The liberal media is agog with reports that prisoners are dying whilst being detained by the U.S. military. The AP story, citing government data, claims that 108 prisoners died while in U.S. custody. In the NYTimes, military officials admit that 26 prisoner deaths are being investigated as homicides. Surprisingly, only one of these possible murders went down at Abu Ghraib.
Though a Pentagon spokesman told the NYT that one homicide is one too many, he did "note" that the U.S. has held 50,000 prisoners during the course of its two current wars. Given that volume, the 26 figure doesn't seem so bad.
Here's how U.S. military detainment stacks up to Los Angeles:
In 2003, L.A. recorded 500 homicides, meaning that one of every 7,400 citizens was murdered.
In U.S. military custody, one of every 2,000 prisoners may have been murdered.
That means getting nabbed by the military is about four times as dangerous as living in L.A. So what's the big deal?
