Boxer Fudged Calif. War Casualties

Boxer Fudged Calif. War Casualties

After accusing Secretary of State nominee Condoleezza Rice of trafficking in "falsehoods" during hearings last week before the Sen. Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Barbara Boxer is the new hero of the Howard Dean-Michael Moore wing of the Democratic Party.

However it appears that Boxer may have indulged in a few falsehoods of her own while questioning Dr. Rice. To justify her tough grilling, the Golden State Democrat repeatedly invoked war casualties from her home state, saying they amounted to 25 percent of the 1,400 GI's killed in the fighting.

But after checking with the website Casualties.org, OpinionJournal.com says that's not true. "The number of California servicemen who've died is 157, which is about 11.5% of the total, less than half the proportion Boxer claimed," they noted.

The Marin County demagogue also had her facts wrong when she claimed her fellow Senators voted to authorize the Iraq war based solely on Bush administration claims about weapons of mass destruction.

In fact, the Senate's Iraq war resolution also cited Saddam's "brutal repression of its civilian population thereby threatening international peace and security in the region," and its refusal "to release, repatriate, or account for non-Iraqi citizens wrongfully detained by Iraq, including an American serviceman, and by failing to return property wrongfully seized by Iraq from Kuwait."