I think this analysis is going to end up so statistically uncertain as to be pointless (no offense AL). There's a real garbage in/garbage out problem here- we dont have a legitimate study on homicides to begin with, only the NYT Lexi-nexis search, and even that didnt seem to have very strict guidelines as to justifiable homicides etc. We don't have a good grip on how many soldiers have been in combat situations as opposed to whatever rear echelon there is these days (the 'tail' used to account for most of the troops in theater, im not sure what that percentage looks like in these kinds of wars).

I'm not sure that spitballing these kinds of numbers is any more intellectually honest than what the NYT tried to pass off (and before i get jumped on, lets just say successfully passed off in some cases apparently).

My gut tells me the violent crime rate for veterans is lower than their demographic counterparts in the general population, and I think there is data to suggest that. But it would take a scholarly study to really prove it. I've put my foot in my mouth plenty of times when my gut and the available data seemed conclusive, but turned out to be misleading. Just my .02 on the subject.

Is the NYT number supposed to represent the results of an accurate, comprehensive survey?

This reporting most likely uncovered only the minimum number of such cases, given that not all killings, especially in big cities and on military bases, are reported publicly or in detail. Also, it was often not possible to determine the deployment history of other service members arrested on homicide charges.

Whoops, guess not. So the rate could be higher by quite a bit. Still potentially below an equivalent cohort of non-military citizens, but in the interest of openness and honesty, this should be caveated.

They don't have readily available separation of those who have actually been in combat roles and those who haven't.

This is a key piece of data, however, in attempting to establish the correlation between serving in combat and committing domestic crimes...the main point of the NYT article and of contention here. If the non-combat:combat ratio is very high, any potential effects will be masked, clearly.

I'm sure someone can come up with an estimate for this. Is it 2:1? 10:1? 100:1?

And if we're going to do a comparison, wouldn't it be more informative to compare the total number of violent crimes, not just homicides, committed by vets?

A.L., if the ratio of 7.6/100,000 is lower or higher than that of the general population, or of a comparable group based on age & sex of non-military individuals, or of all the people in the world, what practical or perceptual difference would be made? If it is lower, do we shrug our shoulders and suggest we cut back the mental-health budget of the military; if it is higher, do we say OMG and increase the budget? Do we care any more or any less? I still don't get how this statistical context offers anything meaningful, or contrary, to the piece in the NYT itself?

I agree with AMac that the one paragraph in the piece was terribly written and very very confusing. But in essence I think it was trying to say this: they established an arbitrary baseline of how many killings are attributable to military personnel in "normal" times. During this particular wartime, they found an increase of 89% total. 75% of that increase was linked to combat. So there's a bump in the number of killings during war WITHIN a particular scope. How that scope compares to other scopes, isn't meaningful in examining that bump. Nor is it meaningful in thinking about how to reduce the bump in that particular scope, if, in fact, it is deemed desirable to try to reduce the bump.

But I don't think the NYT was even advocating that. I think it was just examining another cost of war, albeit a small one in terms of numbers, and a small one to society as a whole, but nonetheless a huge one to those few who pay it. It's one more variable to consider when we calculate the cost/benefit relationship when deciding on war policy.

Now, obviously, if you support a given war, you wouldn't be too eager to publicize the costs. And if you didn't support the war, you wouldn't be too eager to publicize the benefits. But let's say you were trying not to take a particular stand and trying to examine the costs and the benefits in a reasonably fair manner over the course of time. You do a story one day about Iraqi school children going back to school; on another day you look at the lives of two (out of 121) vets who came home and got into serious trouble.

As I said in the other thread. I would love to see some numbers on troops from other nations as well. If the meme they want to shape is that troops become more violent after returning from a warzone, then it would hold across troops from all nations, not just the USA (though I'm sure the intellectually challenged folks at the Times would attempt to make the case particular to US troops only).

IIRC, other statistically challenged articles in the past tried to overstate the number of Suicides by troops as well. Those numbers turned out to be vastly overstated. The case appears to be the same for the latest round of "analysis" from the 4th column.

To recap: this story, along with the suicide one, and the absolute reliance on the Lancet "study" on civilian deaths tends to show a trend towards very piss poor analysis by the modern presscorps. Either these guys didn't bother taking anything past basic Algebra, or introductory statistics, or perhaps they did, and used the "new math" program.

mark:

I'd say its a little premature to really identify where the times is going with this, since there are supposedly other parts to this "report". If we are to take the initial entry as a shape of the tone of the story, I don't forsee it as just a "cost" of war set of pieces. The Times agenda for this conflict has always been anti-war, anti-troop, anti-administration.

The rate of 7.6 is many times LOWER than the national average. A shame the Olde Grey Mare hides that little fact.

I've seen the national average pegged at around 5.5 per 100,000, this shows a trend down over previous years.

Honestly, whats far more staggering is the number of homicides carried out by blacks which for 2005 was 26.5 per 100,000 vs 3.5 per 100,000 for whites and 2.8 per 100,000 for other. Given their minority status of around 14.4% of the population, that numbers significance grows even more.

But we all know, that the NYTimes would never touch that story, would it.

As noted in the prior thread (#109), if the reader isn't supposed to draw any larger lessons from the anecdotes of the "War Torn" series, then fellow journalists need to head back to school. Here's The Independent's precis of the NYT piece:

Traumatised veterans 'have killed 120 in US'

While public anger is directed at the Pentagon for sending American soldiers ill-prepared to fight in Iraq, an equally troubling problem is rearing its head at home. Military veterans are returning from the war zone just as ill-prepared for civilian life and dozens suffering from post-traumatic stress are committing murder and manslaughter.

A new study has identified more than 120 killings committed by veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, as psychologically troubled soldiers slip through the net of an overextended military mental health system.

The study, which was conducted from examining local news reports, and which may well dramatically understate the scale of the problem, suggested that killings by military veterans have almost doubled since the start of the wars.

Of course, the possibility remains that the Independent/Guardian and others did understand the story.

gabriel, you are right. I agree that it's too early to draw a conclusion (but that hasn't stopped any of us from trying), but my comments so far have only represented my feelings of the piece that has so far been published and not about future pieces that might be published. On the other hand, I don't share your expectations that any piece in the NYT or other media is necessarily agenda-driven, or that any "meme" is being shaped. I don't see how this particular piece could be interpreted as anti-war or anti-troop or anti-administration. Certainly, if you read WoC threads, you would expect it to be. But if you read the article itself, that interpretation is not substantiated. I think you need to have a very strong pre-conception of the NYT in order to view this piece in the way it is being viewed here. And, I would speculate that the set of preconceptions are so strong that they distort any new information into a confirmation of the preconceptions.

The article is very clear about its focus on a small segment of troops. There is no attempt in the article to generalize this into a statement about all troops. Somewhat ironically, many here have done just that. I mean to say that the critics of the article are the ones who have generalized from a tiny fraction of the whole. The article doesn't do this. But the assumptions on the part of some readers that the NYT must be doing this, an assumption based on past belief, is so strong that they just automatically believe that the article is doing what, in fact, it is not doing. The belief seems to have arisen among a few people that the NYT is "smearing" the troops as a whole, or painting with a broad brush. This belief is not justified by a close or a casual reading of the article. There is no monster under the bed.

mark: I'll agree in part, and I'm not above admitting my preconcieved biases against the Times (though I think the case is easy to make about their anti-troop/anti-war biases and their actions ie: leaking secrets, have shown they are utterly not to be trusted, but thats another thread)

but I want to know what prompts a study like this, compared say, to a study of why such a high percentage of Black Americans are murders? Isn't the far more significant story the one with the greater impact on our society? Or since the surge is working so well, its time to find something else to hang on the Administration, their creation of murdering psychos who are going to come home and kill their family because of the horrors of war?

It almost dovetails into the TNR fiasco with Beauchamp. The press has a prism of how they perceive soldiers, one that almost uniformly portrays them as ignorant hayseeds who had only one choice in life, the Military to save them from prison, or farming. I don't see positive portrayals of our troops in the press for the most part. I don't see accurate reporting on the ground from Iraq from our press. I do see lots of second guessing, outright falsehoods, and fabrications though. So when I see a "report" with shoddy analysis, it just helps reinforce my own biases, that the NYTimes, and other media outlets, don't "support our troops", nor do they support their mission or their actions. Its all the ends justify the means, and if the Times can end this "illegal war" they will do anything they have to, to get that result, including putting out crap like this.

#1 Mark Buehner --

I think this analysis is going to end up so statistically uncertain as to be pointless.

I don't think so. With a little more web trawling, I came up with a pretty good year-by-year estimate of how many active-duty plus recent veterans are in the U.S., FY2001-FY2007. Adding in the number of 1.6m soldiers having served in Iraq that the Pentagon supplied to A.L., and one can partition those figures between Served-in-Iraq/Afganistan, and Didn't-Serve-in-I/A. Better estimates of how the 121 and 229 homicides reported by the Times translate to homicide rates:

• ~6.6 homicides per 100,000 per year for Served-in-I/A.
• ~2.0 homicides per 100,000 per year for Didn't-Serve-in-I/A.

These could certainly be improved, but getting better numbers for the denominator won't change either rate by more than 25% or so, in my opinion.

The numerators have to be right, that's true. The NYT presumably missed some homicides--but this crime is often used as a proxy for others, because it's much clearer when one has been committed. It's also possible that the NYT included records of killings (e.g. unintentional manslaughter, self-defense) that don't match the DoJ/FBI criteria.

I fail to understand how this story can be reasonably told in a vacuum, without reference to the society that our Armed Forces members and veterans belong to--and the rates of homicide in that society. But since that point's been made repeatedly, I'll conserve electrons rather than tackling the topic again.

If you'd like a copy of the (simple) Excel spreadsheet used to derive the two rates given above, email me at
amac-2007 at usa dot net

AMac,

I agree that the 1st graph in the Independent is out of line in two instances.

"equally troubling" is unjustified. And while its does accurately limit the actual number of killings to "dozens," the statement that "Military veterans are returning from the war zone just as ill-prepared for civilian life" is terribly misleading.

But you are not seriously asking us to believe that NYT is responsible for or is trying to foster mischaracterizations by British newspapers of its articles, are you? I mean, this evidence of what exactly? That the British press has lower standards than the NYT? or that the NYT is sending secret messages across the Atlantic? If you want to condemn the NYT for this article, I think it is only fair that you draw your examples from the article itself, not from the interpretations of others.

For a good example of how someone can blaze a misleading or sensational headline across an otherwise benign story of some else, I suggest you look at the popular drudgereport.

A little historical context from a couple of shrinks:

In the 60's and 70's much was made of the so called government trained killer going on a killing spree here at home (read - Vietnam Veterans). This of course was a calculated lie and Vietnam Vets were no more dangerous than others already in the public sphere. But it was one way for the MSM and the left to make the general population leery of Vietnam Vets.

Over the some 37 years of work in the mental health field I have worked with a lot of PTSD sufferers. None of them were one bit dangerous to others, and only a small portion of them dangerous to themselves, mostly with depression and accompanying self harm ideation or alcoholism/drug abuse problems. That is true of Korea Vets, Vietnam Vets and Gulf War I vets. I've not worked with any Gulf War II vets so I can't say the same for them, but I know of no studies nor have I heard from my fellow psychotherapists of unusual difficulties with these individuals.

And from another shrink in the same thread:

The depiction of the typical Vietnam Vet as a victim of the government and at the same time as a crazed killer became a prominent feature in the MSM. PTSD, formerly known as "combat fatigue" was a perfect, and perfectly terrifying, disorder. Patients were routinely depicted as behaving perfectly normally and then suddenly, with some minimal stimulus, being thrown back into combat and attacking strangers and family as if they were the VC. It frightened Veterans and family members alike. Nightmares became loaded with terror that the Vet would lose control and kill his own loved ones. This was terribly unfair and quite obviously bogus but the meme was implanted and pressed by lurid stories in the MSM.

I spent several years working in the VA system in the late 70s and early 80s and I could count on one hand the number of Vietnam Vets I saw who had a history of violence and could reasonably attribute it to PTSD. IN contrast, most of those who carried a diagnosis of PTSD in fact had severe character pathology and substance abuse that pre-dated their entry into the military. Many of these young men, typically with very few pre-military skills and talents, used the diagnosis as a way to gain and maintain their disability checks. I saw a much smaller number of Vietnam Vets who entered therapy in the VA system to deal with depression and anxiety that was either caused or exacerbated by their experience in Vietnam. Of note, most of these men felt that their post-war experiences, the rejection and hate they felt from those who called them baby killers and worse, was significantly more problematic than their Vietnam experiences.

Shrinkwrapped

AMac,

"I fail to understand how this story can be reasonably told in a vacuum, without reference to the society that our Armed Forces members and veterans belong to--and the rates of homicide in that society. But since that point's been made repeatedly, I'll conserve electrons rather than tackling the topic again."

There are too many electrons in the world for my tastes, so let me try (again) to make the case for how the context you are requesting isn't very relevant to the story. Imagine a set of related college campuses. Let's say, the Ivy League, or California State schools. Something with a sizable population of students, but nothing approaching the size of a medium state...or, for that matter, imagine a state with a smallish population: Wyoming or N. Dakota. Now let's say that this population of Ivy League students or North Dakotans has always had a much lower suicide rate than the general population (or for that matter, a much higher rate.) Over a given time, that rate went up. I contend that quite regardless of how that rate compares to the national average, those who are responsible for the well-being of that population would express some concern. Let's say they set up a program to alert people about signs of depression, believed to be a precursor to suicide. Let's say a newspaper reports a story about this program and how it is based upon an increase in suicides within that population. Would you really expect that story to include the caveat: "but don't let anyone get the wrong idea, Ivy League students (or North Dakotans) still kill themselves much less than the average American?"

I live in NYC. If the murder rate here goes up, I really don't much care how it correlates to the murder rate of Alaska or of Detroit...neither does the Police Department. If homicide rates go up by vets during times of war, I'm sure the army is committed to figuring out how to reduce that. Reporting on that is a matter of course.

Mark #12 --

But you are not seriously asking us to believe that NYT is responsible for or is trying to foster mischaracterizations by British newspapers of its articles, are you?

Not at all. I'm suggesting that A.L. read the tone and context of the article a certain way, as did I, as did more than half of the commenters on these two threads. And, as did the US reporter for the Independent.

The point is that this can't be an instance of a few fervent and misguided right-wingers finding something that isn't really there--the left-wing Independent saw it and reported it. No fostering assumed or required.

Mark #14 --

I contend that quite regardless of how that rate compares to the national average, those who are responsible for the well-being of that population would express some concern.

Agreed. Should express concern, in the case of evidence that PTSD is leading to an increase in violence, as here. Nobody should expect a bureaucracy (the DoD, the VA) to solve problems absent the glare of publicity.

Let's say a newspaper reports a story about this program... Would you really expect that story to include the caveat: "but don't let anyone get the wrong idea, Ivy League students (or North Dakotans) still kill themselves much less than the average American?"

Yes, I would, when the context prone to misinterpretation. With "War Torn", a way-above-average reader, reporter Steven Foley of the Independent, got it quite wrong, by your lights. As did many others who wrote on the story. So I don't think that No-Context-Needed is is a very good line of defense of the Times' journalism.

AMac, what makes you think that you, A.L. and more than half of the commenters on these two threads are not examples of a few fervent and misguided right-wingers? Just kidding. Your point is well-taken. I don't mean to be arguing that # of adherents makes right. A lot of people look at fossils and conclude that God must have planted them there. My point should have been better made that, based on the evidence of the article itself, the interpretations of the Independent, yourself and A.L. are ill-founded. Not that they are outnumbered.

But I think the use of the NTY article by the left-wing Independent is an example of what A.L. feared would happen. But I don't think it strengthens his claims that article in the NYT depicts "the" soldiers as coming home as murderers or his contention that this serves the "narrative" of soldiers as damaged and depraved. Surely, no one here is going to argue that NO soldier is ever damaged by the violence of war. Should we turn our gaze away from those that are because of a fear that mentioning them might drum up anti-war support? I'd argue no.

"Adding in the number of 1.6m soldiers having served in Iraq that the Pentagon supplied to A.L., and one can partition those figures between Served-in-Iraq/Afganistan, and Didn't-Serve-in-I/A. Better estimates of how the 121 and 229 homicides reported by the Times translate to homicide rates:"

I'd be cautious with these numbers for several reasons:

-the served in Iraq/Afghanistan at this point the active duty personel that havent been must be disproportionately non-combat types, Pentagon personnel etc, who would tend to be in a different demographic (older primarily, probably more female). Comparing non combat troops to combat troops is apples and oranges because of this disparity in demographics.

-the issue of combat-vs-noncombat troops in theater hasnt been resolved. If this war is similar to any other fought in modern times, the vast majority of the actual fighting will be absorbed by a minority of the troops. Do the numbers in question include sailors and airmen?

Small misassumptions are likely to have large implications in both the numerator and denominator of this equation. And thats my point- without systematic farming of data on both ends of this you can't have much faith in whatever answer you come up with. Demographics are a tricky business.

The idea that the NYT didnt recognize this is absurd. Journalists constantly think in those terms. Its part of journalistic training to consider 'can we support what we are implying', and as has been pointed out something like this would simply never happen with a demographic the media is more politically sensitive to. That is answer in itself.

I think the general consensus figure that I have seen bandied about is that the combat to support troop ratios in Iraq/Afghanistan are around 7 to 1. Extrapolate that out with the 1.6mm figure and you get roughly 230,000 actual combat troops having served. Now the percentage of those who saw combat should be pretty high. Though I'm not sure if the 1.6 number represents troops that have served multiple tours or not.

Honestly, I'd like to see a few things.

1. Circumstances behind the sampled alleged murders (have any been convicted yet?).

2. Of those who have murdered, how many actually saw combat? How many were pogues sitting in Kuwait.

3. Are these figures for just Marine Corps/Army? What about Navy and Air Force, groups who don't normally see combat when deployed (barring Navy Medics and Air Force Para).

The article brings up a lot more questions, and doesnt really attempt to answer any of them. Honestly, did the Times reporter not consider that there would be pushback or any response at all to this article? Even with my already low opinion of the Times, could they honestly be this tone deaf?

Scratch some of that above, I missed the image on the lefthand side with the demographics.

PD Shaw:

Simply, the statements of the Psychiatrists mentioned by you exactly conforms to my own experiences, both as a Veteran (Service in Grenada / diagnosed with mild to moderate PTSD), and my work with other Vets.

Mark, you are either incredibly naive or being deliberately obtuse. Does Walter Duranty ring a bell? He wrote for the Times and won a Pulitzer Prize for his stories on the Soviet Union - stories that we now know were fabricated. How about Jayson Blair if your memory is too short?

First of all, the story of Jessica Lynch should tip you off that this war is different from previous wars. Anyone who serves in theatre is likely to have seen combat or at least been danger close to fighting (mortars, IEDs, small arms fire, etc.)

However, the way you guys are calculating the numbers is completely wrong. In 2005, the US homicide rate was 5.6 per 100,000. That equates to 16,692 murders with a population of 298+ million. (16,692/2980=5.6) That's an annualized rate. So, for the five years that the war has been going on, the total murders in the US would be somewhere north of 83,000. During that same time frame, the Times found 121 "murders" (scare quotes because at least one was self-defense and another was vehicular manslaughter) which is somewhere just north of 0.14% of the total US murders.

Furthermore, to get the rate per 100,000 of US veterans, based on the 121 number, you have to calculate the annualized rate. Take 121 and divide by five (24.2). For a population of 800,000 vets who saw actual combat (well short of your 1.6 million, but I'm being generous here), the homicide rate is not 7.6 per 100,000 but approximately 3.025 per 100,000. (24.2/8=3.025) If you counted the entire 1.6 million, it would be half that. Drop the number to 400,000 and the rate is still only 6.05 per 100,000.

But the homicide rate isn't what's important - the offender rate is. That number is much, much higher in the general population for the age groups most likely to be involved; 29.3 for 18-24 year olds and 15.8 for 25-34 year olds. Some of the murders committed by vets involved one victim and multiple vets. Without seeing the data the Times is working with, it's impossible to know how many. However, if you assume double (242 vets involved in 121 murders), the offender rate is 242/5/8=6.05 - or slightly less than 4 times lower than the arithmetic mean of the two age groups.

IOW, you're almost four times less likely to be murdered by combat vets than you are by someone in the general population of the US.

Anti-media, I'm not certain which Mark you are referring to, me or Mark Buehner. I'm guessing me. If I have to chose I'm going to go with "incredibly naive" over "deliberately obtuse." I think because it allows me to plead a kind of innocence. Walter Duranty didn't ring any bells, so I googled him. He died the year I was born. I am 50 years old. He wrote what some people claim were pro-Soviet propaganda stories for the NYT in the 1930s, i.e. 70 years ago. Are you suggesting that is evidence that today's NYTimes has communist sympathies? stalanist sympathies? leftist sypmathies? I guess this is a case of my being incredibly naive, 'cause I can't see the connection between what we are talking about and a single instance, 70 years ago, of NY Times correspondent. To me, this is just more generalizing from a tiny sample.

You mentioned Jayson Blair. This is the reporter who was exposed by and fired by the NYTimes for fabricating all manner of stories and plagerizing others, none that I recall having any particular political slant or significance. I have never been able to understand why people use this as an example of the NYT liberal bias. It's as though people believe the NYT hired him to fabricate stories.

I agree that based on the reporting of the NYT you are more likely to be killed by an animal than by an Iraqi vet. My contention is that the article doesn't state--or imply--any different. They gave the number: 121. Whether you look at that as percent of vets, or of the whole population (300 million), it's a pretty small number. And it was over a 6-year time frame, so we're talking about 20 per year.

mark: please reread the lede paragraphs in the story:

Town by town across the country, headlines have been telling similar stories. Lakewood, Wash.: "Family Blames Iraq After Son Kills Wife." Pierre, S.D.: "Soldier Charged With Murder Testifies About Postwar Stress." Colorado Springs: "Iraq War Vets Suspected in Two Slayings, Crime Ring."

Individually, these are stories of local crimes, gut-wrenching postscripts to the war for the military men, their victims and their communities. Taken together, they paint the patchwork picture of a quiet phenomenon, tracing a cross-country trail of death and heartbreak.

Let's suppose the NYTimes did an article about a new group of immigrant to NYCity -- the Atlantians -- and the murderous trail of death and heartbreak they have left behind. And if we later found out that this immigrant group is attributed with a lower rate of homicides than the city average, would anybody doubt that the NYTimes was either irresponsibly clueless in its coverage or bigots?

Any idea if that 1.6 million number counts individuals or tours? A lot of people have been there two and three times. Even so, I would still think the number of individuals would be greater than a million.

No, PD, not at all. Not if the Atlantians, like the returning vets, are an identifiable group, in a particular common circumstance, and especially not if there was evidence to suppose that the homicide rate within that group had risen. I mean to say that if the Atlantians historically had a particular homicide rate but that now, given the new circumstance, it was on the rise. E.g., if AIDS were to rise significantly--or even noticably--among white college women, even though the rate of infection was still well below the national average--I think the story about this increase wouldn't need to explain that the rate was remained below the national average. The story, in other words, is about how the circumstance is affecting a particular group. It's about a rise of incidents among vets. Further it is tying this rise to combat-related PSTD. So assuming the general population is not exposed to combat, then it doesn't really matter to the story being told, what the incidents among the general population is. Unless of course, there is an equal rise in incidents among the general population, and the rise among vets is simply attributable to a more general trend.

The rate of homicides among service men and women is pretty low. It wouldn't take much of a increase to create a large percentage increase. But the story is really about the extent to which this increase, however small, is, in fact, attributable to combat-related PSTD and if there is enough being done for these poor guys.

I think, too, that a further important distinction can be made between the group of vets and the group of Atlantians. There's a war going on and the people conducting the war are very much in the public eye. There's a lot of support-the-troops feeling in this country and there's a lot of talk about how well we are taking care of them when they get back. I think this article falls into that category. I'm not sure the Atlantians, as a group, deserve the special treatment that troops do during war time.

PD, one more thing here: let's be fair. The two paragraphs that you quoted were not, as you described them, the lede. This is a small point, I grant you, but it gets to the heart, I think, of what I'm trying to say. The story led with 10 paragraphs about one particular vet and his nightmarish encounter in LV. This same vet was featured again, at some great length, to close out the story. This was just a story-telling device but it does offer a hint of what the writers were focusing on: individual portraits--and extremely sympathetic ones at that--of individual, troubled young men. The focus of the story was not as it has been made out to be here at WoC. This one particular vet, it unfolds, has gotten the help he needs and seems to be doing quite well.

I can't help but think that some of you guys in here are so committed to the notion that anything that comes out of the Times must necessarily be anti-troop that even when the paper prints an indepth account that is very sympathetic to a vary particular group of young men, you automatically interpret in the worst possible--and in my view, distorted--light.

mark, I was referring to Mark Buehner, who wrote this, "The idea that the NYT didnt recognize this is absurd. Journalists constantly think in those terms. Its part of journalistic training to consider 'can we support what we are implying', and as has been pointed out something like this would simply never happen with a demographic the media is more politically sensitive to. That is answer in itself."

And I was not referring to liberal bias but rather the lack of concern for the truth that exists at the Times. Whether it's biased in one direction or another is for you to decide, but you cannot deny that they show a cavalier attitude toward fact-checking based upon their performance.

Jayson Blair, for example, was not "exposed and fired" by the NY Times. He was exposed by others, and only after tremendous pressure was exerted did the Times reluctantly fire him.

These are bogus numbers, and bogus comparisons. Complete apples and oranges, really.

Right off the top of my head:

a. "served in" - this doesn't tell you anything about what capacity was served in. I also notice the "troops" designation. Does this include say, navy guys?

b. If I am not mistaken, the murders in New York number, is based on the number of homicides that happen IN NEW YORK. No matter where the homicides originated from, or who got killed.

To do an apple to apple comparision you would need to:

a. Count visitors to New York, in the same time frame. (because, you know, they are serving, right? At least serving the economy.)
b. Otherwise, you have to expand the range of killing, and include all the deaths happening in Iraq. If you are going to compare deaths in a geographic area, to deaths in a geographic area, you can't pick and choose WHO you count as dying.
c. I don't believe that anyone - ANYONE - would say that if the soldiers were staying here in the states, that you would see the level of deaths we have had. How many deaths average military deaths, pre-invasion?
d. Similarly, in forward designation areas, it's not as if you are a civilian, who is constantly exposed. If you aren't on the front lines, you are smack dab in some of the most protected places that have every existed on the planet. It's the forward areas - the freedom to move around - that you would need to extrapolate. (While any citizen can walk down New York streets, if you had tried doing a McCain stroll in a Bagdhad market without the protection, you wouldn't have gotten very far.)
e. Lastly, we need to see the published numbers. Where are they, regarding service?

Basically, Mark Beuhner's point at the beginning is right. The demographics, the situations so contextually different, that the comparison of these numbers is a complete artifact - try instead of apple and oranges, apples and battleships.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think there's a gaping hole in your logic, one that unfortunately makes your case look weaker than it is and the NYT's case stronger. You're comparing total murders by veterans over however many years they've been back in the states, with total murders per year by non-veterans. We've been in Afghanistan for over six years, and the buildup in Kuwait for the invasion of Iraq started more than five years ago, with the actual invasion coming almost five years ago. Most veterans have undoubtedly been back for more than one year, which skews the numbers as you are calculating them.

Suppose, for simplicity, that 100,000 soldiers who participated in the invasion returned all in a bunch 10 months later in January 2004, and suppose that none of them have gone back for a second tour. (As I said, I'm simplifying for logical clarity.) In order to achieve a murder rate of 7.6/100,000, they would not have had to kill 7.6 people, they would have had to kill 7.6 people per year for four years. Therefore, any soldiers who have been back for four years need to have their total number of murders divided by four to find the murder rate per year, which can then be compared to the murder rate of the general population, which is already given in murders per year. Those who have been back from Iraq or Afghanistan for 2, 3, 5, or 6 years need to have their total murders divided by 2, 3, 5, or 6. And any who have been back for only six months need to have their total murders doubled to get murders per year. And so on.

This enormously complicates the task of calculating a precise number. However, average number of years back since service in Iraq or Afghanistan is undoubtedly more than one, even counting those who have gone more than once, and that means that the numbers calculated above are undoubtedly too high. It's an a fortiori argument.

Weev, does not your point result in a lower homicide rate for veterans, not higher? Thereby strengthening A.L.'s point? Or am I missing something in your explanation?

Yes, and that's what I thought I was saying in my intro, though I see now that it could be taken the other way around: A.L.'s failure to adjust for the difference between total murders and murders per year makes his case look weaker than in fact it is. When we adjust them (as best we can) we find the numbers make the Times' article look even worse.

Also, I somehow missed comment 22, where Antimedia's argument anticipates mine.

HR and Dr. Weevil,

The estimates I calculated in #11 for actively-serving members of the armed forces and "new" vets were:

• ~6.6 homicides per 100,000 per year for Served-in-I/A.
• ~2.0 homicides per 100,000 per year for Didn't-Serve-in-I/A.

They take the complications you bring up into account.

• They are based on offenders in the U.S., committing homicides in the U.S (not based on victims).
• The Geography is the same as the Times used--homicides committed in the U.S. by service people and veterans in the U.S.
• The NYT didn't define "new" vets, to my knowledge. I used "discharged within 6 years" and can adjust it to match what they used. (It won't affect the Served-in-I/A rate; shortening "new" will modestly increase the Didn't-Serve-in-I/A rate, and the converse).
• I take A.L's "1.6 million" figure to be the number of service people and veterans who served at least once in Iraq or Afghanistan. (The Pentagon gave this number as 955,000 in September, 2004).
• The figure counts all people who served in uniform in Iraq or Afghanistan in the US Armed Forces. That's the plain reading of what the Times discussed in the article.
• There's no distinction made between "combat" and "non-combat;" the Times didn't differentiate in this way, and statistics seem unavailable. Obviously, essentially all "combat" and all people who suffered combat-related PTSD will be in the Served-in-I/A pool. That there are also people who were not in combat in this pool will dilute the effect of combat, but won't get rid of it. It's possible that the contrast between the two rates (~6.6 and ~2.0) is due to a more pronounced contribution by those who experienced combat. If so, we--and the Pentagon and the VA--should be aware of it, and insist that services be targeted accordingly.

Also:

• To the extent the NYT missed homicides committed by service members or "new" vets, the rates are too low. To the extent they miscategorized events as homicides (e.g. vehicular manslaughter), the rates are too high.
• The rates of ~2.0 and ~6.6 are both low, compared to homicide rates of the US population. DoJ says white males aged 18-24 offend at a rate of about 21. A cohort that roughly matches the Army's 2005 makeup by gender, race, and age would have an offending rate of about 26. However, that may not be the best calculation for an apples-to-apples comparison. It does at least give a sense of what "2.0" and "6.6" might mean.

Email me at amac-2007 at usa dot net for the Excel file.

Amac,

As I asked above, in #2, shouldn't it be possible to estimate the number of troops serving in Iraq/Afghanistan who see combat? I'm not as sanguine as you are that this dilution won't have a major effect on the numbers; I can easily believe that it could have a 10-fold effect.

Alan, you are of course correct in #2 and #34--it would be helpful to have a good definition of "been in combat," and know how many of those who served in Iraq and Afghanistan qualify, and then apportion the 121 homicides between assailants who had experienced combat and those who had not.

What I'd meant to point out is a bit different. There may be excess homicides due to service members and new vets who had been in combat as opposed to simply in-theater--it seems likely. Those incidents will push up the "Served-in-I/A" subgroup and not the "Didn't-Serve-in-I/A" subgroup. The effect will be diluted by looking only at those two categories, but it will not vanish. That might (or might not) explain the difference between ~2.0 and ~6.6 (or whatever the real rates are).

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My apologies, Weev, if I was just being dense.

Andy - per the Pentagon, that's the number of peoplewho have been over.

Doc Weevil - I do deal with that, because we're comparing 121 murders/6 years to 1.6 million troops/6 years...

hypo - I don't think the Times makes an effort to count the MOS of the troops they counted, either.

Seriously, the data is crap; it's enough, in broad strokes to say with reasonable assurance that combat doesn't turn troops into ticking time bombs.

It may well be true that some few troops are badly emotionally harmed by combat; we should do everything we reasonably can to identify and help them.

One of those things is, I believe combating the social claim that they are 'supposed to act that way'.

And I'll stand on the fact that the Times didn't do a feature on one or two troops who slipped through thecracks or had individually tragic stories; they did a feature on 'an emerging pattern'. Which is patently false.

A.L.

It's an "emerging pattern" if any increase, regardless of the rate, is correlated to the ongoing wars.

Wait a sec, I think I'm confused. (of course, if you THINK you are confused, you ARE confused...)

I didn't join the earlier argument about troop violence coming out of Iraq, into the United States, as I thought it was reasonable argued, so it didn't require an objection. (I know, I know, when I only speak up when I see a bad argument, just makes me disagreeable, but so be it.)

My particular comment, is regarding comparing deaths in New York, to deaths of troops in Iraq, as both numbers are referenced in this post.

But then with A.L.'s ticking bomb argument, I realize I'm not sure whether A.L. is comparing deaths in Iraq, with deaths in New York, or comparing violence of troops in general, after they come back from occupation.

Apologies for my confusion, please enlighten me.

Be careful trying to break out combat/noncombat roles anyway. Both of these conflicts are insurgencies, which means that there aren't front lines as such. That can make it hard to determine who is or isn't in a "combat" role -- the Marine who kicks in doors is, but the Marine who drives the supply truck... also may have been. The guy on the FOB isn't... unless he's had a cell come after his FOB and shell it day after day, and station snipers right over the walls.

In the last little while, we've got what we would normally call "combat Marines" in Anbar PTing in the streets of Fallujah and Ramadi; while FOBs have still been hit with rockets and mortars.

There really are guys over here who have never been in any serious danger, of course; but it's going to be very opaque, from where you are sitting, sorting out just who they are.

Points raised in the prior thread --

Paul (prior #121):

The average man/woman coming out of Iraq/Afghanistan is most likely over 30 years old... The comparison of homicide rates ought to be with the older groups, perhaps 35-49. For the general population, using the same source as in the post, that would 5.1/100,000.

The vets don't measure up so well at that.

Antimedia (prior #126) disputes Paul's claims, and notes

According to the latest military casualty demographics almost 78% of the casualties in Iraq are 30 years of age or younger. I would expect to find about the same age distribution for all units that see combat...

Also, the estimated offender rates for Active Duty and "new" vets in #33 (above) of 2.0 and 6.6 homicides per 100,000 per year are for a population that is about 85% male and with the following age structure: 40% under 25, 60% 25 and older (PDF, pg. 4). The general population rate of 5.1/100,000 does not reflect that.

from just a couple of points (prior #124):

Clearly though, the homicides comitted by veterans will ultimately be INCLUDED in the age group figures as such you are "double counting" any increase of veteran homicides in the overall age group ratio.

Subtracting a number like "121" from the tens of thousands of homicides committed annually in the U.S. will make no discernable difference.

The only reasonable analysis to "determine the effects of Iraq Afghanistan" on veteran homicide rates would be either

a/ to compare a similar period of pre 2001 veteran offense statistics against the current rates (factoring in any variance in civilian homicide rates between the same periods)

b/ compare Current homicide rates of Iraq Afghanistan vets against that of equivalnet age and position service personnel who have not served or not yet served in theatre.

Reasonable points. The NYT article would have done well to point this out to its readers. If they didn't have the space, they could have tossed some of the overwrought prose to make room. Figuring out the proper matched populations and gathering data would be difficult, as tibor (prior # 125) illustrates:

news reports [prior to 2001] wouldn't necessarily note the killers' veteran status or contain comments from distraught parents saying things like "He just got back from a tour of duty in Germany and he couldn't readjust to civilian life because of the lack of morally casual Teutonic women and tasty, high alcohol beer."

just a couple of points (prior #124) also wrote:

I have no doubt that crime rates within the veterans population is far lower than in the general population of equivalent demographic. Due not only to the above selection issue but also to the consequences of the discipline instilled by military service.

Excellent point, borne out by analysis of the data in the article. Too bad that those who don't have blogs as well as the NYT on their reading lists will miss it.

I'm starting to see a trend with NYTimes number crunching abilities Do these people even have editors?

As much as the NYT is being correctly described here as performing shoddy journalism and directing slanderous innuendos at the men/women in this country's service, there is another group of scumbags that also contributes heavily to developing and reinforcing the meme of the ticking time bomb vet. This group is comprised of lawyers.

Defense lawyers will very often play the PTSD card in defense of a vet who has committed a heinous crime; up to and including murder. Some of these trials become very public and thus the media picks up on and reports the meme. The meme becomes more entrenched in the collective concious of our society, gets used more as a defense/excuse, gets reported more....and, well, a self-reinforcing cycle has developed.

Not that PTSD isn't a real syndrome and that it can't cause all sorts of abberant behaviors. I do think it gets overplayed in the courts.

I am wondering if you'd have to go even further than differentiating between those who have been in combat and those who have not. Different situations could have different severities. I have conjurred up a couple of different aspects (far from thorough) that could provide different affects:

- Seeing someone vs. not seeing someone
(This could be the difference between soldiers clearing a building and a pilot dropping a bomb)

- Morally clear vs. Morally unclear
(Defending a location from attack vs. attacking a wrong target)

- Intensity of fighting
(Small numbers of enemies vs. large, short duration vs. long)

- Total exposure to combat

I am sure there are a number more that could likely play an effect. You would literally have to do a personal study of each person to figure it out.

In the end, I don't think there is any way to turn the NYT data into something usable though, so I don't see what all this effort is about. The only way to do this justice would be a thorough study by the DOJ and DOD. I somehow think they have better use of their resources.

And I think comparing it to the base murder-rate honestly is unnecessary for the NYT. If you have to show every possible relating figure to any story so no one can take it the wrong way, it would not only be a form of censorship, but also absurd. To look at another war related number, we could talk about casualties. Just saying the number of U.S. casualties is insufficient without context. You should have to compare it with all modern conflicts the U.S. has been in, at least from Vietnam onward, the number of troops involved, the number of enemy and civilian deaths, etc. In the end, you'd probably need several dozen sets of numbers over a broad range to give it full context for the reader. You'd have to be an accountant to wade through it. Honestly, I love wading through studies, but only if I'm really interested in them. I don't think I would be that interested in the full data from this kind of a study. I'd probably read the conclusion, maybe look at a chart or two, and that would be it.

Also, newspapers and reporters have different agendas. If someone printed the story with a more "veterans are psychotic murderers," it could be because their readership will better respond to that take on the story or because they feel that it will sell more newspapers. The NYT probably would not see an updward or townward trend based on a story like this. A more local paper might.

I know the local paper in my community butchers most stories they don't buy from the AP. They would probably have the tagline "Vets turn into bloodsucking alien vampires" for this story. That, or "Beware Fort Bragg - Soldiers May Go On Killing Spree." They would probably also misprint the statistics and have a few dozen spelling and grammatical mistakes. It would be another gimmick to increase readership in a community that is weary of a poorly-operated, poorly-written newspaper.

I don't read the Guardian or the Independent, so I really could not judge them, but I hold by my original interpretation of the article. It is not about painting the vets in a bad light, but about being against the government and the war.

avedis,

All mental disorders, whether or not the defendant actually suffers from them, are overplayed in court, at least by successful lawyers.

Someone may have already mentioned this but the Times' number is over 6 years. So, the actual rate is .79/100,000. That is a phenomenally low murder rate.