Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
The latest conservative meme, which I keep hearing over the last few days, is that "military deaths" under Bush are pretty much in line with "military deaths" under Clinton. The implication, of course, is "oh my god, why does the liberal media make such a big deal about soldiers dying with Bush in office but not when Clinton was in office?" For instance, this blog says:
Active duty deaths during Clinton's first four years (1993 - 1996): 4302Active duty deaths during Bush's first four years (2001 - 2004): 5187
The difference? 885 deaths over four years, or about 221 deaths a year. Of course, during Bush's first four years in office we liberated both Afghanistan and Iraq. What did we accomplish, in terms of military victories, during Clinton's first four years in office?
And he reaches this conclusion:
And regardless, the point is clear: US Military active duty deaths simply have not gone up that much despite the fact that we've fought two major wars, liberating two formerly oppressed countries, and have struggled against an active terror insurgency in both countries ever since. Given the numbers above it is safe to say that fighting two major wars has resulted in an annual active-duty death total that is only about 250 (give or take) more than the annual total from a time when this country was relatively at peace.
The Gateway Pundit not only plays with the statistics but reaches an even more ridiculous conclusion. He inserts this chart:
And then asks, in all bold letters:
So, where was the outrage during the Clinton years?
A closer examination of the official Pentagon statistics tell quite a different story. The problem is that they are only comparing total military deaths, which means anyone in the military, active or reserve, who died that year from any cause. Even by that comparison, of course, there have been more under Bush.
Total military deaths 1993-2000: 7500 or 938/year
Total military deaths 2001-2006: 8792 or 1465/year
But if you look at deaths from combat, you get a much different picture:
Total combat deaths 1993-2000: 1
Total combat deaths 2001-2006: 2596.
And that's not counting the last 7 months. So this notion that the media is making a big deal out of these deaths while they ignored the deaths under Clinton is patently absurd. There are many other reasons it's absurd as well, of course, like the now nearly a trillion dollars we've spent while losing all these soldiers with no positive benefit to show for it. The total number of deaths is irrelevant; Clinton did not get thousands of soldiers killed in a bankrupting, aimless, ill-planned war that achieved no reasonable strategic goal. Let's compare apples to apples, at the very least.
The rest of the deaths are either accidents, illness, suicide, homicide or terrorist acts. The shocking stats to me are the number of murders that take place in the military - 1400 in the Clinton years, 1338 since then, an average of almost 200 murders a year. Likewise the number of suicides - 1522 in the Clinton years, 960 since then. Those numbers seem extremely high to me.
Comments
Although I don't know the exact numbers, the military was also much larger esp. in the early Clinton years as we were still in our post Cold War drawdown.
Posted by: Dan R. | July 28, 2007 10:00 AM
The number of murders, especially compared with suicides, is surprising to me. In my experience (doing coroner's duties as a pathologist), the suicide rate where I live (BC, Canada) is several times higher than the murder rate. Mind you, there are a lot of people in the military (don't know the exact number) and most of the personnel are in the age group with the highest murder rates. So it may not be that out of line with a matched civilian population.
Posted by: T. Bruce McNeely | July 28, 2007 10:50 AM
Heh, that's quite a bold whopper you found there Ed. These guys seem to have lost the capacity to both lie and
Posted by: DarkSyde | July 28, 2007 11:04 AM
hmmm ... lie effectively.
Posted by: darksyde | July 28, 2007 11:05 AM
I'm confused (and it may be I'm missing something), but what about the U.S. military in Mogadishu, Somalia in October 1993? There were 18 deaths in combat there. Did they not count them for some reason?
Posted by: Bill | July 28, 2007 11:08 AM
It's interesting that those numbers count the 18 soldiers killed in the battle of Mogadishu in 1993 as "terrorist action". I would have thought that was combat.
But, anyways, your point still stands. What a ridiculous claim from the right. But then, I'm getting used to hearing ridiculous claims in defense of the Iraq war, so it's no surprise.
Posted by: Wes | July 28, 2007 11:19 AM
I like that chart, which makes it look like 938 is about three times 789.
Posted by: Dave M | July 28, 2007 11:43 AM
Wes-
I thought about that too, but it looks like the military classified that as a terrorist attack rather than a death in battle. I'm not sure why. And I don't know why they would do so in that case, but not in so many cases in Iraq. But if you add in all the terror attack deaths during both administrations, it only changes the disparity by about 200.
Posted by: Ed Brayton | July 28, 2007 12:12 PM
Was there some war in 1993-1996 that we all missed?
Hmm...guess not.
Nice to see the "Big Lie" technique is alive and well!
Posted by: RickD | July 28, 2007 12:38 PM
I'm suprised that nobody explicitley pointed this out already, but that graph is classic bad math. Notice how the range is from 700-950, giving that the impression that the ~150 difference between the two columns is more significant than it actually is. It makes the Clinton bar appear 2.5 times taller than the Bush bar, rather than the 19% taller than it actually is. This is how 5th graders lie with graphs.
Between the false comparisons and the deceptive graphs, I don't see how anybody could take Gateway pundit seriously. He's either stunningly dishonest or stunningly stupid, or likely, a hefty combination of both.
Posted by: JohnTheStudent | July 28, 2007 12:51 PM
"the suicide rate where I live (BC, Canada) is several times higher than the murder rate."
Bruce, I think "Canada" may be the magic word there.
Posted by: Coragyps | July 28, 2007 2:12 PM
"The shocking stats to me are the number of murders that take place in the military[.]"
Let's see. You've got large numbers of young men trained to kill, and they're all armed to the teeth. Shocking? I'd call it predictable.
Posted by: PhysioProf | July 28, 2007 2:13 PM
The suicide rate doesn't seem that far out of line from the general population. Maybe a bit higher, but that's to be expected, what with the stress and the easy access to weapons and the fact that the military attracts many kids who are already at the end of their rope.
Keep in mind the US military has 1.4 million people.
Posted by: Cairnarvon | July 28, 2007 3:22 PM
Ed,
I just sent you a file that takes the stats that you linked to and normalizes them by total military. If you do this the picture looks quite different. I would post the excel charts here but I do not know how to do that.
mess
Posted by: mess | July 28, 2007 5:08 PM
Anyone remember the hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths resulting from Mr. Bush's little misadventure? Hardly worth mentioning, really.
Posted by: Doug | July 28, 2007 5:32 PM
The meme's data is skewed in order to reach a desired conclusion. The military death rate has been falling for years. Choosing 2001-2004 gives the benefit of the trend, without including most of the deaths in Iraq. Take a look at this graph of the death rate from Murdoc:
http://www.murdoconline.net/archives/003564.html
Z
Posted by: Zachriel | July 28, 2007 8:34 PM
If the Somalia and Kosovo campaigns had turned into a 4-year clusterfuck of piss-poor leadership with over 3000 US combat fatalities with no end in sight, I guarantee the "liberal media" would have turned against Clinton.
Posted by: Royale | July 28, 2007 9:27 PM
More would have died in Somalia if Congress hadn't in effect forced President Clinton to withdraw the troops.
http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/09/who-wanted-to-cut-and-run-from-somalia.html
Posted by: ds | July 28, 2007 9:53 PM
Thanks, ds.
I don't have links, but I remember reading about statements made by the GOP during the Kosovo campaign where they said that they could support the troops without supporting the war.
Oh man, if anyone could find that, it would be priceless. And shame on Tim Russert for not digging up all those old quotes turning them on the pro-war chickenhawks.
Posted by: Royale | July 28, 2007 10:54 PM
With regard to suicide rates: tt is sometimes difficult to distinguish between suicides and accidental deaths in the military. We saw this in Australia with the death of Private Jack Kovco while on active duty. While a coroner concluded that Private Kovco had died of an accidental bullet wound there was evidence that the body and the private's side arm had been disturbed post-mortem. This led to speculation that his fellow soldier's might have been attempting to conceal the fact he'd taken his own life.
Posted by: Ian Gould | July 29, 2007 2:18 AM
Terrorism must be stopped.
Out total military deaths in Iraq are less than one week at Normandy.
Cowards!
Posted by: Grady | July 29, 2007 6:11 AM
Grady,
See, that was WWII where we had good leadership, a clear enemy (who exactly is a "terrorist" anyway?), and the French wanted us to kick the Germans out.
Posted by: Royale | July 29, 2007 8:13 AM
Does Grady perchance have a sister named Clarissa? There's something about these overnight trollers that seems familiar.
Posted by: doctorgoo | July 29, 2007 9:32 AM
How about comparing military and combat injuries as well? Isn't the ratio of non-fatal combat wounds to combat deaths something like 10:1? I doubt whether the Clinton years would show anything comparable that even a sneaky spin-doctor could find.
Posted by: Jon | July 29, 2007 11:18 AM
Graphs should make you smarter after you read them. I can feel myself losing IQ points after looking at that 3D bar graph monstrosity with the scale starting at 700. What would a graph that makes you smarter and not dumber about Clinton-era active service deaths look like? Allow me to modestly propose this one. It conforms to the major "don'ts" of deceptive graph making.
How to make a deceptive graph (the Wingnut Way)
*Do* squish all the information together in an undifferentiated lump
*Do* choose the lump for its convenient message
*Do* leave all the context out
How to make an honest graph (the Reality-based Way)
*Do* break the information out into its component parts. If the result makes the story look less conveniently simple, that's too bad.
*Do* show it all. Aggregate statistics like mean, sum, and percentage destroy information, and should be avoided if possible.
*Do* give the context. If that means surrounding the graph with written notes, do that. There's no shame in using words.
Posted by: derek | July 29, 2007 1:00 PM
Like Murdoconline, Dunford graphs the active duty deaths per 100,000, and shows a low area during the Clinton years, followed by a modest rise in the early Bush years, and finishing with a sharp incline starting just after the invasion of Iraq.
Posted by: llewelly | July 29, 2007 5:24 PM
Grady,
You really have no business calling anybody a coward. Name-calling doesn't make your argument any stronger. Good job conflating different ideas, though. I thought the purpose of the war in Iraq was to prevent Saddam Hussein from getting WMDs. Remember the "mushroom cloud" argument?
The American public was never told that the purpose of the invasion of Iraq was to "fight terrorism". That's just some after-the-fact bullshit that was made up to win elections. The problem with empty rhetoric is that while it may do the job at winning elections, at least for a short while, it doesn't do a damned thing about whatever the underlying problem is.
Brave, brave Grady. Fighting "terror" with his keyboard.
Posted by: RickD | July 30, 2007 8:28 AM