Outright Lies and Distortion

A click here, a click there, and pretty soon (if you're not careful) you find yourself deep in the bowels of an alternate, and not entirely pleasant, reality.

At issue is whether military casualty (actually, fatality) figures used by the mainstream media misrepresent the severity of American losses in Iraq and Afghanistan. RedState.org's "Proud Kaffir" says they do: "This is all simlpy [sic] outright lies and distortion."

Which, of course, is in the eye of the beholder. Max at MaxSpeak.org aptly summarizes PK's argument this way: "U.S. deaths in Iraq are not so bad, when you demonstrate your innumeracy by comparing them to irrelevant numbers."

(I'll never understand, by the way, why people who claim to "support the troops" -- whatever that means -- will go out of their way to minimize the very real dangers our troops face in Iraq and Afghanistan and, implicitly but inevitably, their bravery and sacrifice in facing them. Brit Hume (search for "California"), refuted here, is another egregious example.)

By all means go to RedState and see for yourself. A number of comments on PK's post ably dissect what he's done wrong. It's instructive.

Also interesting is how they react to contrary views over there. Dissenters who post reasonably polite, factual comments (not noticeably in violation of RedState's posting rules) are told to "Go away. Now." and blocked from further posting. One RedStater even threatened, "if you post again we will inform the abuse office at your ISP." An interesting peek into a worldview that tolerates no intrusion by troublesome facts.