New York Times 'Killer Vet' Story Exposed as Erroneous

[Jim]

We have seen this sort of thing before; this time someone is speaking out quickly.

New York Times 'Killer Vet' Story Exposed as Erroneous by Pro-Troop Group
January 14, 2008 - FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Mary Pearson: (916) 441-6197 or Email:
mary@MoveAmericaForward.org

EXCLUSIVE:

New York Times 'Killer Vet' Story Exposed as Erroneous by Pro-Troop Group
SACRAMENTO- Move America Forward (website: www.MoveAmericaForward.org), the nation's largest grassroots pro-troop organization, today announced that after vetting the numbers cited by The New York Times in their Sunday, January 13, 2008 story, "Across America, Deadly Echoes of Foreign Battles," it became clear that the Times had engaged in demonstrably erroneous and false reporting.

It took seven New York Times researchers to find 121 cases in which veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan committed a killing in the United States, or were charged with one, upon returning home to this country.

The Times made the false conclusion that: "Taken together, they paint the patchwork of a quiet phenomenon, tracing a cross-country trail of death> and heartbreak." The Times documentation of 121 potential killings out of more than 1.5 million veterans of Operation Iraqi Freedom (Iraq) and Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan), divided by 6 years of conflict results in a murder rate of just 1.34 incidents per 100,000 veterans per year.***

That murder rate is far lower than the murder rate for the general population, demonstrating that the experiences of military service - icluding having served in Iraq and Afghanistan - actually made it less likely for returning veterans to commit murder once they returned home, than the general population.

Given a census-estimated population of the United States of 300,000,000 persons in this country as of October 2006, and FBI-compiled statistics of 17,399 homicide offenders for 2006, the murder rate of the general population was 5.80 offenders per 100,000 on average - and a rate of approximately 7.67 per 100,000 for men.

Since all but one of the veterans cited by the Times who committed a killing in the U.S. was male, the comparable rate is approximately 7.67 incidents of murder per 100,000 people among the general male population, compared to just 1.34 incidents per 100,000 returning Iraq and Afghanistan veterans (of both genders). "It's obvious that the New York Times has an agenda of undermining the missions of our troops in the War on Terror, so much so that they are willing to resort to demonstrably false statistics to support their anti-troop bias," said Melanie Morgan, Chairman of Move America Forward.

"The slander of our troops and veterans by the New York Times is unfortunately all too familiar. We heard this kind of nonsense about our returning veterans from Vietnam. It's the same insult, different war.

"Perhaps the shameful staff of The New York Times has run out of war-time secrets to publish for America's enemies to read, because now they've resorted to an all-out smear campaign of America's finest men and women, who have served this country bravely and with distinction," Morgan said.

In place of hard data to support their premise, The New York Times was instead forced to devote almost the entire portion of 6,321 word hit-piece to anecdotes of wrongdoing by individual veterans.

The New York Times even went so far as to trace back the phenomenon of murderous veterans to Greek mythology to back up their assertions of their report.

"The real mythology is the reporting by The New York Times," Move America Forward's Melanie Morgan concluded.

[RTO]

Thanks for posting the real story Jim. God Bless our Men & Women in Uniform.

[archangel]

Why would you do that? Why? How fucked in the head do you have to be to shit on people who offer their lives for your peace and safety?

In the COIN FM they talk about 10% actively fighting against you 10% fighting with you and 80% being in the middle. The same is true in the USA. Were winning the counter insurgency abroad but were losing it on the home front. All the AQ videos on Youtube and the like; the smear campaign by papers like the Times are activily underminding our gains in theater. We need to counteract this threat as much as we need to kill terrorists. It might be as simple as a daily hour on tv about what the troops are finding on the ground. Put the torture houses on the tv, put the murdered families, and all the other brutal act of the enemy on tv for the public eye. Let them see who were fighting and public opinion will swing back to the right. The enemy can still win this war by defeating us at home, vigilance is key.

[Ranger Bill]

Veterans are the best citizens.

[Draco]

Veterans are the best citizens.

/nod....I still adhere to the STARship Troopers idea. You don't serve, you don't vote. Some people call me biased.

~~Corrected for dumbass mistake, don't drink and post...

[EvilCouch]

Veterans are the best citizens.

/nod....I still adhere to the Stormship Troopers idea. You don't serve, you don't vote. Some people call me biased.

It's actually Starship Troopers, bro.

And the people responsible for the article are spineless weasels that will be ground up into animal feed when I come to power.

[Rugger]

Ralph Peters wrote an article with similar facts and statements that was in the Early Bird Brief earlier this week.

Typical New York Times BS...

[PocketKings]

Numbers. You can spin them to say whatever you want and the general populace is too stupid to notice.

[Lefty]

This denigration of the military and veterans sounds all too much like the anti-war junk from the Vietnam era. This stuff is eerily familiar.

[RTO]

Does anyone have a link to the actual NYT article?

I believe this is the one referenced in the story...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/us/13 ... ref=slogin

[Jim]

The discussion continues with an article form Ralph Peters in the New york Post:

THE NEW 'LEPERS'
By RALPH PETERS


January 18, 2008 -- I'VE had a huge response to Tuesday's column about The New York Times' obscene bid to smear veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan as mad killers. Countless readers seem to be wondering: Why did the paper do it?
Well, in the Middle Ages, lepers had to carry bells on pain of death to warn the uninfected they were coming. One suspects that the Times would like our military veterans to do the same.

The purpose of Sunday's instantly notorious feature "alerting" the American people that our Iraq and Afghanistan vets are all potential murderers when they move in next door was to mark those defenders of freedom as "unclean" - as the new lepers who can't be trusted amid uninfected Americans.

In the more than six years since 9/11, the Times has never run a feature story half as long on any of the hundreds of heroes who've served our country - those who've won medals of honor, distinguished service crosses, Navy crosses, silver stars or bronze stars with a V device (for valor).

But the Times put a major investigative effort into the "sensational" story that 121 returning vets had committed capital offenses (of course, 20 percent of the cases cited involved manslaughter charges stemming from drunken driving, not first- or second-degree murder . . . ).

Well, a quick statistics check let the air out of the Times' bid to make us dread the veteran down the block - who the Times implies has a machine gun under his bathrobe when he steps out front to fetch the morning paper. In fact, the capital-crimes rate ballyhooed by the Gray Lady demonstrates that our returning troops are far less likely to commit such an offense.

Again, the Times' smear certainly wasn't an accident. The paper's staff is highly paid and highly experienced. Its editors know that a serious news story has to put numbers into context. But their sole attempt at context was to note that offenses by former soldiers have ticked up since we went to war.

The Times is trying to make you fear our veterans (Good Lord, if your daughter marries one, she's bound to be beaten to death!). And to convince you that our military would be a dreadful place for your sons and daughters, a death-machine that would turn them into incurable psychopaths.


http://www.nypost.com/seven/01182008/po ... htm?page=0#