‘Worst’: Less casualties or fuzzy math?

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Less casualties or new math?
Feb. 2: Tonight's Worst Person in the World: Dr. Michael Kilpatrick, who has "reduced" the number of war casualties by only counting those that require air transport out due to medical reasons.

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Worst Person in the World

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Aug. 29: In the last 20 days, suicide bombers have killed at least 78 people in Iraq and wounded countless others, yet John McCain told Time Magazine that Iraq is a “peaceful and stable country now.” Keith Olbermann explains in Worst Person in the World.

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'The Worst Person in the World' by Keith Olbermann

COMMENTARY

By Keith Olbermann

Anchor

Countdown

updated 10:23 a.m. ET Feb. 5, 2007

Keith Olbermann
Anchor, 'Countdown'
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Every night at 8 p.m. on MSNBC, Keith Olbermann awards his daily pick for "Worst Person in the World." Some contenders are lucky — or unlucky —enough to be nominated more than once.

The bronze goes to the Fox TV series 24. We explored here a few weeks ago the possibility that the show was in part a device to get people thinking we were living in a country where a car bomb could go off at any moment. This was poo pooed in some corners. Of course not, I was told. It’s just entertainment.

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But now our esteemed colleague Cal Thomas of Fox noise has pretty much underscored this point in his latest newspaper column, "Watch the TV drama 24 for what could be our prophetic and imminent future, with a nuclear device exploding in major cities."

Number two is the National Football League, insisting that a series of establishments in the Indianapolis area not show Sunday’s Colts/Bears Super Bowl game on big screen TV’s or there might be legal action. The institutions: a bunch of churches that want to have Super Bowl gatherings for their Colt fan congregations.

The NFL will continue, however, to permit bars nationwide to show the games on big screen TV’s and require patrons to buy drinks. Sue over viewings in church, endorse pay per view at bars. Why do I think the NFL might want to be rethinking that marketing strategy?

But the winner is Dr. Michael Kilpatrick, deputy director of Force Health Protection and Readiness at the Department of Defense. The number of injured American service personnel just dropped from 47,657 in Iraq to 31,493. Is it a miracle? No it’s Dr. Kilpatrick’s new math. Minor injuries, accidents, illnesses were counted along with actual war casualties, he says, and that gave a misleading leading view of how many of our friends and family have been hurt in Iraq.

So the new accounting shows only those Americans who required air transport out due to medical reasons. Next for Dr. Kilpatrick, trying to help the president out with the troop surge of 21,500, that will really require 35,000 troops.

Pentagon Dr. Michael "Kill-Patient" Kilpatrick, today’s Worst Person in the World.