THE CASUALTIES KEEP COMING: Stefan Sharkansky notes that the District of Columbia is a quagmire of violent resistance to peaceful government, despite the efforts of American authorities:

According to this week’s story from Scripps Howard News Service, there are 140,000 troops in Iraq, and there have been 286 fatalities from all causes since the war began in March (about 24 weeks ago). That gives us an annualized death rate of 443 per 100,000. Only about half of these deaths (147) were in combat, for a combat death rate of 228 per 100,000.

According to Center for Disease Control / National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, there were 21,836 young black men (age 18-30) in Washington DC in 2000, the latest year that mortality data is available. The total number of deaths in this group from all causes was 132, with 95 homicides. i.e. the death rate for this group was 604 per 100,000 and the murder rate was 435 per 100,000.

In other words, a young black male soldier from Washington DC would have been 36% more likely to die by staying at home than by serving in active duty in the Iraq war, and almost twice as likely to be murdered at home than to be killed in combat. Yes, that’s horribly sad, but it puts a few things in perspective.

I think we need regime change in the D.C. government, for starters. The death toll is just too high.

UPDATE: Greg Buete has an offensive suggestion.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Here’s an interesting comparison of casualty rates in Iraq with those in industry — suggesting that overall casualties (deaths + injuries) aren’t much worse in Iraq than in some industrial areas.

I realize, of course, that statistics are no answer to dramatic photos and hysterical news coverage, which live in a world of their own. But some perspective is useful given the ceaseless negativity in the press: I heard an NPR story the other day that said that a bombing in Baghdad proved that the U.S. effort was futile and that bombers could strike whenever they chose. The story was mostly over before they got around to admitting that nobody had been seriously hurt.

The trouble with that kind of reporting is that it makes it hard to identify real problems, or to get a clear sense of how things are actually going. So although people defend such reporting by pointing to the role of a free press, it’s not actually, you know, performing the role that a free press ought to perform.

UPDATE: Then there’s Robert Scheer . . . .