Of course the NYT isn't doing this to help our vets and their families. Their intent is, presumably, to yet again portray veterans of unpopular foreign wars as mindless killers, drug addicts and ne'er-do-wells.
According to Global Security:
Well over 1 million U.S. troops have fought in the wars since September 11, 2001, according to Pentagon data released to Salon. As of Jan. 31, 2005, the exact figure was 1,048,884, approximately one-third the number of troops ever stationed in or around Vietnam during 15 years of that conflict.Excluding demographic peculiarities which would only bolster my arguments, let's assume the numbers are correct: 121 murders from a population of at least 1,084,884 deployed troops. That's 11.15 murders per one hundred thousand vets. There are just over 124,000 men, women, children and oldsters who live in Hartford, CT, most of whom have never fired a gun yet they managed to committ 33 actual murders last year, that's a murder rate of 26.53 per one hundred thousand, more than twice as many murders as the NYT's deranged, combat hardened Myrmidons.
Why doesn't the NYT run a breathless expose on the victims of the Kennedys called "Liberal Killed". Let's just count the most infamous dead and leave out the raped, lobotomized and assaulted for the time being: Mary Jo Kopechne, Lauren Bessette, Carolyn Bessette Kennedy and Martha Moxley. That's at least 4 women killed, how many Kennedys are there? 100, 200, 500? Even if there are 500 Kennedys that would make their murder rate over 71 times that of our war veterans. When will we see an expose about a useless American political clan who has a nominal murder rate of 800 per one hundred thousand?
