Are Returning US Troops Ticking Time-Bombs?

In the New York Times last Sunday, [color="Red"]Deborah Sontag and Lizette Alverez co-oped an article--which spread across two entire centerfold pages and spilled onto a fourth--entitled, "Across America, Deadly Echoes of Foreign Battles". The premise of the article was to show that returning Gulf War Vets have been unleashed on American streets and are turning American cities into killing grounds:

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.”

The New York Times found 121 cases in which veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan committed a killing in this country, or were charged with one, after their return from war.

Horrible stuff, isn't it? American soldiers seem hellbent on destruction. They must really be tearing the country to bits. 121 cases the NY Times found--that's incredible.

Or is it really that incredible?

Here's another take on those 121 cases, brought to you by the good folks at The American Thinker:

Had the Times' "journalists" and editors bothered to put those figures in context - which they carefully avoided doing - they would've found that the murder rate that leaves them so aghast means that our vets are five times less likely to commit a murder than their demographic peers.

While the NY Times didn't lie, as such, why didn't they bother to tell the whole truth? Why did they feel the need to skew the article to such a biased end? Why omit facts that are relevant to the story?

Simply, the NY Times hates GWB, Conservatives, and the military so much, that it is willing to bend the truth, or omit the truth, in order to achieve its aim at discrediting anything Conservative and GWB.

American servicemen aren't insane killers roaming the streets looking for their next victims. The NY Times knows that, yet it dedicated 4 pages of this tripe, and NINE online pages, to paint a picture of the US military personnel as nothing more than blood thirsty psychopaths. If you can stomach it, go have a look at some of the heart-wrenching stories they dug up in order to prove their point.

Look at those numbers again--Returning troops are FIVE TIMES less likely to commit a murder than their demographic peers.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/us/13vets.html?_r=2&hp&oref=login&oref=slogin

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2008/01/a_calumnious_smear_of_our_troo.html