What other conclusion could one reach after reading their unveiled attack on “the troops” in today’s New York Times. I could conclude that they are affirmative action babes who got their jobs only because of their sex, that they slept with the right people to get their jobs, and that Sontag and Alverez are the heroin connections at the Times, getting smack for the editors at crack-basement prices. Unfortunately, the story doesn’t support those conclusion. Only the title: Sontag and Avlerez hate American servicemen.
Power Line blog eviscerates the smear campaign at the NYT by demonstrating a tad bit of intellectual curiosity and basic math–two activities beyond the IQ of anyone who works at the New York Times.
The national rate of 27 homicides per 100,000 is an annual rate, whereas the Times' 121 alleged crimes were committed over a period of six years. Which means that, as far as the Times' research shows, the rate of homicides committed by military personnel who have returned from Iraq or Afghanistan is only a fraction of the homicide rate for other Americans aged 18 to 24. Somehow, the Times managed to publish nine pages of anecdotes about the violence wreaked by returning servicemen without ever mentioning this salient fact.
The NYT article paints American veterans as murderous, alcoholic thugs bent on killing, raping, and beating everyone and everything in sight. From Deb and Liz try mightily to convince readers that every American veteran should locked in maximum security for the rest of his natural life.
JammieWearingFool asks, rhetorically, if the NYT has an agenda. Of course, it does.
What Deb and Liz fail to do is math. It turns out that veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq are significantly less likely to commit crimes than their civilian counterparts. In fact, non-military males, 18-24, are about 9 times more likely to commit murder than are military veterans.
Winds of Change drilled even deeper into the numbers, and you should read them.
An intellectually honest viewer of the data must reach one conclusion: Combat makes men better citizens.
Well, he could reach one additional conclusion: Deborah Sontag and Lizette Alverez suck at their jobs. Perhaps that’s how they got them.