Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Grey Lady Vet-Bashing Debunked

The floundering "war on the war" avails the New York Times little, as the Weekly Standard reveals:

On Sunday, the New York Times printed a massive front-page story about a supposedly alarming homicide rate among Iraq and Afghanistan vets. The Times reported 121 cases of homicide or homicide charges and attributed them to post-traumatic stress disorder--presumably an attempt at making another case for ending the war, if we know anything about the Times's editors.

Unfortunately, the paper misreported the facts they had and left out key statistics--most importantly, a comparison of the vets' homicide rate to that of the general population--and they were quickly caught.

Yesterday, WEEKLY STANDARD contributing editor John J. DiIulio Jr. proved the Times's "wacko-vet myth" to be just that--a myth. Read it at the DAILY STANDARD. With a little investigation and some high-school math, he found that the homicide rate among vets is exceedingly lower than the general population--a detail the Times reporters missed.


Just throw out a few unverified facts and let the "blame America first" crowd, as well as the radicals overseas gather their talking points. Yet, in this Internet Age the truth is easily discovered as the aging MSM finds out with lagging subscriptions and falling credibility.