Steve King Gets His Ass Fact-Checked

From Dale McFeatters at Scripps Howard News Service:

King's argument was that the rate of violent death in Iraq is 27.51 per 100,000 people, while in presumably far more dangerous Washington, 45 per 100,000 residents come to violent ends...

Really, the capital couldn't be all that dangerous, because the congressman's Web site says his office will gladly arrange tours of Washington for visiting constituents. It would be dubious politics to let a visiting group of Council Bluffs schoolchildren wander into insurgent cross-fire on their way to the Lincoln Memorial.

King might have been here long enough _ he's lived in Washington since 2003 _ to get the rhythms, but not long enough to realize that "this place," as he so warmly called it, is truly Wonk City. And the wonks were all over his numbers in no time flat.

The murder rate in Washington is 35.8, not 45, per 100,000 and the murder rate for Baghdad is 95, not 27.51, per 100,000, and even that, says the Brookings Institution, is "too low since many murder victims are never taken to the morgue, but buried quickly and privately and therefore never recorded in official tallies" _ a problem that Washington, whatever its other faults, doesn't have.

King had his knuckles rapped earlier by a conservative Wall Street Journal Web site for "painting a misleadingly Pollyannaish picture of Iraq" and thus giving aid and comfort to liberal Democrats who would then argue, the reasoning went, 'If Iraq is so safe, we can bring all the troops home.'

It's a deliciously snarky column against King all the way through to the end. Read the whole thing.