Charles first noticed the AP comparing the number of soldiers killed in Iraq with the number of people killed in the 9/11 attacks. Of course, the first thought that comes to mind when you read an idiotic comparison like that is, “WTF?”
The U.S. military announced the deaths of seven American soldiers Tuesday, raising the U.S. death toll since the beginning of the Iraq war to at least 2,978 — five more than the number of people killed in the Sept. 11 attacks in the U.S.
Then, I noticed that the AP seems to have added this little comparison to its stories as boilerplate.
Earlier Tuesday, the military also announced the deaths on Monday of three American soldiers. The U.S. military death toll to at least 2,978 five more than the number killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.
But I wasn’t quite sure. Until I saw this story:
The latest U.S. deaths brought the number of members of the U.S. military killed since the start of the Iraq war in March 2003 to at least 2,978 five more than the number killed in the Sept. 11 attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.
We now have the official AP boilerplate on Iraq casualties being compared to the number killed on 9/11. If someone can come up with a valid reason why these numbers should be compared, I’d love to hear it.
Can’t remember where I read it, but someone pointed out that’s like comparing the number of soldiers’ deaths in WWII to the number of casualties at Pearl Harbor (2,403: 2,335 US servicemen and 68 civilians). You may as well add that to the boilerplate. It makes as much sense. Let’s try it. And let’s add a comma where it belongs, something the AP copy editors haven’t managed to do:
Earlier Tuesday, the military also announced the deaths on Monday of three American soldiers. The U.S. military death toll to at least 2,978, 575 more than the number killed in the Dec. 11, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.
Yep. Makes just as much sense as the comparison to 9/11.
And the quality of AP sinks lower and lower….
Update: And so does the quality of their copy editing. It occurs to me that the offending sentence is not a sentence. They should have put something like “This brings” to the final quoted sentence. As it stands, it’s completely ungrammatical. Way to go, MSM, with your layers and layers of professionals!
From a military perspective, body counts are a horrible way to tabulate your success or failure, but neither is the taking of specific parcels of land, no matter how important. Both are a poor for evaluating one’s stance.
For instance, the bloodiest battle ever fought, Napoleon’s Battle of Borodino, saw a devastating loss of humanity in one day – some estimate over 75,000 men! (Actual figures are hard to come by, complete units were literally wiped out.) Though Napoleon controlled the field and later went on to Moscow, the immense loss of life on both sides radically altered the nature of the campaign. Holding Moscow was untenable for the French, so in the end, many died in vain.
Launching cowardly surprise attacks by driving fuel-laden commercial jetliners into tall buildings is hardly a great sign of victory either, serving mostly to awaken the West to the festering sores of a growing Islamofascist threat.
War doesn’t make much sense. It ultimately is a contest of wills between the combatants. As long as we continue to feel threatened, we need to respond.
Comparing 9/11 to our casualty count should mean only one thing: all of our fallen should strongly remind us that there is an enemy out there who wants us dead no matter if we’re in NYC or in Iraq. Petty political dissension needs to take a back seat to preservation until we know for certain that this threat has been eliminated.
There has not been any credible evidence linking Iraq to the Sept. 11 attacks.
That mantra only continues to serve the purposes of the terrorists. Someone is still out there killing our soldiers and it isn’t the dead suicide pilots. It doesn’t require much imagination to see the reporter shouting such a statement from Sadr city, Tehran or for that matter radical London. So the AP (and Reuters) continual demand for credibility after all their 2006 fauxtography and subsequent Picture Kill advisories strains the phrase “ethical journalism”.
At some point it’s no longer just journalistic opinion, and true colors are revealed.
My sincere thanks, prayers and condolences go to those in uniform and without, to their family members who suffered the loss of their loved ones, and to those serving who keep acts of evil at bay.
The AP is trying to make a point-one against the Iraq War. It is an old tactic.
Meryl, they’re trying to make the “moral equivalencey” argument, by claiming that the administration has killed more Americans than the terrorits.
It doesn’t work. The Bush administration may be inept and irresponsible, but the soldiers are dying because Islamic terrorists out there want to kill all Americans, armed or not.
The AP is unable to understand the simple truth, as valid in chess, debate, or football as it is in war, that sometimes the best defense is a good offense.
I must say I struggled with this complaint against the AP story, at first, when I saw what LGF did with it. But your comparison to Pearl Harbor and World War II casualties makes it clear. After a while the media’s negative viewpoint, being relentless, come to seem normal, until someone cracks their facade. Thanks.
You know, I just noticed something about that quote from AP: It doesn’t make grammatical sense.
They forgot the words “This brings” in front of the offending sentence.
Dick, you’re right about the media’s negativity being relentless. But I’ve always been able to see through bullshit.
Too bad more people don’t have that talent.
Perhaps we should compare the death toll of innocent civilians in Israel to the death toll of 9/11 and state it as a percantage of the total population of Israel and the US respectively. Maybe then people will start to understand.