Our troops may not make our newspapers or TV shows for all they have done in this War on Terror yet they are making history and us proud.

Yet the New York Times hates America’s troops, has used the names of our honored dead, tossed the heroism of both the living and the dead aside for six years, and smeared their character at every opportunity. Sunday, they did it again.

Not once in their 6,300 word article Across America, Deadly Echoes of Foreign Battles did they place into context the 121 murders, alleged murders, and suicides they sited. Instead, the Times insinuated our troops are nothing but a bunch of crazed killers.

John Hinderacker at Power Line exposed the Times’ sorry excuse for journalism yesterday when he wrote:

Now put yourself in the place of a newspaper editor. Suppose you are asked to evaluate whether your paper should run a long article on a nationwide epidemic of murders committed by veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan–a crime wave that, your reporter suggests, constitutes a “cross-country trail of death and heartbreak.” Suppose that the reporter who proposes to write the article says it will be a searing indictment of the U.S. military’s inadequate attention to post-traumatic stress disorder. Suppose further that you are not a complete idiot.

Given that last assumption, I’m pretty sure your first question will be: “How does the murder rate among veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan compare to the murder rate for young American men generally?” Remarkably, this is a question the New York Times did not think to ask. Or, if the Times asked the question and figured out the answer, the paper preferred not to report it.

As of 2005, the homicide rate for Americans aged 18-24, the cohort into which most soldiers fall, was around 27 per 100,000. (The rate for men in that age range would be much higher, of course, since men commit around 88% of homicides. But since most soldiers are also men, I gave civilians the benefit of the doubt and considered gender a wash.)

Next we need to know how many servicemen have returned from Iraq or Afghanistan. A definitive number is no doubt available, but the only hard figure I’ve seen is that as of last October, moe than 500,000 U.S. Army personnel had served in either Iraq or Afghanistan. Other sources peg the total number of personnel from all branches of the military who have served in the two theaters much higher, e.g. 750,000, 650,000 as of February 2007, or 1,280,000. For the sake of argument, let’s say that 700,000 soldiers, Marines, airmen and sailors have returned to the U.S. from service in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Do the math: the 121 alleged instances of homicide identified by the Times, out of a population of 700,000, works out to a rate of 17 per 100,000–quite a bit lower than the overall national rate of around 27.

But wait! The national rate of 27 homicides per 100,000 is an annual rate, whereas the Times’ 121 alleged crimes were committed over a period of six years. Which means that, as far as the Times’ research shows, the rate of homicides committed by military personnel who have returned from Iraq or Afghanistan is only a fraction of the homicide rate for other Americans aged 18 to 24. Somehow, the Times managed to publish nine pages of anecdotes about the violence wreaked by returning servicemen without ever mentioning this salient fact.

Retired Army Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Peters put it this way, this morning in the New York Post:

Aren’t editors supposed to ask tough questions on feature stories? Are the Times’ editors so determined to undermine the public’s support for our troops that they’ll violate the most-basic rules of journalism, such as putting numbers in context? Answer that one for yourself.

Of course, all of this is part of the disgraceful left-wing campaign to pretend sympathy with soldiers — the Times column gushes crocodile tears — while portraying our troops as clichéd maniacs from the Oliver Stone fantasies that got lefties so self-righteously excited 20 years ago (See? We were right to dodge the draft …). And it’s not going to stop. Given the stakes in an election year, the duplicity will only intensify.

That’s correct. The New York Times does not give a tinker’s damn about America’s soldiers. All it cares about is using them to influence the outcome of elections.

Support our troops!