comes to the active duty death rate. From here, it looks like there was a fairly smooth and steady decline in the death rate between 1980 and 2000, a relatively moderate increase from 2001-2003, and a massive increase coinciding with the post-aircraft-carrier-end-of-major- combat-mission-accomplished-speech era. That's nothing like the picture that the right-wingers were trying to paint.

All in all, though, who gives a damn what the numbers actually are? I brought them up to demonstrate that the new spin is, in addition to being enormously disrespectful of active duty troops living and dead, thoroughly dishonest. But, even if it were not dishonest, and even if it were not wrong, it would make no difference.

...We have a responsibility to do our best to keep the active duty troops from dying unnecessarily

Go read it all, look at the graphs, digest the argument. Mike's right.