apples per month to oranges per year

So, there's a socially viral email that's going around claiming Iraq is safer than DC:

There has been a monthly average of 160,000 troops in the Iraq theatre of operations during the last 22 months, and a total of 2,112 deaths. That gives a firearm death rate of 60 per 100,000 soldiers. The firearm death rate in Washington D.C. is 80.6 per 100,000 persons for the same period. That means that you are about 25% more likely to be shot and killed in the U.S. Capital than you are in Iraq . Conclusion: The U.S. should pull out of Washington.

There's so much wrong with this it's hard to know where to start. But, here goes:

• 2,122 deaths in 22 months is 1,152 per 160,000 people per year. That's 720 per 100,000, not 60 per 100,000. That means the "deaths in Iraq" figure is for a month, not a year.
  
• In 2006, the number of firearms deaths in DC was 169; the population is 581,530 people. That's a rate of 29 per 100,000, not 80.6. (nb: some sources give the rate as 31.5. Still nowhere near 80.6)
  
• Thus, the actual comparison is 720 soldiers dead in Iraq to 30 people killed in DC in a year per 100,000, or around 24 times higher.
  
• Therefore, "you" are actually 2225% more likely to be killed in Iraq than in DC. That's not 22.25% - that actually is twenty-two thousand percent.
  
  Moreover
  
• These figures are counting "shot and killed" in DC vs. "killed" in Iraq. It's pretty much the same for homicide, though, with the DC rate being 35.4.
  
• How many people have been killed by IEDs in DC in the last couple of years? Zero.
  
• How many of the dead in DC were in armored vehicles or wearing body armor? Zero.
  
  And most importantly
  
• How many Iraqis have died in the last 22 months? That's the true measure of how "safe" Iraq is.

But of course, the kind of people who circulate these things don't really care about Iraqis. They don't count.