The Wide Middle

Over the weekend I received an e-mail that began with the following text:

“Here’s an eye opener! Military Losses, 1980 thru 2006 Whatever your politics, however you lean, however you feel about the current administration, this report should open some eyes.” (Google the phrase: “Military Losses, 1980 thru 2006” and you’ll find the entire text with little effort.)

Among a list of assertions, the message makes claims about the number of military deaths during the respective administrations during those years. Specifically, the message asserts that 14,000 deaths occurred during the Clinton presidency compared to 7,932 deaths during the George W. Bush presidency. It concludes with this assertion:

“These statistics are published by Congressional Research Service , and they may be confirmed by anyone at: http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL32492.pdf “

If you download the PDF and review the data, you will find the data in the message does not line up with the CRS report. Specifically:

1. The report does not include which president was seated in office (or their political affiliation) in the data.
2. The “Military Eye Opener” message omits data from the years 1982, 1983, 1985, 1986, and 1987-six of the eight years of the Reagan administration-understating the number of deaths during the Reagan years by 11,003 deaths. (The “Military Eye Opener” shows the number of deaths during the Reagan administration as totaling 6,198. The CRS report shows the number of deaths during the Reagan administration as totaling 17,201-an increase of 11,003 deaths in comparison.)
3. 3. The “Military Eye Opener” message overstates the number of deaths during the Clinton Administration by 6,607 deaths. (The “Military Eye Opener” shows the number of deaths during the Clinton administration as totaling 14,107. The CRS report shows the number of deaths during the Clinton administration as totaling 7,500-a decrease of 6,607 deaths.)
4. The CRS report does not contain any casualty data for the year 2007. Owing to the fact that the report was released in June of 2007, this makes sense. I do not know the source of the 2007 number. I do not dispute the data; it simply is not in the report.

The following table summarizes the discrepancies:

I will not attempt to dispute any of the other the claims and assertions in the “Military Eye Opener” message (the political rhetoric and the demographic data regarding the casualties). When I consider these errors in the cited data along with the tone of the message, I conclude the author proves to be willing to distort the data and attempt to exploit the lost lives of our nation’s sons and daughters to grind a political axe. What an affront to their memories. Shame on the author for distorting casualty data for the sake of advancing a partisan attack!

I would say “Liar, liar, pants on fire!”, but I don’t know who to say it to, as I can’t find the original source for the message. If you find them, point them to this post and we’ll have a chat about it in the public record.

For a more complete analysis, I have uploaded a complete comparison of the casualty data from the Military Eye Opener message and the CRS Report. Look in the lower right area of this blog in the box.net file sharing widget for the Excel worksheet that you can simply click on and freely download and review.