Wanker of the day

I thought Dennis Mansfield was becoming more reasonable. As he puts it, "more wag, less bark." But, he put up a post purporting to show that more troops were killed under Clinton's watch than under George Bush's.  Mansfield says that 14,107 troops died during Clinton's years, and 7,932 deaths under Bush's watch. How a person can even think this might be true, given that under Bush we're fighting TWO WARS, is beyond me.  Either he's dissembling, or he's not serious about accuracy. He says, snarkely

I don't recall any type of anti-war movement developing under President Clinton's admin. The numbers, though, scream off the page.

At least he included the link, so I checked it out.  Here's a screen shot of Mansfield's bogus claim. (Click to enlarge) (Note he dropped off some high-casualty Reagan years)



And here's a shot of the report he linked to.



Remember that a president takes office at the start of an odd numbered year. So, we have deaths under Clinton, 1993 - 2000, 8 years: 7500. Under Bush, 6 years shown on the graph: 8989. Most of Clinton's years were 3 digits, as opposed to the 4 digit death toll under Republicans. Add the 904 in 2007, and the 261 so far in 2008, source here, and the Bush total is 10,154.

Ya know Dennis, these are human lives we're talking about. Don't you care to check it out? Or are you so happy to diss Dems and promote Rs that you don't care. Are you simply trying to help keep Rs in power, military consequences be damned? Is it so important to keep Rs in power that you are willing to lie about Dems?

Here's my bottom line. Dennis is falsely using military deaths to promote Republicans. Please, STOP USING TROOPS TO SCORE POLITICAL POINTS!

Wanker.

Update. Mansfield pulled the post, and apologized for posting unchecked info, so I withdraw the wanker. He didn't apologize for trying to score points off the troops, however.