Random Michael Moore Deceits [#39]

Congressional Children in War [from Fahrenheit 9/11]

Smearing Our Representatives

Michael Moore intones: ". . . out of the 535 members of Congress, only one had an enlisted son in Iraq." His words are carefully chosen because he can't make his case without the restricting words "enlisted" and "son" and "Iraq." He wants you to mistakenly believe that those in power are shielding their offspring from danger while the rest of the America's families are being bled dry. It's another Michael Moore invention.

Military personnel have no control over where they are deployed. As of 2004 seven members of Congress were confirmed to have a son or daughter in the military. As for Iraq: Democrat Senator Tim Johnson's son fought in Iraq with the 101st Airborne Division in 2003. Republican Representative Duncan Hunter's son quit his job after September 11 and enlisted in the Marines and served with an artillery unit in the heart of the war zone in February 2004. Moore doesn't include Hunter's son because he was a Second Lieutenant and was therefore not "an enlisted son." Recall that in Vietnam Second Lieutenants had the shortest life expectancy of any rank. Moore is also careful to exclude Attorney General John Ashcroft's son serving on the USS McFaul in the Persian Gulf. I guess cabinet members don't fit well with Moore's thesis either.

So, two congressional members have sons in Iraq. Is that an unusually low number? Well, . . . no. As of the summer of 2003 about 300,000 American troops had been rotated in and out of Iraq. According to the Census Bureau there were 104,705,000 households in America in the year 2000. Therefore the ratio of households to troops who have set foot in Iraq is 349 to 1. Since there are 535 congressional households and two Congressional sons serving in Iraq, their ratio is 268 to 1. Therefore, the average American family is 23 percent less likely to have a child serving in Iraq than is a congressional family. At least seven members of Congress are themselves military veterans. And so dies one of the Left's most cherished myths."

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