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They are among about 5,600 retired and discharged soldiers being
involuntarily returned to active duty for possible service in Iraq
or Afghanistan in the first substantial call-up of the Individual
Ready Reserve since the 1991 Persian Gulf War."(1)
The fact that Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry blasted
Bush for the "back-door draft"(3) that prevents "volunteers" from
retiring shows that there is a very important goal involved here for
Bush. He surely knows that 70% of the public opposes a draft right
now(2) and his call-up and stop-loss orders do not help Bush's
chances among military personnel--except for those most itching to
fight.
Sergeant Michael Bass, "uses simple figures. Nine people from
southern Florida have died in Iraq, compared with 338 murders in the
Florida region last year: 'They have a better chance in the army
than on the streets of Miami.'"(4)
We should all be clear that this is fallacious reasoning-- the same
underlying mathematical method error underlying claims that say
Hitler was relatively harmless compared with Stalin and Mao as the
idiotic Black Book of Communism says. In actual fact, despite the
u$a's murder rate so disgraceful for such a rich country, urban
areas such as southern Florida are safer than serving in Iraq.
We cannot compare 9 with 338 the way Sergeant Michael Bass did. We
have to take as many people living in southern Florida and put them
in Iraq to have a fair comparison. Miami by itself has 370,000
people.
Less than half that would be the total troops of the u$a in Iraq.
Hence, we cannot do a literal comparison, because the number of
southern Florida soldiers exposed to murder in Iraq is much smaller
than the total number of people exposed to murder in southern
Florida.
We have to do a calculation for how many people die per 100,000 per
year both in Iraq and southern Florida. The united $tates had 866
deaths in 466 days in Iraq. That would be 678 deaths in 365 days.
That's approximately 484 per 100,000 troops in Iraq one year.
Now we take the sergeant's 338 figure. That is 338 deaths for all the
population of southern Florida, when Miami by itself is over
370,000. That means that there are much fewer than 91 murders per
100,000 in southern Florida once we account for the rest of the
population of southern Florida and not just Miami. That 91 number
should be compared with the 484 deaths in Iraq per 100,000 troops.
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