October 29, 2003
WORST HEADLINE OF THE WEEK
This item from the Scripps Howard News
Service wins the prize for this week's worst headline of the
week.
Young enlistees have highest death rate in Iraq
The article seeks to highlight that most of the U.S. forces dying in
Iraq are the younger members. Who knows what the reason for this is.
Perhaps they're trying to spin a story angle about lost youth and the
young dying for the wishes of the older generals and politicians. It's
a theme with a long history. If one bothers to read the article,
however, it mentions that while younger members are numerically dying
in greater numbers, proportionally to their percentage of troop
composition, they are faring significantly better than noncommissioned
and commissioned officers.
Commissioned officers such as Army Lt. Col. Charles
Buehring, who was killed Sunday in an enemy rocket assault on a Baghdad
hotel, have accounted for just 11 percent of the troops who have died
in Iraq and surrounding areas since the war began March 19. They also
were about twice as likely to die during the major combat of the war in
March and April than in the six following months.
Non-commissioned officers such as sergeants have made up 34 percent of
the fallen U.S. fighting force, while privates such as Guerrera,
specialists and other grunts comprise 55 percent of the toll.
That breakdown is more top-heavy than has been typically seen in past
conflicts, where non-officers - who commonly make up 85 percent of the
force - died in numbers more proportional to their number in the
ranks.
The article then goes on to wrap up by again emphasizing that
more young soldiers than old are dying. And also throws in that more
deaths are occurring in the ranks of the Army than in the Marines,
Navy, or Air Force. They do this without mentioning the relative
number of troops on the ground from each of those branches, thus making
that paragraph less than worthless for conveying useful information Tagged:
Posted by Lexiphane at October 29, 2003 9:30 AM
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