I trust you were as appalled as I was when I recently heard that military members who had served in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2003 had committed over 120 murders in the U.S. after returning home. The New York Times first revealed this data in their Sunday Times. The inference, of course, is that war and combat are making murderers out of our men and women returning from the war zone.

When we look at all of the service members who have served, or are serving, in Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan in the past four years, we are talking about somewhere in the mid-300,000. Even though many of these men and women may have served multiple tours there, each individual is counted only once for this analysis.

So then, we have had 121 returning service members either found guilty of, or charged with, murder in a four-year period. On average, the statistics would suggest a returning G.I. murder rate of less than 10 in 100,000 annually – 30 per year over four years with a 300,000-plus cohort group. Not knowing much about murder rates here in our country, I got in touch with one of my favorite researchers: www.google.com. Wow, was I surprised. Maybe our G.I.'s returning from the war zones are far more disciplined than the Times article would infer. Of course, I know they are.

Taking 2005 as the middle year in the war and looking at the U.S. Department of Justice stats for that year, we see that a similar age cohort group of 18- to 34-year-old citizens in America had a homicide rate of 40 per 100,000. The 18- to 24-year-old group rate was 26.5 per 100,000. The 25- to 34-year-old group was 13.5 per 100,000. The more I reflected on this data, the more I came to realize that maybe we should expect homicide rates like this if we watch the local news or read the local papers daily. What leads? What is the headline?

After several hours of research of this G.I. murder rate, I changed my mind about being appalled. I was still appalled. But now my anger and concern is focused on a highly slanted or poorly researched article in such a widely read newspaper. Maybe some news is not “fit to print.”