Last week I heard Rush Limbaugh talking about the American military casualty rate in Iraq.   He asked his viewers to answer a question in order to gauge the degree to which each was subject to MSM manipulation.   The question was how many US soldiers died last year.   I guessed around 800.   The answer is, according to a web site called iCasulaties, 821.   Limbaugh suggested that if you guessed something like 1,000 or less, you aren't as subject to media manipulation as those who may have guessed 1,000 or more, 2,000 or more, etc.   Yet I wondered if that is precisely true or not.   Am I subject to media manipulation?

I guessed approximately the correct number but that was just a guess.   And the guess was a "raw number" guess.   How relevant is it that I happened to guess right?   What other impressions do I have which might demonstrate my susceptibility to manipulation?

I freely admit that I thought going to war was a worthwhile endeavor for our military.   Saddam was a loose canon.   Sure the US might have supported him at one time but only as a counterweight to a dangerous theocracy which threatened to turn the entire Middle East into a unified Islamic fundamentalist, fascist whole.   If the FBI can cozy up to Sammy the Bull in order to bring down John Gotti, we can use a repressive dictator to further our national interest.   That's practical reality.   But, just as Sammy the Bull, eventually was arrested for subsequent crimes, we didn't get married to Saddam and his regime of thugs.   We used him when he was useful.   There's no shame in that.   And when his actions began to exceed a certain level, long after his usefulness to us had expired, when he invaded a neighbor friendly to us, we had to go toe to toe with him.   Maybe we could have finished the job then or maybe we should have thrown the full weight of our capability behind the burgeoning insurgency which rose against him after Kuwait.   But we didn't and you can't go back and have a do-over.   The question was what would we do going forward.

Any questions about whether Saddam was a madman were answered for me by the show which replays every now and again on National Geographic Channel called "Inside Saddam's Reign of Terror."   if you haven't seen this program, you should.   It does a great job of providing pretty much the full history of the Saddam regime.   It shows why Iraq didn't really have a WMD program per se, at least not a serious one.   Maybe the US should have known or reasoned to some of the information like how poor the regime had become and how their debt load was so great that they couldn't afford to really develop nuclear weapons after the Israeli bombing of their $3 billion nuclear plant, the 8 year Iran war, and the destruction of most of their military hardware in Desert Storm.

I'm going to far afield here but I did want to at least discuss the backdrop for my opinions about Iraq so I could understand better the ways in which I have been manipulated by the media with respect to this war.   Over the past year or so, I came to the realization that Republicans would lose this past election.   I tried to convince myself that this wouldn't happen, that the American people weren't quite as weak as they seemed to be.   But when I heard my own relatives say things like, "I don't like what the Democrats are saying but we just have to get out of this war," I knew it was pretty much over.   The sense was things are bad in Iraq and they are getting worse every day.   I agreed with that.   I couldn't refute it.   I knew in my heart that the situation was, every day more and more US soldiers were making the supreme sacrifice.   I didn't know there was any place around where I could look at casualty rates.   I didn't need to look at that.   I knew the rate of casualties was steadily climbing.   I figured the rate of killing would continue to accelerate until the situation became untenable.   This one is over, I thought.

When Rush Limbaugh put forth his challenge, his media manipulation quiz, I was driving in my car and decided that I would check out this iCasulaties site to take a closer look at the raw data.   I'm pretty good at analyzing trends in numbers because in my prior life I was an accountant - that's part of our training.   We conduct "analytics" to try to find theft an error.   I resolved to go through the numbers in detail and form some trend analysis so I could understand exactly what these numbers should be telling me.   What I found was a striking contrast to what I expected.

First off, the only real trend in the data concerns the actual fixed piece war.   That period, as presented on the site, shows our rate of military deaths was very low by any standard of evaluating a war between hundreds of thousands of military personnel.   From March 20 to May 1, 2003, we lost 140 service people.   I'll call that a 42 day period including both of the end points.   The average rate of death during the battle was three and a third persons per day.   That's incredible until you consider the manner in which the US conducts wars.   Our weapons systems are unparalleled.   We have a single non-nuclear missile which can wipe out a huge number of armored vehicles in a single shot.   The weapon was deployed in a battle in which our Marines faced an entire tank formation.   It was deployed and wiped out one third of the vehicles in a single blast.   The rest of the formation immediately surrendered without a single shot being fired by our Marines.   Aside from that incident, they are many others in which we didn't deploy such weapons yet achieved almost the same results.   The American military is an incredibly effective machine, the most efficient fighting force the world has ever seen by a large margin.

Secondly, after the fixed battles were over, there was a lull in deaths as the populace embraced the death of the truly wicked witch, Saddam.   That lasted for a few months, a little less than a year.   This brings us to early 2004 at which point deaths rose somewhat.   In February we lost 20, in March 52, in April 135, and by November the number of casualties per month reached its apex at 137, the highest number of monthly deaths according to my manipulations of iCasualties' data.   April, 2004 seems to be when the insurgency got going.

Thirdly, the number of deaths per year has remained fairly steady.   In 2004, we lost 848 people, in 2005 the number was 846, and in 2006 with the conflict "escalating" we lost 821.   That isn't much of a trend.

In order to try to make better sense of these numbers, I ran them using a trailing one year average monthly rate.   That means I took the previous 12 month total and divided it by 12.   Using that methodology, I determined that the peak of the insurgency to date was in February, 2005 at which point the trailing monthly average was almost 80 deaths.   Moving forwards from that point, I found the trailing monthly average dropped steadily until August, 2006 when it was 63.   Then it moved up slightly but never has approached the rate of February, 2005.   That's about the point in time when I, before analyzing the numbers, came to the realization that the situation in Iraq was worsening quickly and likely to bring down Republicans!

Let me rehash the results of my analysis to try to understand what the actual casualty situation is in Iraq.   There is no year to year trend.   The death rate remains flat with just a small downturn in 2006.   On a moving average basis, the death rate dropped steadily through the 2006 election cycle and has inched up since.

Yet one is left with the feeling that the situation on the ground has been steadily worsening.   Where does that feeling come from?   It isn't fact based.   I have no source of information regarding Iraq other than the news.   I can't afford to take a trip there, let alone several to gauge whether we are making progress or not, the way Nancy Pelosi, Jack Murtha, and others can.   Other than that I have my primary sources of news and information, the daily paper, the nightly news, news-related broadcasts, and whatever comes across the radio at the top of each hour.   And I am convinced that the situation is worsening.   I have been manipulated by the media into believing that this insurgency is progressing exactly like the one in Vietnam did.   The numbers, however, don't lie.   There is no escalation in American deaths.   There definitely was not one leading up to the 2006 election.   There was a clear downward trend in deaths from February, 2005 (two years ago) through November, 2006, when we voted out Republicans due to their inept handling of the war.

So what is the cause of this manipulation into a completely false impression?   I can't put my finger on it.   The best I can do is formulate possible hypotheses.   I don't have access to the resources in order to test the hypotheses but I'll share them with you to see what you think.

The first thought I have is I pay more attention to political news during election cycles.   It is entirely possible that, because I do, I heard candidates claiming that the situation on the ground was worsening.   Those sorts of claims were common during this most recent campaign.

Another theory I have is the news media is interested in seeing Democrats win and Republicans lose.   I can look to anecdotal evidence concerning other elections to support this claim.   It has become pretty clear to me over the past several decades that the news media is liberal-biased.   Heck I used to enjoy "60 Minutes" attacks on corporate America and conservative politicians.   But I grew tired of it when I realized that the reality couldn't be that slanted.   And over several election cycles, I found it difficult to believe that the newsies just happened to always support the Democrat because he was a better candidate.   That works for a while but after a couple of elections, it is fairly clear they are supporting a party and an ideology more than a single candidate.

How can a guy like Reagan who turned a stagflation economy into a booming one be called a dope while a guy like inept Jimmy Carter be considered "brilliant?"   How can the man who headed the CIA be referred to as sort of weak on international affairs while the governor of Arkansas (Arkansas) be considered to have refreshing viewpoints on the international arena?   How can the captain of a national championship football team be referred to as uncoordinated?   How can a 40-something year old man who plays sex games with a teenage intern not be crucified during a period when sexual harassment claims are skyrocketing and filling the news broadcasts and movie theatres?

I could go on for hours with specific examples about particular candidates but my point is, after watching news of politics for decades, I find it more than a little curious that the Democrat is always preferable to the Republican unless there is bias on the part of the media.   And the way the news media tries to protect its reputation for independence goes a little too far.   David Gregory is fair and balanced!   Chris Matthews, who has worked for four Democrats, including a stint as speechwriter for Carter and a six year period as aide to Speaker of the House, O'Neill, is actually a closet conservative!   He always supports the better man regardless of ideology!   By the way, just to prove it, Matthews a Democrat for his entire adult life, claimed he voted for Bush over Gore in 2000!   How can you refute that!   Was Gore too liberal for him?   Right!   The guy who worked decades for extremely liberal Democrats finds Gore unappealing!   How stupid are we or how stupid do they think we are?

So that's why I suspect the news media may be behind creating the image of an escalating insurgency - an escalating insurgency which is not happening.   How they accomplish the swindle, I suspect, is very subtle.   They gradually increase the coverage of casualties to create the image of an ever-increasing rate.   Likely this would have begun around the middle of 2005 right as the actual death rate was inconveniently dropping.   Each day Murtha or Cindy Sheehan get a little more coverage.   Eash day the facts, when they don't point in the desired direction are covered less and less.   Anybody who wants to test this theory of mine should try comparing the actual trailing monthly average with the number of reports of Iraq deaths.   If I'm right, the trend should be very clear.

Personally, I don't need to test my hypothesis.   All I have to do is pose one question.   That is, name me one major newscaster, who doesn't work for Fox News, who has ever stated that the casualty rate in Iraq is falling or has remained flat.   Go ahead and name one for me so you can try to change my mind.   Here's another question for you to answer to change my mind about media bias.   name a single newsy, again not employed by Fox, who has been in favor fo this war since after the first phase was over.   OK, you can't name an answer for either question.   That's because there weren't any.

I have one final theory on why my impression is the war is worsening which doesn't have to do with media bias per se.   That is due to the gradual rising overall numbers.   It was easy to make comments when the number reached 2,000 that Iraq wasn't in any way comparable to past conflicts like Vietnam or Korea since tens of thousands perished in those wars.   Yet I hesitated to do so because I feared the passage of time would make me eat those words.   And I don't have a good sense of time, especially where months and years are concerned.   I don't know if that's the result of age or something else but I lose track of years.   So when the number approached and passed 3,000, I felt that the rate was accelerating.

In any event, I now know that I have been or have allowed myself to be manipulated in some manner.   My impressions of Iraq are becoming worse each day.   I feel as if the death rate is escalating.   Maybe you do too.   But the fact is the rate is at worst holding steady and in some ways improving.   And while a comparison to Vietnam or Korea is still not appropriate, it seems likely that it never will be unless the insurgents step upo attacks dramatically or we stay in-country for another 40 years.

There are other more accurate comparisons to make.   Our military's death rate was worse in Somalia than it is in Iraq.   That was due to inadequate resources being there.   But that was a UN peace-keeping mission in which the idea was to distribute supplies to the people.   We weren't engaged in pitched battles or rebuilding a country.   We were protecting supplies.   Still the death rate per deployed force and time spent there was higher than it was in Iraq.

Our death rate was actually far worse in Reagan's Grenada "pre-dawn vertical insertion" than it is in Iraq.   We were there from the end of October to the middle of December, 1983.   That's a month and a half.   Our total forces were 7,000 personnel.   We suffered 19 fatalities.   If Iraq went like Grenada, we would be losing 270 per month and would have lost almost 13,000 by now.

The situation in Iraq is not growing more grave very day.   It's fairlt stagnant - too stagnant.   We aren't exactly getting the job done but this feeling of panic is purely emotional - not based on the facts.   If you disagree with me, that's fine.   But this discussion is just about the casulaty rate.   If you disagree, point to something about that not to the old argument that "Bush lied, people died."   And don't refute me by claiming I have excluded the Iraqi victims of the insurgency.   We can have another discussion if you like about the death rate of Iraqis under Saddam and you won't win that argument either.