One of the great aspects of writing an opinion column is that opinions do not have to be verified, fact checked, or corroborated. This explains why the Jayson Blair Times still exists, albeit barely. However, unlike the Jayson Blair Times, I prefer to let facts creep into my columns. Perhaps it has something to do with integrity. Also, since I do not have shareholders, or payroll, or overhead expenses, I can be free to express my opinions without fear of being submarined.
When looking for statistics, I find it best to deal with those that spend their whole lives dealing with the minutiae of analyzing numbers. While the Wall Street Journal and Investors Business Daily do discuss politics, their primary focus is economics, especially stock prices. Accuracy centers around metrics and mathematics. Connecting the dots does not require knowledge of calculus, or even algebra. It only applies the area of math that many choose to ignore…logic. This is what separates serious economic and statistical analysis from “economists,” like the Jayson Blair Times’s Paul Krugman, whose economic expertise seems to rely on Bush Derangement Syndrome. In 2009, the model will be tilted ever so slightly to despise the next republican president.
Here are some cold, hard statistics as reported by Investors Business Daily. I expect liberals to either ignore these facts, say they do not matter, or claim that the source is not valid, since it did not come from the Jayson Blair Times. Finer. Let them ignore the numbers. Reasonable people can decipher them for themselves.
Monthly U.S. death tolls in various wars:
World War II–6,639…Korea–900+…Vietnam–526…Iraq since 2003–70.
2007 Monthly Iraq death tolls: Terrorists–650…U.S.–37 through May. For every U.S. death, 18 terrorists are killed.
Iraqi death tolls: 2 million under Saddam, or 6,944 per month, almost all of which were his doing….60,000 Iraqi civilians during the current Iraq conflict, or 1,200 per month, most of which are the fault of Al Queda, not the U.S.
The number of positive stories about the Iraq war from the Jayson Blair Times, it’s ugly kid sister the Washington Post, and it’s illegitimate cousins CNN, CBS, ABC, NBC, MSNBC, PBS, National Palestinian Radio: More than Al Jazeera. However, Al Jazeera has a higher percentage of positive stories about it’s own side, that being Al Queda and all others trying to destroy the Great Satan American and Little Satan Israel.
I trust the Investors Business Daily Numbers, especially since they and the Wall Street Journal do not have to issue mealy mouthed corrections on a daily basis. Apparently they value their integrity like I value mine, and actually prefer producing a quality product worth reading. If anybody thinks ideology alone can carry a badly written factually incorrect paper to literary greatness, enjoy watching the Jayson Blair Times approaching a smug induced mushroom cloud of chapter 11 bankruptcy.
The numbers are there. I thank Investors Business Daily for reminding us again that we are winning the War on Terror overwhelmingly by every metric that matters. The troops do not care about public relations, and neither do I. They will do their jobs, and I support them, as well as their mission.
Let the liberals wail and cringe and complain. Let them say the war is lost, even though General David Petraeus and our troops say otherwise. If the left had integrity, they would say they are against the war because they either are against all war, or at least all war led by a republican. However, the left should be disgusted when they look in the mirror knowing they have to lie to themselves every day about what is actually going on.
Lastly, I hope republicans absorb these numbers, and do what makes the soldiers fighting this war so great…the republicans need to grow a pair….and fast.
We are winning the War on Terror, and despite the best efforts of liberals to say that up means down, and good means bad (perhaps they are Michael Jackson fans, and we all know what his reputation has become), the numbers have been crunched. The facts have spoken. Thank you Investors Business Daily. The soldiers do great work, and you do a great job reporting it properly.
eric
Very good, you still amaze me with how you can do this all on a regular basis. You should write editorials for newspapers.
He can’t write for a newspapaer, he makes too much sense.
There are other numbers that make the combat deaths in Iraq pale in comparison. Take a look at auto fatalities per year for the same period as we’ve been in Iraq. Somewhere around 80,000 Americans have died on our roads in the same period of time. There have been more suicides in the USA than combat deaths in Iraq. But you’ll never hear about those statistics.
Tyg, I just posted a new essay at the Island. Drop on by!