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The point is that including the US in that group of countries without noting the disparity is disingenuous at best and misleading at worst.
Say there are 100 people participating in a hot dog eating contest. The top person eats 75 hot dogs, the second eats 73, the third eats 70 and the fourth eats 65. The other 96 people are all lightweights, eating amounts ranging from 0 to 7.
Now, pretend that competitor number five is a famous person and that I'm a reporter who doesn't particularly like competitor number five and has in fact gotten into a lot of arguments with him. Further pretend that I have a history of seeking to get my articles on the front page by writing bad things about competitor number five in particular, and I know that implying that he's a fatass that eats a lot of hot dogs is a great way to do that.
Now, I could write an article saying that "the top five competitors combined to eat 290 hot dogs, 93% of the total" and I would be 100% accurate. However, wouldn't that article be somewhat misleading in that it would be lumping the fifth competitor in with the top four without noting the huge disparity in consumption between the top four and the fifth? Wouldn't you be suspicious of my motives in doing so?
I understand your view, but you would have to find reportable countries comparable to the U.S. to say that the U.S. is being hand picked from a slew of other countries to represent the 5th slot.
According to the article (reposted since the OP link isn't working):
Article said:Fifty-nine countries retain the death penalty. But only 25 of them carried out executions in 2008. In Europe, only one country carried out the death sentence: Belarus, where four people were executed last year.
Of those countries, the U.S. falls into the top five. I agree that 39 isn't that many executed, but it's still a notable figure from an organization that is universally against the death penalty and has internally declared it a human rights issue.
I think objectors to this article are seeing an argument against the U.S. where one doesn't exist. You are essentially anticipating an anti-U.S. or anti-death penalty argument... but I don't see that at all. All I see are numbers. It's just like when people say that the U.S. and China are the world's worse polluters... Americans get offended by being compared to the Chinese, but the figures aren't about your national pride, they're about reality.