Our Government: Lying With Statistics

During a statistics class I took in grad school, one topic for discussion was how people can lie with statistics. Little did I know then that my government would use some of the same strategies in changing the death toll in Bush's war in Iraq. This administration will not stop covering up the true costs of this war even if they have to manipulate death and casualty rates.

Here is an excerpt from an article in The Register-Guard:

Statistics on a Pentagon Web site have been reorganized in a way that lowers the published totals of American nonfatal casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Michael Kilpatrick, deputy director of force health protection and readiness at the Defense Department, said the previous method of tallying casualties was misleading and might have made injuries and combat wounds seem worse and more numerous than they really were.

The old method lumped many problems under the label ``casualties,'' including illnesses, minor injuries and injuries from accidents, as well as wounds sustained in combat....

.....On Monday, the bottom line of the Defense Department's Web page on casualties in Iraq listed a total of 47,657 ``nonmortal casualties.''

By Tuesday, the same page no longer showed a total for nonmortal casualties. The bottom line is now ``total - medical air transported,'' and the figure is 31,493.

The new total excludes 16,164 soldiers who were wounded but did not require medical air transport because their injuries were minor. The total does include combat wounds, nonhostile injuries and diseases serious enough for medical transport....

.....Paul Sullivan, director of research and analysis of Veterans for America, said the changes actually meant that the Pentagon was trying to conceal the rising toll of injuries and illness.

Sullivan, formerly a project manager at the VA, also said the department was not prepared to provide the health care that returning veterans would need for mental and physical disabilities.

Shame on our government for "revising" the death toll. The lies from this administration started with the reasons for the war and still the lies continue. I hope that the Democrats will look into this. These statistical lies are so reminiscent of how the governments in other countries re-wrote history in their textbooks to further their propaganda.