Gullible Voters?
Recently I received an blog claiming to present military causality “facts” that stated that more U.S. soldiers died during the years of Bill Clinton’s presidency than have died during the Bush years.
The blog claimed that 14107 died during Clinton years vs 7932 during the first six years of Bush. The source the blogger cited, however, says 7500 during Clinton years and 8989 during the first six years of the Bush administration.
Why would someone double the number of deaths during the Clinton years and expect us to believe? Did he think we would not check? Possibly worse he failed to mention that during the 1992-2000 period there was only one (1) death due to hostile action and more than two thirds of the deaths were due to accident or illness (a problem for the military since the revolutionary war). I include the data published by the government in the table below.
I hope we can reject the trash messages that try to influence our opinions. In the current political battle the differences between the candidates are massive without resorting to biased statements that manipulate information.
MILITARY CASUALTIES *
CAUSES OF DEATH
TOTAL HOSTILE
YEAR DEATHS ACCIDENT ACTION DISEASE
1992 1293 676 0 252
1993 1213 632 0 224
1994 1075 544 0 206
1995 1040 538 0 174
1996 974 527 1 173
1998 827 445 0 174
2004 1873 605 739 272
2005 1941 649 739 289
2006 1882 559 769 252
2007 1950 544 846 227
* Department of Defense data (published April 22, 2008)