October 16, 2006
Left-Wing Lawyer to be Sentenced For Aiding Terrorism
Lynne Stewart, the radical liberal lawyer convicted of providing material support for terrorism, faces being sentenced for
up to 30 years today. Her defense team's strategy?
She and her allies are pinning their hopes for leniency on a strategy that argues she became so emotionally involved in the sheik's case that she acted irrationally — a strategy that is underpinned by a sealed letter to the court from a psychiatrist.
A psychiatric report submitted to the federal judge in Manhattan who will decide the sentence, John Koeltl, claims that several emotional events in Stewart's life suggest her actions were motivated by "human factors of her client and his situation" and not by politics, according to portions of the psychiatric report.
The psychiatrist, Steven Teich, points to 11 emotional events that he claims prompted her to want to take action on Abdel Rahman's behalf, Stewart's attorneys say. Among the events that make Dr.Teich's list are her experiences seeing Abdel Rahman incarcerated and the 1995 suicide of a drug defendant named Dominick Maldonado, whom Stewart had once represented.
"Ms. Stewart's commitment to the protection of her client, the Sheik, in prison was magnified by emotions from her perceived failure to protect her former client Mr. Maldonado, which had, consequently, resulted in his death by suicide," Mr. Teich wrote.
While the evaluation by Dr. Teich is filed under seal, Stewart's attorneys quote portions of it at length in public legal papers.
Stewart's behavior was "emotionally based and sometimes impulsive" and her mental state while representing Abdel Rahman "immobilized her critical ability to evaluate the potential consequences of her actions," according to the psychiatric report.
In other words, they are claiming that Stewart became a traitor to her country because she let her perceived failures and emotions get the better of her, not because she was inherently or willfully disloyal.
Somehow, that defense sounds familiar... where have I heard it before?
This "emotionally-based and sometimes impulsive" behavior did not start in 2000 or in September 11, 2001, in October of 2001, or March of 2003. It is instead a inherent structural flaw in a group of people going back decades.
Once upon a time liberals were classic liberals, pulling for individual rights, equal opportunity, freedom, and peace. I didn't agree with the methods they espoused towards realizing their ideals, but I could at least respect their ideals, if not their plans for implementation.
Somewhere, however, liberals began to lose their liberalism and thirst for universal freedoms. As Dr. Sanity noted, they traded their ideals for ideology, and have now reached a point where:
...every issue supported by the Left, and almost all of the behavior exhibited by the Left is completely antithetical to classical liberal philosophies. There is no longer a commitment to personal liberty or to freedom. The Left is far too busy to promote freedom for the common man or woman, because their time is taken up advocating freedom for tyrants who oppress the common man; terrorists who kill the common man; and religious fanatics who subjugate the common woman.
The intellectuals who once promoted the IDEA of freedom, now are ensnared in an IDEOLOGY that depends for its very existence on the silencing of speech; the suppression of ideas; and the persecution of those who dare to refute its tenets.
Patriotism and love of one’s country is mocked by those who once fought to bring the American Dream to all American citizens; and who once championed those who were prevented from sharing in that Dream. Slowly and inexorably those idealists who once shouted, “we shall overcome,” morphed into a toxic culture promoting a never-ending victimhood that cannot possibly be overcome. Love of American ideals and values was transformed into the most perverse and vile anti-Americanism –where all things originating or “tainted” as American are uniquely bad; and where America became the source of all evil in the world.
This is the worldview that seems to have ensnared Lynne Stewart, and forms the basis for her defense as she is about to be sentenced for aiding and abetting terrorism. "I didn't mean to become a traitor," seems to be her cry, "my emotions made me do it." It seems beyond her that emotions led her to support those who would take away everything that she professed to support in a lifetime of liberal activism.
Liberals are not liberal anymore, and have not been for decades.
Many no longer even choose to identify themselves as such, perhaps subconsciously acknowledging that as they brand themselves as "progressives," without even realizing what they are progressing towards; Statism, the destruction of free speech, the crushing of dissent, the willful abandonment of a platform that once declared all should have equal rights to life liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Their new platform is something else entirely.
Progressives donÂ’t want peace; they just don't support our going to war.
They push to surrender in Iraq and Afghanistan—or as the style it, "redeploy"—because they claim that the cost of American lives is too high. The are ashamed to address what occurred when they were able to convince us to withdraw from Somalia and Vietnam. They perhaps saved tens of thousands of American soldier's lives by forcing politically-motivated withdrawals, but at what cost?
Millions died in Southeast Asia as a result of a successful anti-war movement in the United States forcing us to retreat, and the Murtha-led retreat from Somalia inspired Osama bin Laden to the African embassy bombings, the attack on the USS Cole, and eventually 9/11/01.
Progressives still claim to support individual freedoms and feminism and equality, but shamefully propose to abandon two fledgling nations struggling to find democracy to Islamists that subjugate people for being of a different ethnic group, or religion, or race, or gender.
How is this surrender to oppression in any way in confluence with the classical concept of liberalism? Put bluntly, it is not.
Liberalism, or at least those who today claim to be liberal and progressive, has become the refuge of back-biting isolationists that long ago gave up any pretense of finding freedom and equality concepts worth fighting for in favor of a morally bankrupt ideology blindly seeking power and relevance at any cost. Once more, those that claim to be liberals urge us to turn our backs on the ideals that made American great.
Justice. Honor. Freedom. Equality.
These noble concepts are snorted at with derision by an American Left today that in no way shares the ideals of those who came before. No one truly interested in human rights and justice and equality could abandon Iraq to insurgent Islamists and elements of al Qaeda advocating sharia law, nor abandoning Afghanistan to a brutal Taliban that subjugates women and murders homosexuals and others who deemed unworthy under brutal and primitive Sharia law. These "liberals" would condemn more than 50 million people to oppression because the price we've paid thus far is too much for their tender sensibilities.
Lynne Stewart braces for sentencing today as one liberal that long ago abandoned her stated principles in favor of an ideology most un-American. Thousands more just like her view her impending incarceration as a travesty of justice, without understanding that it is instead their beliefs that run counter to every ideal this nation holds dear. Ironically, they think they are the voices of freedom and reason.
Freedom is not earned by submission. Cowardice does not buy liberty. Retreat does not win equality.
Somehow, so called liberals lost sight of those basic facts long ago.
Update: I said "cowardice does not buy liberty"... but convicted felon and liberal moneyman George Soros came damn close. Soros funded a significant portion of Stewart's legal defense.
Stewart was sentenced today to to a whopping 28 months in prison. Her paralegal Ahmed Sattar got 24 years for conspiracy to kidnap and kill those in a foreign country.
Posted by: Confederate Yankee at
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Justice. Honor. Freedom. Equality.
These noble concepts are snorted at with derision by an American Left today that in no way shares the ideals of those who came before.
Abu Ghraib. Waterboarding. Stress positions.
Keep preaching to us about the moral superiority of the American Right...
Posted by: Phoenician in a time of Romans at October 16, 2006 04:32 PM (iYlrE)
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Phoenician,
Waterboarding vs Beheading... you can argue about the wrongs of individuals all you want but in the end you have to choose sides. I think it is a great testament to this nation that our citizens will not stand for relatively minor(considering the historical and international record on torture) mistakes by our side. at the same time, it is mind boggling how people can some how come to the conclusion that these occurrances not only make us equally evil as our enemy, but worthy of losing the war at the cost of millions of innocents here and abroad.
Wars do not end without a victor; regardless of our indiscretions, to deny that we must win this war is at best naive and stupid, at worst it is treasonous and fascistic.
Posted by: K-Det at October 16, 2006 07:08 PM (aaP7C)
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Still trying to pin the slaughter in Cambodia on America's withdrawl from Vietnam?
Hard to square with the fact that the Vietnemese are the ones who put a stop to the "killing fields."
Posted by: monkyboy at October 16, 2006 07:45 PM (unUeA)
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Pleeeeaaaassee tell me that wasn't a reference to "waterboards" and "stress positions" as some sort of heinous atrocity. You can do better than that. being waterboarded sucks, but it's probably got long term effects similar to being tickle-tortured for an hour.
when i was at SERE school, some of the guys in the class wanted to see what being water boarded was like, so they resisted past all reason and the instructors obliged them. to a man, and we're talking about marine officers and a SEAL, they said that after being water boarded they told the instructors anything they wanted to hear because it freaked them out.
were they sitting in the fetal position in class? no. having had it done on them, they recognized how effective it was because it's such a powerful tool. is there a risk of death? no. you just think you're going to drown, but you wont. are the terrorists probably pissed off and crying torture because they completely freaked out and spilled the beans? wouldn't surprise me.
Open question: Have any journalists volunteered to be water boarded to see what it's like? It might sound ridiculous but..why not?
Anyway, this woman is claiming to be a slave to her emotional impulses, and her occasional whackjob sessions make her a threat to those around her. She ought to be treated as such, and be placed in a mental institution so that she doesn't accidentally get emotionally involved with terrorists and whatnot. It's for her own safety.
Posted by: paully at October 16, 2006 09:00 PM (yJuX3)
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Waterboarding vs Beheading...
A difference in degree, rather than kind.
you can argue about the wrongs of individuals all you want but in the end you have to choose sides.
Very good - I choose the side of civilization rather than barbarity. Your country has degenerated to resemble the thing it claims to struggle against.
I take pride in being able to state that
my country does not torture people. Any thinking American would be deeply humiliated by the fact that they cannot say the same.
Justice. Honor. Freedom. Equality - remember?
Posted by: Phoenician in a time of Romans at October 16, 2006 10:57 PM (iYlrE)
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Freedom is not earned by submission
It was for the Confederacy...or at least for the Confederacy's former slaves.
Posted by: Hed at October 16, 2006 11:53 PM (ZS4Cu)
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Freedom is not earned by submission. Cowardice does not buy liberty.
Does this mean that you believe those Iraqis attempting to kill the American invaders occupying their country are right to do so?
Posted by: Phoenician in a time of Romans at October 17, 2006 12:03 AM (iYlrE)
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Put your hand on the phone-ah, dial the number, see that your free to be carrying on-ah, when your gone-ah...
Posted by: Pinko Punko at October 17, 2006 12:46 AM (6F6lT)
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What country are you from? Pamphletpropagandastan? Those little snipings are pretty tired. Why not bring in your experiences from your utopic country, which you mentioned is free of any oppression, and throw around some original ideas?
Posted by: paully at October 17, 2006 01:00 AM (yJuX3)
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Paully:
Phoenician wanders into blogs spewing all over the place until it finally pisses off the blog owner and gets banned, in which case it finds a new one.
Looks like Confederate Yankee's the next lucky host.
Posted by: Patrick Chester at October 17, 2006 03:21 AM (MKaa5)
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PiatoR is one of Goldstein's old trolls from PW, it just took me a while to recognize the handle. He's gone.
Not that it matters, but he is from New Zealand, a country rich in hobbits and hairy fruits.
Posted by: Confederate Yankee at October 17, 2006 06:31 AM (BTdrY)
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Go Braveheart Bob!
Ban everyone who disagrees with you. Way to show that Kiwi who's boss of this little house of cards!
Posted by: Lint at October 17, 2006 08:07 AM (lf6+g)
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you cant spell "banality" without "ban".
Posted by: paully at October 17, 2006 08:29 AM (gLHFl)
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Hard to square with the fact that the Vietnemese are the ones who put a stop to the "killing fields."
I would suggest you read Chandlers's
Brother Number One
Posted by: Purple Avenger at October 17, 2006 10:06 AM (k5pDn)
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Well, paully, it may have something to do with the fact that we prosecuted Japanese soldiers for waterboarding. War crime in 1945, but really effective interrogation technique now? As a graduate of a SERE course myself, I am constantly amused by the comparison if its use on highly trained troops in a known training environment, with its use on civilian prisoners under our control who have no recourse.
Followed only by the first class cognitive dissonance that you don't have to prove a single one is guilty before you use a war crime to extract information. The irrational rationalization being, I suppose, its not really that big a deal, so if they're innocent, no harm done. It takes a special kind of crazy to fit that in your head, and then advocate having it written into your "law".
Posted by: Officious Pedant at October 17, 2006 12:13 PM (688sS)
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I want the three minutes of my life back that I spent reading this.
So "liberal" is o.k., but the liberals have forgotten what that means? Yes CY, it is the left that is pushing to destroy free speech and squelch dissent. Damn man, what color is the sky in your world?
Posted by: T.S. Garp at October 17, 2006 03:55 PM (pSZ41)
Posted by: AJB at October 18, 2006 07:36 AM (C8fuN)
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...every issue supported by the Left, and almost all of the behavior exhibited by the Left is completely antithetical to classical liberal philosophies. There is no longer a commitment to personal liberty or to freedom.
Hm. I support Habeas Corpus. Apparently this makes me a fascist?
Bye bye, Republicans. It has been unpleasant dealing with you.
Posted by: brooksfoe at October 18, 2006 10:27 AM (OVjfO)
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October 15, 2006
Congressional Page Sex Predator Dies
That's the headline he
would have gotten had he been a
Republican unashamed of having sex with a page just 17 years old.
Posted by: Confederate Yankee at
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You summed it up, CY. The same standards are 180 degrees different when you are a member of the opposition, according to Nancy Pelosi.
Posted by: Tom TB at October 15, 2006 09:31 AM (GIL7z)
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"Courage" -- Dan Rather
Posted by: Purple Avenger at October 15, 2006 11:27 AM (uLMbH)
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Awww, poor little republicans. Never get treated fairly, do ya?
Posted by: EnoughIsTooMuch at October 15, 2006 03:50 PM (ACYOx)
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IF Dubya had been caught out in public with a hamster up his rectum, I'll bet the headline would be this: "George W. Bush, Forty-Third President of the United States, Arrested In Gay Bar Brawl; Found To Have Hamster Up His Ass."
The World Of If is a wonderful world, indeed.
Posted by: Doc Washboard at October 15, 2006 05:02 PM (I5N7V)
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Freaky! You and I think alike.... my headline was "Only US Congressman Who Admitted to Statutory Rape Dies Suddenly."
Heh.
Posted by: Bruce (GayPatriot) at October 16, 2006 08:06 AM (lV1tZ)
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No doubt he should be ashamed, but whether he was a predator is arguable, and he didn't commit statuatory rape, because his victim was over the legal age, which in DC is 16, and in Colorado can be 12.
Instead of labeling people as liberals or republicans, it would be more productive to change the laws. But, I don't see much outrage about men porking barely legal females.
Posted by: dzho at October 16, 2006 12:13 PM (jb33V)
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Huh huh, dzho said porking! Huh huh.
The emphasis between non statutory rape of a consenting child and sex between fully acknowledged consenting adults being considered the "Legal" part of the "barely LEGAL" age.
A unified age of acknowledged adulthood would be great but it isn't real so a line gets drawn somewhere.
So the rape wasn't statutory. Sex was still had buy a person of influence with what is considered and underage person regardless of their consent.
Wouldn't the world be great if laws that apply to bosses, parents and others in authority dealing with coercing sex from those arguably under their authority didn't apply equally to all and not just (to often) to Democratic political leaders?
Goose, gander.
A Foley by any other name or party is still a Foley.
Treat them accordingly or not at all.
Selective treatment is done for no other reason than ignorance, stupidity, cynical manipulative intent or some combination thereof.
Posted by: Brian at October 16, 2006 03:21 PM (6CDOn)
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October 13, 2006
Guards: I Can't Gitmo Satisfaction
If some of the stories told to Sgt. Heather Cerveny by guards at Guantanamo Bay are true, I hope the offenders are appropriately punished, but parts of CervenyÂ’s affidavit are
simply sad:
During my conversations with these people, one Sailor who called himself Bo (rank and last name unknown) told the group stories involving detainees. Bo was 19 years old and had been working at Guantanamo Bay for almost one year. He was about 5”10” and 180 pounds. He was Caucasian, with blond hair and blue eyes. Bo told the other guards and me about him beating different detainees being help in the prison. One such story Bo told involved him taking a detainee by the head and hitting the detainee’s head into the cell door. Bo said that his actions wee known to others. I asked him if he had been charged with an offense for beating and abusing this detainee. He told me nothing happened to him. He received neither nonjudicial punishment or court-martial. And he never even received formal counseling. He was eventually moved to the maintenance section but this did not occur until some time after the incident where he slammed the detainee’s head into the cell door.
Detainee abuse is a bad thing, but Sgt. HeatherÂ’s apparent incredulity that Bo didnÂ’t even get counseling makes me either want to laugh or cryÂ… I havenÂ’t decided which yet.
It is worth noting that this and all the other admissions came as a lonely, undoubtedly horny sailors were trying to impress a girl in a bar. Pardon me if I hold out hope that his apparent attempt to be “bar tough” is just one more lie to join the hundreds of millions told in a fruitless attempt to impress women.
What Sgt. Heather also seems to consider abuse outside of several claims of hitting detainees, however, is well, questionable.
I recall speaking with a guard named Steven. Steven was a Caucasian male, about 5”8”, 170 pounds, with brown hair and brown eyes. He stated that he used to work in Camp 5 but he now works in Camp 6. He works on one of the “blocks” as a guard. He told me that even when a detainee is being good, they will take his personal items away. He said that they do this to anger the detainees so that they can punish them when they object or complain. I asked Steven why he treats detainees this way. He said it is because he hates the detainees and that they are bad people. And he stated that he doesn’t like having to take care of them or be nice to them. Steven also added that his “only job was to keep the detainees alive.” I understood this to mean that as long as the detainees were kept alive, he didn’t care what happened to them.
I bet Sgt. Heather is probably a very nice person, kind to old people and animals, and is probably just the girl youÂ’d like to take home to meet dear old Mom and Dad, but would someone please explain to her what holy Hell these people are in prison for?
They are Islamic terrorists who want nothing more than to see Americans dead. These same inmates have a long record of flinging various bodily liquids at guards, assaulting them with homemade weapons, and generally not being nice people. God forbid that Steven doesnÂ’t like them and occasionally confiscates the personal effects from an inmate that once forced him to remove a uniform covered in , urine, feces, spit, or semen, or who once tried to cut him with a shiv.
And God forbid, sheÂ’s upset that they might not be getting their mail in a timely manner:
I asked Shawn why it often takes 6 months of so for them to get their mail. Shawn replied that there is often a delay because the mailroom personnel have to look through everything and get it translated prior to the mail being forwarded to detainees. I then asked why it would possibly still take six months if the mail matter was printed in English. Shawn said there wouldnÂ’t really be a reason and it was not uncommon for them to withhold the mail of detainees until they, the mailroom clerks, decided to forward the mail.
Prisoner abuse—hitting and punching them without prevarication or just cause—is patently wrong. But Sgt. Heather seems to be under the delusion that Marines and sailors have a duty to be nice and go out of their way to provide prompt, courteous, and friendly service to terrorists, as if Guantanamo Bay was a resort. Someone needs to write this little Marine paralegal a reality check.
Of course, Brian Ross sees this as a major scandal. I guess Foleygate must not be having the desired effect.
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Should the guards have been nice to the innocents who have since been released from Guantanamo?
Posted by: monkyboy at October 13, 2006 04:05 PM (unUeA)
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I watch Fox news frequently and read political blogs just to see how crazy the "other" side is....and often wonder if it were twenty years or thirty years earlier, I'd be seeing journalist defending torcher. How sad we have lowered ourselves.
I find myself watching the morning Fox and Friends, just so I can look up a girl's crotch and watch some pro-wrestling level debate, a cheap thrill if you will.
Would Walter Cronkite be a part of this crap? Not.
Reaching CY....Reaching.......(shaking my head and smiling)
Posted by: Johnny at October 13, 2006 06:23 PM (jmvhP)
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What you have is a young girl looking for attention so she took some bar room bragging and turned it into a story. If things work out she will have a nice two/three year vacation break at the brig in Ks. Lying in sworn statements will get you free transport and everything.
Posted by: Scrapiron at October 13, 2006 08:37 PM (fEnUg)
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What's so sad about the fact that he didn't get counseled? Oh, I forgot, you're a chickenhawk who doesnt know the first thing about soldiering. A counseling statement is the precursor to a punishment. You must be counseled by your superiors prior to a punishment as either a warning or a notification that you are facing an Article 15.
Good belittling of a female sergeant, too. You're an asshole.
Posted by: Ron at October 14, 2006 12:07 AM (BgCsf)
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CY:
When I think of the detainees in Guantanamo, I'm put in mind of those who were held in Abu Ghraib--not because of the torture allegations, although that does cross my mind. I'm thinking of the hundreds of innocents who were let out in mass releases after the Abu Ghraib abuses were publicized. These dudes, apparently, had done nothing; they'd been in the wrong place at the wrong time, or they'd been turned in for a bounty or whatever.
How many of those held in Guantanamo are in the same boat? Even if it is, as the Right calls it, "Club Gitmo," these dudes are being held with no hope of release ever, and it's possible that they are not, in fact, "enemy combatants" or whatever other term the Administration wants to make up to describe them.
Are we to believe the Administration's claim that they are all bad guys? Why? Because of their impeccable track record for honesty and thoroughness in these situations? That brings us full circle back to Abu Ghraib. Some of those guys were bad, but many were merely hapless.
The whole thing bothers me. I want to keep the bad guys behind bars, but I want to see the innocents go home. I'd rather not see anyone tortured, and let's start with the guys we have in custody. It's safe to say that none of them are the proverbial "ticking time bombs."
Posted by: Doc Washboard at October 14, 2006 09:02 AM (6+rMK)
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Enough of the Chicken hawk BS, Ron. Following typical chickenhawk logic then only the 700000 people, the number of soldiers that have gone through RFI, are allowed to have an opinion on Iraq. Its a stupid argument and the reason democrats were stuck with the dud Kerry...he supposedly had 'gotcha' points on Bush's service.
I was a First Sergeant on Abu Ghraib. The detainee population consisted of criminals, terrorists, people that were in the wrong place, people faking it for US medical care, and witnesses. That's right, witnesses. Its Legal under Iraqi law to detain witnesses to keep them from disappearing.
Next, they are called detainees because they haven't been proven guilty yet and are awaiting trial. They had satellite TV, plasma screens, surround sound, plenty of food, and excellent medical care. Tough life.
Had anyone committed those offenses we would have gone straight past counseling statements and to legal punishment. I have a good friend that was a guard at Gitmo and he indicates that nothing like that happened while he was there...not even after a poop throwing incident.
Thats my two cents. If you have never been to Abu or Gitmo, you are not allowed to have an opinion on what happens there, according to Ron.
Posted by: y7 at October 14, 2006 11:06 AM (I1rXq)
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Gitmo has got to be the most watched, talked about, investigated prison in the world. What about the thousands and thousands of people languishing in prisons in places like Yemen, does anyone ever even think about them? Is their fate of no import?
Posted by: Terrye at October 18, 2006 06:18 AM (4XoCB)
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Number Crunched
Thank you,
Asymmetrical Information commenter
Yancey Ward:
If there have been 650,000 excess deaths, and my understanding is that violence is the predominate cause of this excess, then I wonder about the ratio of wounded to dead. From my reading of history, in war there is about a 3 to 1 or greater ratio of wounded to dead in combat. If we take the study seriously, then we should also have well over 1.5 million wounded. Has anyone checked this out?
According to the Lancet’s disputed study, 601,027 people—al Qaeda terrorists, insurgents, Iraqi soldiers, police, and true civilians—have been killed violently ("the most common cause being gunfire," says the summary) since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
We also know that for every combat-related death, there are usually a far greater number of casualties. As Donald Sensing notes in a 2004 post to his blog, the United States sustained a ratio of wounded to killed of 2.3:1 in World War II, 3.28:1 in Vietnam, and 9.5:1 in the current Iraq war (a more current Newsday article from last week puts that figure at roughly 8:1).
The numbers look the way they do largely because of the advances made in medical and defensive technologies since the World War II and Vietnam era. U.S. soldiers that sustain wounds today will often survive what would have been killing wounds of 40 to 60 years ago, and they often won't sustain wounds where they might have in prior wars because of advances in vehicle and personnel armor.
Iraqi civilians do not wear body armor and as a rule neither do most insurgents or al Qaeda terrorists (though there are exceptions to that rule as well). Many Iraqi police and Army units do have body armor, as well as some lightly armored vehicles. While it is a simple SWAG, it would probably not be unreasonable to suspect that medical technologies available to the average Iraqi are probably not any worse than what our soldiers faced in World War Two, and may be better and approaching or exceeding Vietnam-era levels in some urban areas.
It is far from valid science (I, at least, admit it), but one might assume that a wounded to killed ratios of all Iraqis probably fits within the 2.3:1 and 3.28:1 figures of these prior wars, and a slightly higher number afforded by modern medical methods used in Iraqi civilian hospitals.
If we can therefore make that assumption (and I'm not entirely sure that we can, but I'm going to in an endeavor to prove a point) that the Lancet accurately states that 601,027 Iraqis have been killed violently since 2003, then there would logically be a minimum of 1,382,363-1,971,369 Iraqis wounded by violence (using the WWII and Vietnam ratios). If the ratio of wounded surviving is better than that, then there should be in excess of 2 million wounded Iraqis in addition to those killed by violence, or a grand total of 1,983,390-2,572,396 Iraqi civilians that have either killed or wounded since 2003.
The CIA World Factbook estimates the population of Iraq at 26,783,383 as of July.
Does the Lancet really want to stand behind a study that seems to suggest almost a tenth of Iraq's population has been killed or wounded in the past 3 years, and the world somehow overlooked it?
Funny think, statistics.
Update: In a post titled, Reality checks: some responses to the latest Lancet estimates, the staff of IraqBodyCount.org accuses the Lancet of over-inflating the civilian body count in Iraq.
Interestingly enough, IBC asked where the wounded are, how the media could have overlooked such carnage, how the Iraqi government could have participated in such a cover-up, and where the death certificates are.
If those questions sound familiar, it's because you've been reading this blog.
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So if I read you correctly, you're taking battlefield statistics from two 20th century wars, applying the ratio of wounded to dead
soldiers to the latest estimates of
overall mortality figures for Iraqis, and concluding yet again that one of the most prestigious medical journals in the world is off its nut -- all because of the inspiring words of a commenter named "Yancey Ward."
These marijuana cigarettes you're smoking -- where can I get some?
Posted by: d at October 13, 2006 04:08 PM (LHK5X)
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d - instead of being snarky, why don't you use your self-proclaimed intellectual superiority and address the subject of the wounded?
If there has been a excess of 650,000 deaths - caused by violence - then isn't it likely that there has been an excess of wounded? If fighting occurs in populated areas, then isn't it reasonable to expect a higher proportion of wounded among the civilian population?
Or are we to surmise that the coalition's plan is to leave no witnesses, therefore most casualties would be deaths, rather than wounded?
Enlighten us.
Posted by: SouthernRoots at October 13, 2006 04:45 PM (jHBWL)
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It keeps getting better with you folks. It's amazing.
First, the proprietor of this blog makes a stream of facially absurd remarks that indicate a basic misunderstanding of statistics, public health research, the academic peer review process, and any number of other related issues; he and his commenters (including you) go out of your way to mis-read the article under consideration, claiming that it argues something that it does not; and then, after it's pointed out over and over again (try
here for starters) that criticism of the
Lancet study is almost universally ignorant, CY (and now you) derive renewed inspiration from a commenter named "Yancey Ward" and promtly begin howling about a pile of utterly irrelevant, phantasmic statistics about wounded Iraqis.
There's no possible way to enlighten you. It's quite dark in there, I'm afraid to say.
Posted by: d at October 13, 2006 05:37 PM (LHK5X)
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In other words, we have absolutely no right to be astounded and skeptical of a death rate that is significantly higher (10x-13x) than what has been reported over the last 4 years?
We have no right to question the accuracy of the report?
We have no right to question the political motives of the authors of the report?
We have no right to ask for more than a statistical extrapolation as proof of the veracity of the report?
We must bow down and pledge unquestioning obedience to all (the right) scientists for they are pure, infallable, and apolitical?
Well, I am performing my patriotic duty by dissenting with your point of view.
The link you gave said (paraphrased) "Pay no attention the the really big number - it doesn't matter. What matters is that we have scientifically proven, beyond a shadow of any doubt, that Iraq is extremely more worse off since the start of the war than they were before the war started."
Until corroborated by other sources, I will remain skeptical.
Posted by: SouthernRoots at October 13, 2006 07:27 PM (jHBWL)
5
I'm still waiting for Al-Jazeera to show the pics of these 600,000 graves. I won't be holding my breath, becasue if AJ can't can't find'em, nobody can.
Posted by: Purple Avenger at October 13, 2006 07:32 PM (uLMbH)
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Another example of a professor sucking more people into some fantasy so he can get attention. Like a spoiled brat they don't care what kind of attention just so it's attention. This bunch is so full of bull a kindergarden student would smell it out.
Posted by: Scrapiron at October 13, 2006 08:40 PM (fEnUg)
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I have not read the study, and really do not intend to. But if more Iraqis died of US activity in a couple of years than Germans during four years of bombing not only factories but "population centers" (Berlin, Hamburg, Dresden and others) would not there be more than one study showing it?
Perhaps the statistical analysis of reported (to the studiers) deaths is good: can the same be said of their sampling methods? For example, asking interviewees to spread the word that they want to hear about deaths by violence, is it not likely that only people who had such deaths to report would then show up on succeeding days? Extrapolating from such a self-selected base would surely be akin to interviewing only people who claim success on the grapefruit diet and extrapolating that it must work...
Posted by: Tequila Jack at October 13, 2006 09:39 PM (oHkbn)
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Tequila Jack: I appreciate your willingness to publicly state your determination to know absolutely nothing about this study.
Scrapiron: You're absolutely right. I have no interest in this question except to draw people into some kind of "fantasy," and I am so desperate for attention that I can only receive it from people who denounce public health research they have publicly announced their refusal to read. Remarkable.
Southern Roots: I don't particularly give a squirt if you "question authority" or not. I'd remind you, though, that intelligent questions will always get you farther in life than the ones you knuckleheads are asking about the
Lancet study.
Let me put this whole issue another way. Rather than focus on the estimated figure of 655,000 dead, I'd like someone -- why don't we start with you, Southern Roots? -- to explain to me why we should find it so implausible that the Iraqi mortality rate should rise from 5.5 per capita to 13.3 per capita over the course of three and a half years of warfare and insurgency, sectarian violence, infrastructural corrosion, massive unemployment, and degraded access to medical care throughout much of the country. The 655,000 figure you find so grotesquely overstated is actually derived from that spike in mortality.
I'm keen to hear your theories on this one.
Posted by: d at October 14, 2006 12:02 AM (LHK5X)
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d - We are having a very fine dance here. You are asked questions and you refuse to really answer them except to belittle and then fall back on the "read the report, believe the report, you no nothing of statistical analysis" theme.
In order to have an increase from 5.5 to 13.5, you are required to have over 600,000 more deaths than "normal" in a three year period.
There is no getting around that number. I find it very difficult to believe that it goes unnoticed and unreported.
If the death rate due to violence increases significantly, then there should be a corresponding increase in wounded. You have thus far refused to acknowledge this, let alone discuss it.
I also don't think anyone here has been arguing that there haven't been increase in civilian casualties due to the war, what we are disputing is the magnitude. Do you honestly believe that, if the casualties are as high as the Lancet report claims, that all those groups that detest and hate Bush (and America) are just sitting on their hands and not finding some way to use this information against Bush? How realistic is that?
When actions do not correspond the presumptions of statistical studies, I do get cynical about the theoretical side. And I don't "give a squirt" if that puts your panties in a bunch.
Posted by: SouthernRoots at October 14, 2006 01:07 AM (jHBWL)
10
If the death rate due to violence increases significantly, then there should be a corresponding increase in wounded. You have thus far refused to acknowledge this, let alone discuss it.Alright, let's have a go with this.
No-one knows how many people have been wounded in Iraq over the last three years. You don't know, I don't know, The Lancet doesn't know, and George Bush doesn't know. There has never been a comprehensive study of this.
If the Lancet had tried to do the same survey of injuries as they did for deaths, the numbers would be practically useless. With a death, you're either living or dead, true or false, there's no middle ground. It's an easy thing to count because it doesn't rely on someone's interpretation. There's even official certificates. But for injuries, you'd need to send doctors out to assess every wound, which obviously isn't practical. Many of these people don't have access to medical care at all, so if you've got a few thousand doctors spare who are happy to be sent into dangerous territory, they really should be used to make people better, rather than collate statistics.
The comparison to war statistics is, as d says, a non sequitur. I think a lot of you are missing the point here: this number of 655,000 is
not measuring war dead. That is, it is not measuring people who died in pitched battles. It is measuring excess deaths due to many causes, including sickness and accidents. It is measuring the number of extra dead people Iraq has as a result of the war, not the number of people killed directly in the war itself. Historically, it's perfectly normal for there to be a big difference between these two numbers.
As to how many people I think were wounded, I can only speculate. I might say that many of the dead bodies that have been turning up show signs of torture. That is, they weren't gunned down in a pitched battle, but abducted, tortured, and killed. If someone wants to do that to you, you either escape, or you're dead. There's no way to get injured. If that effect was statistically significant, it might produce a death/injury ratio higher than pitched battles would. But I should emphasise that that's just speculation: I have no idea what the injury rates should look like.
So we have no idea how many people we should expect to have been injured given 655,000 excess deaths, and we have no idea how many people were in fact injured. You are taking two numbers you know nothing about and concluding that one is less than the other. It's not very convincing.
Posted by: Mat at October 14, 2006 03:34 AM (2yVWt)
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To follow up on Mat's point in the last two paragraphs, I just typed "Iraq" into Google News. The top two headlines were:
Decapitated corpses found in Iraq
8 Females, 2 Teenagers Kidnapped In Iraq
I haven't done a scientific study that shows that the dead-to-wounded ration from decapitation and kidnap-murder is higher than the dead-to-wounded ratio of WWII-style combat, but it seems like a plausible hypothesis. (That is to say, freaking obvious.)
A couple of other points:
would not there be more than one study showing it?
Well, there was another study a couple of years ago. But these studies are very difficult to carry out -- they involve going around Iraq and interviewing families in large numbers, and Iraq is a dangerous place to do it. So no one else has actually attempted this kind of study, as far as I know.
I'm still waiting for Al-Jazeera to show the pics of these 600,000 graves.
There are some interesting articles lately about people fishing bodies out of the Tigris.
Posted by: Matt Weiner at October 14, 2006 08:47 AM (Mnkma)
12
Rather than focus on the estimated figure of 655,000 dead...
Yes, lets ignore a patently absurd claim so we can bash others. Yea, that's the ticket.
Sorry jaggoff, the claim is so absurd its not even worth considering in serious company. Save this shit for you truther buddies who might listen.
You don't need to be a rocket scientist to figure this out, you just need to watch rabidly biased sources like Al-Jazzera to know its bogus.
Posted by: Purple Avenger at October 15, 2006 11:31 AM (uLMbH)
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Where did they grow you guys? I think I know what they used for fertilizer.
Posted by: Pinko Punko at October 16, 2006 01:33 PM (6F6lT)
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The staff of Iraq Body Count has now issued a press release accuses the Lancet of over-inflating the civilian body count in Iraq.
See the update to this post.
Posted by: Confederate Yankee at October 16, 2006 03:25 PM (g5Nba)
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If there has been a excess of 650,000 deaths - caused by violence - then isn't it likely that there has been an excess of wounded?
Not particularly. Very few people who are kidnapped with the intent of being tortured to death and dumped as an object lesson to others wind up wounded instead of dead. Since deaths from violence would tend to involve victims rather than soldiers, I'd expect a far higher dead-to-wounded ratio.
In other words, we have absolutely no right to be astounded and skeptical of a death rate that is significantly higher (10x-13x) than what has been reported over the last 4 years?
From an interview with one of the authors (to which, strangely enough, this blog won't allow a link):
"We have gone and looked at every recent war we can find, and only in Bosnia did all governmental statistics add up to even one-fifth of the true death toll. And in Bosnia, the rate was 30 or 40 percent, with huge support for surveillance activities from the UN. So itÂ’s normal in times of war that communications systems break down, systems for registering events break down.
And in SaddamÂ’s last year of his reign, only about one-third of all deaths were captured at morgues and hospitals through the official government surveillance network. So, when things were good, if only a third of deaths were captured, what do you think itÂ’s like now?"
You were saying?
Perhaps the statistical analysis of reported (to the studiers) deaths is good: can the same be said of their sampling methods? For example, asking interviewees to spread the word that they want to hear about deaths by violence, is it not likely that only people who had such deaths to report would then show up on succeeding days?
"And then, once we had picked that we were going to visit two or three neighborhoods in a certain governance or province, we would then make a list of all the villages and towns and cities, and again randomly pick one of those to visit, so that big places had a larger chance of being visited than smaller places. And then, finally,
when we got down to the village level or to the section of a city, we would pick a house at random, visit it and the other 39 houses closest to it to grab a cluster of 40 houses."
You were saying?
Posted by: Phoenician in a time of Romans at October 16, 2006 04:42 PM (iYlrE)
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Summary
Iraqi Body Count Press Release
October 16, 2006
"In the light of such extreme and improbable implications, a rational alternative conclusion to be considered is that the authors have drawn conclusions from unrepresentative data. In addition, totals of the magnitude generated by this study are unnecessary to brand the invasion and occupation of Iraq a human and strategic tragedy."
http://tinyurl.com/yd5o2j
Posted by: Bluangel at October 16, 2006 08:43 PM (T1cju)
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In the light of such extreme and improbable implications, a rational alternative conclusion to be considered is that the authors have drawn conclusions from unrepresentative data.
Ooops -
Appeal to Consequences of a Belief.
One notices that the IBC hasn't said anything about the statistical basis of the study, of which all informed experts have said is fairly robust. One also notes that the authors have addressed some of the points made, noting, for example:
"We have gone and looked at every recent war we can find, and only in Bosnia did all governmental statistics add up to even one-fifth of the true death toll. And in Bosnia, the rate was 30 or 40 percent, with huge support for surveillance activities from the UN. So itÂ’s normal in times of war that communications systems break down, systems for registering events break down."
"And in SaddamÂ’s last year of his reign, only about one-third of all deaths were captured at morgues and hospitals through the official government surveillance network. So, when things were good, if only a third of deaths were captured, what do you think itÂ’s like now?"
So the IBC criticism is not only off focus, it is based on false assumptions.
Try again.
Posted by: Phoenician in a time of Romans at October 16, 2006 11:06 PM (iYlrE)
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of which all informed experts have said is fairly robust.
Where have we heard the "all experts concur" line before?
Donald Berry, chairman of biostatistics at M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, was even more troubled by the study, which he said had “a tone of accuracy that’s just inappropriate.”
http://medpundit.blogspot.com/2006/10/lancet-strikes-again-i-admit-this.html
According to official reports , over 180,000 internally displaced refugees were reported just between the months of February and June of 2006. Undoubtedly those not registering pushes the number much higher. As I pointed out below, the survey methodology means that these displaced refugees had very little chance of being surveyed. But in addition to that, their migration is sure to skew the analysis of the data.
The authors acknowledge as much in their paper:
"The population data used for cluster selection were at least 2 years old, and if populations subsequently migrated from areas of high mortality to those with low mortality, the sample might have over-represented the high-mortality
areas."
http://notropis.blogspot.com/
"We have gone and looked at every recent war we can find, and only in Bosnia did all governmental statistics add up to even one-fifth of the true death toll. And in Bosnia, the rate was 30 or 40 percent, with huge support for surveillance activities from the UN. So itÂ’s normal in times of war that communications systems break down, systems for registering events break down."
Even with such terrible registration rates for death certificates, isn't it just amazing how the Lancet group was able to get well over 80% of the households to produce a death certificate? This was a key element in their validation of interprolating the numbers out to >650,000.
Seems bogus to me.
Posted by: SouthernRoots at October 16, 2006 11:48 PM (jHBWL)
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To compare deaths-to-wounds ratios in combat with what's going on in Iraq is just pig-ignorant.
Then, to presume at least WWII-quality medical care is to ignore the fact that hospitals currently are serving as *bases* for some of the militias, so a lot of wounded probably aren't even seeking medical help.
Beyond that, sure, it's possible the Lancet study is flawed. But nothing to date proves it, and disinterested public-health professionals find the survey techniques generally unassailable.
As for IraqBodyCount, anyone who knows anything about statistics has known for some time that its own methodology was overwhelmingly likely to have been understating fatalities by anywhere from several multiples to an order of magnitude.
But don't let, you know, facts get in the way of a good story.
Posted by: Lex at October 17, 2006 02:51 PM (FcWi1)
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Where are the death certificates? If they could get them for 501 and of the 546 people they said were killed because of the war, where are the rest?
The methodology is sloppy, they virtually ignore rural areas, and the sample groups are too small and interrelated. Note how few real professionals are prepared to risk their reputations backing this absurd claim. It is like saying the earth is flat, it is ridiculous on its face.
It is political and it shows a cyncial disregard for the suffering of the Iraqi people. They are just cannon fodder for the people who did this report.
I wonder what the numbers would have been had they done a report like this when Saddam was around and used as a sample the Kurds and Shia? There were people in the Kurdish north whose entire villages were destroyed. I wonder how many millions they could have claimed as dead using this methodology? But then again, Saddam would not even have let them talk to people.
Posted by: terrye at October 18, 2006 06:30 AM (4XoCB)
21
The
Wall Street Journal says that the Lancet is a bogus report.
Specifically that the selection of only 47 clusters to represent 26 million people was bogus.
Also that no demographics were asked of the interviewees so that the samples could be compared with a census or other information.
Posted by: SouthernRoots at October 18, 2006 09:47 AM (jHBWL)
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According to the Lancet’s disputed study, 601,027 people—al Qaeda terrorists, insurgents, Iraqi soldiers, police, and true civilians—have been killed violently ("the most common cause being gunfire," says the summary) since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
We also know that for every combat-related death, there are usually a far greater number of casualties.
"Violent" death and "combat-related death" are not synonyms.
A large number of targeted murders would yield a large number of bodies, and few wounded.
(By "targeted murder", I mean a murder where the murderer has selected a victim, and decided to kill the victim, attacked, and did not stop until certain that the victim was dead.)
However, if you can prove that there is damn good injury tracking in Iraq - a statement that we have no evidence for - and can show that nowhere near that level of injury has occurred, you might well have found a flaw in the report.
Uh, do you have any proof that the injury tracking in Iraq is so good that it calls the study results into question?
I mean, you haven't presented any; you've just insisted that we surely would have known if there were that many injuries. You're saying that one should trust an unknown system of tracking and reporting injuries, and use that trust to ignore solid research with a sound methodology.
It doesn't sound very sensible to me. My figuring is, if the study is done soundly (and it was), we should be digging to find out if it's true, not looking for self-serving reasons to declare that it's false.
Posted by: Longhairedweirdo at October 18, 2006 02:19 PM (MTypB)
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Coroner in Lloyd Inquest Fails to Prove His Charge
I'd like to know how this British Assistant Deputy coroner can justify
this conclusion:
A coroner ruled on Friday that a British journalist who died in Iraq at the start of the war was unlawfully killed by American forces.
Lloyd, a correspondent with the British TV network ITN , was killed outside Basra in southern Iraq in March 2003.
Oxfordshire Assistant Deputy Coroner Andrew Walker said he'll be writing the director of public prosecutions to seek to bring the perpetrators to justice.
"Terry Lloyd died following a gunshot wound to the head. The evidence this bullet was fired by the Americans is overwhelming," Walker said.
Lebanese interpreter Hussein Osman also was killed in the ITN crew, and cameraman Fred Nerac remains missing. ITN cameraman Daniel Demoustier survived.
Lloyd -- who was aged 50 -- was shot in the back during U.S. and Iraqi crossfire and was apparently shot by U.S. forces when he was taken away in a minibus for treatment.
"There is no doubt that the minibus presented no threat to the American forces. There is no doubt it was an unlawful act of fire upon the minibus," Walker said.
It is tragic when any civilian is killed in combat, but the simple fact that the bullet that killed Mr. Lloyd was fired by an American unit does not establish that:
- that the vehicle was intentionally fired upon;
- that the vehicle could be considered "no threat" if it was targeted.
Assistant Deputy Coroner Walker is attempting to make the claim that Marine tanks were able to identify this as a civilian vehicle, and that despite that, they decided to willfully fire upon it. He does not support his charge.
It is tragic that in this instance that the vehicle in this instance was perhaps a civilian vehicle attempting to provide care for a wounded journalist, but there is no evidence presented by Coroner Walker to the public that supports his charge that the vehicle carrying Lloyd was specifically targeted. Further, Walker does not establish the fact much less that it was knowingly targeted as a noncombatant, non-threat vehicle. For that matter, the inquiry seems to gloss over previous reports that the "civilian" van was also carrying Iraqi soldiers.
Much more detail about the incident is provided in a TimesOnline article which gives a general picture of the event, but it hardly provides enough detail to warrant Walker's statement that Terry Lloyd was "unlawfully killed." There is no released evidence supporting that the van was targeted, and sufficient reason to suspect that the fire that killed Lloyd were fired at Iraqi soldiers engaged with U.S. forces at the time.
I feel sorrow for the Lloyd family, but this inquest, at least what has been released thus far, does not support the coroner's conclusion. Terry Lloyd's death was tragic, but nothing released thus far supports a charge of murder.
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Posted by: Anonymous for now at October 13, 2006 01:14 PM (RMHg5)
Posted by: monkyboy at October 13, 2006 01:21 PM (unUeA)
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It's not a conviction or anything, the coroner's opinion is just that. It's up to the prosecutors to examine his conclusions before deciding whether or not to bring it to trial.
I agree that there is not enough here yet to support a charge of murder, but I am troubled that apparently the DoD is holding some evidence back. Film of the incident has been edited, including the crucial moment when he received the fatal bullet. And witnesses supplied statements but were not subject to questioning or cross examination.
If the authorities think there is enough to proceed, maybe there is enough as yet unreleased evidence to support the charge that will come out in a full trial.
Posted by: aplomb at October 13, 2006 01:39 PM (Iva5Y)
4
A reporter who has an ego so large he would put himself on a battle field and then in a cross fire for a story is sure to die of stupidity. Feel sorry for his family, but be amazed that an educated person could be so stupid. War is hell and people die.
Posted by: Scrapiron at October 13, 2006 08:55 PM (fEnUg)
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October 12, 2006
Questionable Methods, Questionable Results
It seems that the British
Lancet has a certain problematic pattern of behavior:
From ABC News last year:
Indian experts say a new study which found that some 10 million female foetuses may have been aborted in the country in the past 20 years was sensationalist and inaccurate.
The study, published online by British medical journal The Lancet, says the practice of selective abortion is due to a traditional preference for boys in India.
"It is a sensational piece of work. We are very, very concerned about this study," activist Sabu George said, who has been campaigning against the practice of foeticide for more than two decades.
"An unreasonable estimate will undermine the issue," he said.
Exaggerated? An unreasonable estimate in the Lancet? Shocking.
Worried about the hype generated about "Frankenfood?" If you want to guess where it came from, thank this New York Times article in 1999:
a prestigious medical journal is publishing a study suggesting that genetically modified food may be harmful, even though the research has been widely criticized by scientists and was found wanting by some of the journal's own referees.
The Lancet, a journal based in England, said had it decided to publish the study in part to spur debate and to avoid being accused of suppressing information on a controversial subject.
The study is also likely to be seized upon by opponents of such food in the United States, where consumers have until recently expressed little concern about the genetically altered corn and soybeans that have swept quietly into their diets.
Charles Margulis of the Washington office of Greenpeace was quoted as saying, "I think it gives it a certain scientific credibility. It's going to increase concern here in the United States." But the decision to publish the study is itself generating debate: some scientists say the Lancet has lowered its standards and subverted the peer review process.
Subverting peer review and lowering its standards of accuracy? Surely, this is not the Lancet we're talking about.
Speaking of questionable accuracy and low standards, do you remember the 1998 study linking the common childhood MMR (measels,/mumps/rubella)vaccine to autism? It didn't do too well.
Ten of the original 13 authors of a controversial 1998 medical report which implied a link between autism and the combined MMR vaccine for measles, mumps, and rubella, have retracted the paper's interpretations.
The retraction will be printed in the 6 March issue of The Lancet, which published the original paper. One author could not be reached and two others, Peter Harvey and lead author Andrew Wakefield, refused to join the retraction.
"We wish to make it clear that in this paper no causal link was established between MMR vaccine and autism as the data were insufficient," write the 10 authors in their retraction. "However, the possibility of such a link was raised and consequent events have had major implications for public health."
The original paper, which was based on parental and medical reports of just a dozen children, suggested a "possible relation" between autism, bowel disease, and MMR. The paper added it "did not prove an association".
The Lancet rushed through a under-sampled study spearheaded by a possibly dishonest scientist. Interesting.
It seems that sometimes a desire to influence or shock public sensibilities seems to get the better of the Lancet from time to time, as it did when it claimed just prior to the 2004 elections that 8,000-194,000 (but most often trumpeted as 100,000) Iraqi civilians had been killed.
Funny, how the UN Development Program Iraq Living Conditions Survey using similar cluster survey methodology but on a far greater scale, recorded only 24,000 deaths published five months later with a 95% confidence interval of 18,000 to 29,000.
If you didn't know any better, you might just think their studies were driven by leadership more interested in exerting political influence than presenting valid science.
It's a good thing that couldnÂ’t be the case.
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1
Any similarities between those who attack this study and Ahmadinejad's Holocaust denying are purely coincidental, I'm sure...
Posted by: monkyboy at October 12, 2006 07:49 PM (unUeA)
2
Ah, but here's the difference: we know millions actually died in the Holocaust. We know many of their names, who they were, what they did, and where they came from. We have hard data based upon census records, property deeds, marriage, birth and death records, etc.
All we've got from the Lancet are extrapolated paper corpses.
Posted by: Confederate Yankee at October 12, 2006 08:05 PM (BTdrY)
3
It seems that sometimes a desire to influence or shock public sensibilities seems to get the better of the Lancet from time to time, as it did when it claimed just prior to the 2004 elections that 8,000-194,000 (but most often trumpeted as 100,000) Iraqi civilians had been killed.
So some journal articles in the Lancet (as in every journal) have been questioned (as is often the case in science) - and yet you seem to have failed to provide any credible criticism of either the 2004 or the 2006 articles. This is akin to creationists stating that since Piltdown Man was a fraud, evolution is bunk.
Do you have any substantive criticisms of eithe r the 2004 or 2006 study?
Funny, how the UN Development Program Iraq Living Conditions Survey using similar cluster survey methodology but on a far greater scale, recorded only 24,000 deaths published five months later with a 95% confidence interval of 18,000 to 29,000.
Funny that that's what you
claim it states, but the link you give doesn't give a working copy of the survey.
Fortunately, there's a copy
here.
And, lo, if we take a look on p. 54, we can see that (a) the ILCS talks about a restricted definition of "war-related deaths", whereas the Lancet study talks about "excess deaths", and that the ILCS study states that it has underestimated deaths by not including households where all members were lost.
You also seem to have conveniently forgotten to mention that the ILCS study attempts to provide another estimate of mortality by making the interesting point that 13% of Iraqis report dead fathers as compared to Jordan's figure of 8%. Let's see - 5%, divided by 2 as they're talking about males... Why, that seems remarkably in line with the Lancet's estimate of 2.5% of the population dead due to the invasion and war, doesn't it?
Why is it, do you suppose, that you didn't provide a working link to the report when you failed to quote from it properly?
Posted by: Phoenician in a time of Romans at October 12, 2006 09:40 PM (iYlrE)
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I think that Al-Jazeera isn't showing video of tens of thousands of fresh graves is prima facie evidence they simply don't exist.
Posted by: Purple Avenger at October 12, 2006 10:26 PM (uLMbH)
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I guess we need to define "credible criticism."
I would define a credible estimate as one that starts from a valid baseline, and can be either repeated, or correlated by another similar method or process. The 2004 Lancet study (actually, a questionnaire sent to less than a thousand homes in just 33 areas) has never been correlated. The baseline data has been questioned. The methodology was questioned both based on scale (the sample size was criticized as being too small), and was accused of being unevenly distributed. It was never repeated, and no other casuality estimates of any othr methodology or source came to figures that were even close. In short, there is no reason to assume it is valid.
If anything, the UN Study that came out five months later--and
other sources agree with my interpretation of the UN data, not yours--was a far more scientifically valid study. It involved a far larger sample size (more than 21,000 households in 2,200 areas) while utilizing similar claimed techniques and methods.
Logically, a larger sample size over a much more diverse are will give you a much more refined spread. The Lancet 2004 study was technically correct: it estimated deaths between 8,000-194,000. The U.N report, using similar techniques much better and across a wider population sample, effctively narrowed down that wide range of 8,000-194,000 to just 18,000-29,000.
I wouldn't call it technically a debunking, just prove that the 2004 Lancet study--and the 2006 study apparently built from the same shoddy framework--are essentially meaningless... except a political agi-prop, and that is what they were created for in the first place, weren't they?
Posted by: Confederate Yankee at October 12, 2006 10:49 PM (BTdrY)
6
CY -
Richard Nadler at NRO has a good piece that corresponds with your position.
The Hopkins researchers chose their “base-line” for pre-invasion Iraq carefully: January 2002 through March 2003. They chose a period of time in which Baathist violence against the Kurds was restrained by a U.S.-imposed no-fly zone in the north; a period of time after the extermination of hundreds of thousands of Shia and Marsh Arabs in the south.
Burnham and associates carved out a brief period of enforced peace within a 25-year regime singularly dedicated to war and internal slaughter. They called it a “baseline,” and they compared that baseline against a period of war.
Basically, the bogus baseline gave them a much larger multiplier to use on postwar "data" to shape their data into the antiwar message they are trying to espouse.
I'm with you and Purple Avenger - if the number of civilian deaths were that high, with the press we have today and the Arab press, there is no way that information wouldn't have been on the news 25/8.
The under
lying part of this is that we are supposed to believe that coalition (i.e. American) soldiers are more wanton killers of Iraqi civilians than Saddam Hussein ever was.
The lefties arguing for the accuracy of this report are probably still saying, "We're against the war, but we support the troops (lying, muderous, rapist, massacring puppets of Rumsfeld and Bush that they are)....
Scientists aren't God. They are human. When they skew data to support a specific political goal, they cease to be scientists and are not worthy of trust.
What's the phrase? Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics.
Posted by: SouthernRoots at October 12, 2006 11:09 PM (jHBWL)
7
I would define a credible estimate as one that starts from a valid baseline, and can be either repeated, or correlated by another similar method or process.
What, in your vastly informed view, would have been an appropriate baseline for this study? Perhaps the death rates during the 1988 Anfal campaign? Or during the Shi'a massacres of 1991? Would those baselines have satisfied you?
More importantly, I'd like to know -- again, in your vastly informed view -- on what basis you would like to claim that this study cannot be repeated or (and I don't know what you mean by this) "correlated by another similar process or method."
Your sloppy use of the passive voice here makes it sound as if others have tried (and failed) to reproduce the results of this study. If that has indeed happened, you should share your findings with the world. Meantime, though, you embarrass yourself by suggesting that cluster sampling is a "shoddy" framework for arriving at estimate like this one. It's not. Cluster sampling -- as my colleagues who actually
do cluster sampling tell me -- is a highly reliable method and is used throughout the field of public health. There are reasonable and informed critiques that can be made about the methodology of any study, including this one.
Your approach -- which is shared by your fantastically well-informed commenters -- is to (a) deliberately misread the actual claims of the study; (b) duplicitously insist that the study is wrong because it contradicts the findings of a
non-scientific tally by Iraq Body Count, which counts media reports of deaths directly attributable to the war; (c) yodel incoherently about the lack of press coverage, the lack of "fresh graves," or whatever else proves (by its absence) your suspicions; and now (d) insist that because
The Lancet has been criticized before by someone, somewhere, the results of this study are automatically called into question.
It's no wonder that you can't fathom the statistical methods in this study. You can't even make a coherent, logical argument about the most basic facts of the case.
Posted by: d at October 13, 2006 01:23 AM (LHK5X)
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Looking over the data on the Holocaust, it seems the primary source of information comes from the Nazis themselves, not "census records, property deeds, marriage, birth and death records, etc."
Such detailed records aren't currently being kept in Iraq, so sampling would seem to be the best way to get an accurate number.
For those who doubt the Lancet study, I think you should pause and ask yourself why...
Posted by: monkyboy at October 13, 2006 04:03 AM (unUeA)
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What, in your vastly informed view, would have been an appropriate baseline for this study? Perhaps the death rates during the 1988 Anfal campaign? Or during the Shi'a massacres of 1991? Would those baselines have satisfied you?Let me have a go at this. It depends on the question you want answered. The question I personally would like answered is, how does the current death rate in Iraq compare to what would have happened if the invasion hadn't taken place? That's obviously pretty speculative. By adopting the baseline that they did, the study authors assumed that things would have stayed more or less as they were shortly before the invasion. They didn't include periods of genocide against Kurds or Shi'ites because international action had mostly brought an end to them, and there was no reason to believe they would flare up again. This seems like a sensible approach.
However, I personally think that without international intervention, Saddam Hussein's government would most likely have collapsed under its own steam and there would have been a civil war. This could well have produced a situation even worse than we're seeing now. That is the only good argument I've come up with for the invasion of Iraq, but it's not one that you hear used much, probably because of the debacle of Somalia. And because it's so speculative, it's a poor baseline to use in a scientific survey.
The reason I don't like the IBC is not just that it's an underestimate, but that it can also be accused of being an
overestimate. Violent death happens in every country. Who knows how many people would have died anyway? You have to subtract the "normal" level of violent death from the IBC numbers to assess how bad the war has been for the local population. But there was no free press under Saddam Hussein, so there's no way to figure out what that baseline level should be.
The value of the Lancet article is that it answers precisely this question. It measures something completely different than the IBC does: excess deaths. It includes deaths from disease, accidents, and crime, not just organised attacks by military units, and it's free from the natural distortion produced by the press. It's therefore a far more useful piece of information for assessing the impact of the war (although the IBC is still valuable data).
It would be wonderful if a second group could replicate the survey and let us know what they find. This is, however, unlikely. Compiling this information is dangerous work; they didn't just mail out surveys, they had to physically turn up to these places. Even doing it once might be considered foolhardy.
Finally, here's an exercise for you, Bob, to demonstrate what the IBC numbers actually represent. You live in North Carolina, do I have that right?
Raleigh has a population of 276,093.
The death rate in the United States is 8.25 / 1,000 population / year. Therefore, in Raleigh, there should be something like 8.25 / 1000 * 276,093 / 365.25 ~= 6 deaths each day. So your exercise is the following: find the press reports from Thursday for each of those six deaths. Paid obituaries don't count, since they don't count in the IBC. Or, since 6 is a pretty low sample, make it 18 deaths from Tuesday to Thursday if you want. In either case, I bet you can't.
What does that prove?
Not every death is reported in the press. Not even a large fraction of deaths are reported in the press. Death is a normal part of life, especially in Iraq, and is therefore usually not important enough to make the news. Any estimate of the number of people dying in a country which uses only press reports as its source will be a massive underestimate.
Posted by: Mat at October 13, 2006 04:40 AM (kVBtr)
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d and Mat - Show me the bodies. We're talking about dead people - lots of dead people. Unlike perceptions and feelings, dead people are something that can be "seen and touched".
Where are the pictures of massive increases in burials? Where are the Arab news stories with the photographic proof?
Did you personally and independantly recreate the findings of the study? Where's your report?
In order for us to beleive this study, one would have to believe that there has been a MASSIVE coverup (so to speak) by the new Iraqi government, the US, UK, Japan, Russia, China, Spain, France, Germany, all the other countries in the coalition, the UN, the Red Cross, US news organizations, International news organizations and news agencies that definately not friendly to the Bush administration.
Who's in charge of this coverup and how have they managed to keep the lid on it for three and a half years?
Prove to me the validity of the study by using it to verify auto deaths in America. Compare the methodology results with the official numbers reported by the government. Use a baseline of pre SUV/post SUV or some delineator of improved safety (airbags).
I have seen way too much of the politicization of science, so I am a skeptic when a "scientific" study produces results extremely higher than anyone else is reporting.
The study is a nice theoretical approach - where are the bodies and mass graves?
Posted by: SouthernRoots at October 13, 2006 09:35 AM (jHBWL)
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Show me the bodies. We're talking about dead people - lots of dead people. Unlike perceptions and feelings, dead people are something that can be "seen and touched".
Where are the pictures of massive increases in burials? Where are the Arab news stories with the photographic proof?You're applying standards that are absurd. No-one has the time or inclination to go around photographing every single dead body in Iraq. Why would you expect that they would?
Some incidents, the most spectacular ones, are photographed and reported. But after reporting the thousandth random anonymous murder, no journalist needs a giant conspiracy to tell them not to bother reporting the next one. It's a waste of time.
What about
the numbers for Hiroshima and Nagasaki you flung around? Do you think that someone went around photographing every single body after those incidents? Do you think that there was a morgue slapping death certificates on every single one of the 214,000 (a suspiciously round number, if you ask me)? It seems that statistical methods are fine when they back up the point you're making, but unacceptable when they don't.
Posted by: Mat at October 13, 2006 10:49 AM (2yVWt)
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I do apologise, I was sorta expecting a response from Bob. I didn't realise that that was SouthernRoots I was replying to. Please disregard the whole response if you like.
Posted by: Mat at October 13, 2006 10:59 AM (2yVWt)
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In order for us to beleive this study, one would have to believe that there has been a MASSIVE coverup (so to speak) by the new Iraqi government, the US, UK, Japan, Russia, China, Spain, France, Germany, all the other countries in the coalition, the UN, the Red Cross, US news organizations, International news organizations and news agencies that definately not friendly to the Bush administration.
No, all you have to believe in order to take this study seriously is that the mortality rate has nearly quadrupled since March 2003. There are no mass graves because the rise in mortality has been distributed across the country, and because the cases of death cannot be assigned to single factors -- like, say, the Anfal genocide or the November 2004 Fallujah massacre.
As anyone with even a rudimentary understanding of statistics could tell you, the phenomena measured by statistical data is often "invisible" within the context of everyday experience -- that's one of the reasons that statistical studies are useful. Science often produces results that run contrary to the quite un-scientific work of reporting. On the merits of the study itself, there is no compelling reason to dispute the methods or the conclusions.
Posted by: d at October 13, 2006 01:43 PM (LHK5X)
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In Your Hands
Scott Elliott wrote this very impassioned
call to action for conservative voters yesterday:
Here we are enduring the ongoing saga of Foleygate, immersed in a steady stream of scandalous revelations about who and when, what and where. After news broke of former GOP Rep. Mark Foley's disgraceful acts, it was only a matter of time before the headlines would begin tolling the death knell for the GOPÂ’s chances in November. "GOP in meltdown" was the headline recently at MSN online. "Bush approval sinks to new low" was another. Phrases like "tipping point" and "nail in the coffin" are being banged out of keyboard after keyboard across the country faster than my 8-year-old can tell you his life story.
And why shouldn't they be? After suffering through a withering summer in which their fortunes seemed to steadily decline into resignation, many Republicans feel the Foley scandal is indeed the coup de resistance for Democrats ravenous to regain the gavel of power on Capitol Hill. The undersea earth has shifted; the tsunami is on its way. And there's nothing we can do to stop the coming tidal wave from crashing down on November 7. There is no force to stand against the swelling political seas. Hey, we had a nice run; it's time to close up shop and accept the inevitable, right?
I can hear Jimmy V. turning in his grave and the editorial board at The New York Times shrieking with delight. Are we really giving up? With so much to lose, so much on the table, with America's very future hanging in the balance, surely we can't be calling it quits. If we learned anything from the last three elections, it is that participation, not polls, pundits or pooh-poohing, makes or breaks an election.
In 2000, ineffective GOP mobilization efforts and disaffected GOP voters afforded Al Gore 500,000 more votes than George W. Bush. In 2002 and 2004, a transformation of miraculous proportions took place in the Republican get-out-the-vote machine. It culminated in the GOP control of both congressional chambers and the re-election of a Republican president who received over 3 million more votes than his opponent and nearly 8 million more than any previous presidential candidate in history.
Scott, by the way, knows a thing or two about elections. His web site, called Election Projection, was only off of getting the exact electoral vote count correct by three in the 2004 Presidential race.
Despite all the gloom and doom from the media, his present models are calling the Senate a dead heat and predicting that the Republicans will hold onto the House by five seats, quite a far cry from the slaughter many on the left are merrily predicting.
In fact, the only way it seems that the Republicans could lose the House is if we decide not to vote. So vote already, and if you haven't registered, you need to do so quickly. Here in North Carolina, tomorrow is the last day to register to vote.
A web site geared at getting out voters called PayAttention.org has all the details about registering and voting in your area. Please register, and use your right to vote.
If you don't, some patchouli-stinking liberal front group might just do it for you.
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Here in Connect-I-cut, I have the same two candidates that I had to choose from two years ago; Shays and Farrell, and neither has changed, nor have I. But vote we must, for staying away from the polls on election day sends a message that we as citizens don't care enough to make a statement at all!
Posted by: Tom TB at October 12, 2006 02:20 PM (GIL7z)
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Thank You
I think I responded to everyone who contributed funds to my "
blegburst" personally, but I’d like to do so again publicly. I’m both deeply touched and humbled that so many people—almost none of which I’ve every met in person—were kind enough to donate money to help me purchase a replacement for my aging Dell desktop.
I swung by the TigerDirect outlet store here in Raleigh during lunch and was able to find a solid, basic laptop that I think will take care of my needs quite nicely. I'll likely pick it up next week when the transfer of funds from PayPal to my bank is complete.
I couldn't have done it without the support of both blog readers and of course, my fellow bloggers, who linked to my bleg.
Bloggers and blog readers are truly wonderful folks.
From the bottom of my cold conservative heart, thank you.
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WHAT! A CONSERVATIVE WITH A HEART? GET OUTTA HERE!
LOL,
Marshall Neal,
Baklersfield, CA
Posted by: Marsh at October 12, 2006 01:26 PM (aE9Lg)
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Dirty, Dirty Harry
If current Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid suddenly find himself on the wrong end of a full investigation by the Senate Ethics Committee for a
undisclosed land deal that made him quite rich, he'll have no one to blame but himself, and perhaps, the
company he keeps:
Reid's avoidance of disclosure hid two aspects of his business relationships. The first was his association with Jay Brown, who has a history of being involved in scandal. The NY Times describes him as "a prominent Las Vegas lawyer," but they never get around to mentioning his involvement in a federal bribery case in Las Vegas. Nor do they mention Brown's work as a lobbyist, as the AP did, nor do they follow up on the AP's report of connections between Brown and organized crime.
The other part Reid wanted to keep secret was the financial ties between himself and Harvey Whittemore. The AP story reported that Reid bought the parcel from "a developer who was benefiting from a government land swap that Reid supported," a perfect description of Whittemore in 1998 when Reid purchased the land. For the next seven years, Reid would work to ease Whittemore's difficulties in developing the Coyote Springs project by forcing the government to swap its right-of-way for less valuable land owned by Whittemore; he tried to get the government to literally give away more of its land to Whittemore, although he would not succeed; and in the end, he pressed federal regulators to lift a endangered-species restriction on Whittemore's Coyote Springs real estate. All of this helped give Whittemore an opportunity to make tens of millions on residential and commercial development in the former test range site.
Personally, I'm not big on covering corruption scandals, but I've been hearing for quite some time that "Dirty Harry" has long held ties with the shadiest of characters, so this wouldn't unduly surprise me. What happens next?
Time will tell.
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Confirming or Debunking the Lancet Study with One Simple Question
The controversial and disputed Johns Hopkins study
published (free reg required) in the
Lancet today claims an additional 654,965 deaths as the result of the Iraq War since 2003, 610,000 of those deaths as a result of violence. It also claims they were able to verify that 92% of those 629 claimed killed in their survey had valid death certificates.
Using the research of the John Hopkins study, the Iraqi Ministry of Health should be able to therefore produce roughly 602,568 total death certificates (654,965 x 92%), and 561,200 (610,000 x 92%) of these death certificates should by attributed to violent deaths, if they do in fact collect such information nationally.
If they have far, far less death certificates on file, then the Lancet study will have invalidated itself using it's own methodology, would it not?
I'll also be very interested to find out whether or not Gilbert Burnham of John Hopkins or the editors of the Lancet made any attempt to check their figures against any available compilations of the number of death certificates issued in Iraq as a check on their research. Iraqi morgues regularly and independently released their own figures until September, when the Iraqi government took over that responsibility, which was after the data in the study was compiled by June of 2006.
Other Estimates
Not surprisingly the study figures--far beyond every other survey done by orders of magnitude--are widely discounted by most, and run contrary to every previous attempt to estimate casualties.
Iraq Body Count, a well-respected site that tracks the number of casualties in Iraq based upon media reports, lists the maximum number of casualties to date at 48,693.
The Brookings Institute reports (PDF) their estimate, based upon IBC and United Nations Cumulative data until August 31, 2006, to be a slightly higher figure of 62,000 civilian deaths due to violence. Michael E. O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution said of the Lancet numbers:
"I do not believe the new numbers. I think they're way off," he said.
A June 25, 2006 Los Angeles Times report comes up with another set of figures:
The Times attempted to reach a comprehensive figure by obtaining statistics from the Baghdad morgue and the Health Ministry and checking those numbers against a sampling of local health departments for possible undercounts.
The Health Ministry gathers numbers from hospitals in the capital and the outlying provinces. If a victim of violence dies at a hospital or arrives dead, medical officials issue a death certificate. Relatives claim the body directly from the hospital and arrange for a speedy burial in keeping with Muslim beliefs.
If the morgue receives a body — usually those deemed suspicious deaths — officials there issue the death certificate.
Health Ministry officials said that because death certificates are issued and counted separately, the two data sets are not overlapping.
The Baghdad morgue received 30,204 bodies from 2003 through mid-2006, while the Health Ministry said it had documented 18,933 deaths from "military clashes" and "terrorist attacks" from April 5, 2004, to June 1, 2006. Together, the toll reaches 49,137.
Obviously, the Johns Hopkins study figures published in today’s Lancet are far higher than any previous estimates. It will be quite interesting to see if these figures—already dismissed by every world leader and military leader commenting on it so far—can indeed be defended.
As Bryan notes at Hot Air:
The Lancet study would have us believe that 2.5% of Iraq has been killed by the war in the past three years. It would have us believe that more Iraqis have died as a result of a mid-sized insurgency than Americans died in World War II. Or the Civil War. Or Germans, who died in World War II, fighting against the combined might of the USSR, the British Empire and the United States, at a time when Germany was reduced to conscripting young boys and old men to resist those armies as they approached Berlin.
This study, in other words, is nonsense on stilts.
Of course it is, but it will be most entertaining if we can debunk them using their own informaiton against them.
Update: A word on public health methodology from a medical professional at Jane Galt:
And sorry, but the defense that it's as soundly designed as can be expected for these kinds of public health surveys is a weak one. Retrospective, interview-based studies like this are poor designs. It may be the standard way of gathering data in the public health field, but that doesn't make it the best methodology, and it certainly doesn't make its statistics sound. For too long the field of public health has relied on these types of shotty shoddy numbers to influence public policy, whether it's the number of people who die from second hand smoke or the number who die from eating the wrong kinds of cooking oils.
The same blog post notes that Lancet-published studies of the past have been throughly debunked for shoddy research.
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If they have far, far less death certificates on file, then the Lancet study will have invalidated itself using it's own methodology, would it not?No. Not at all. Iraq is a chaotic country with an ineffective government. There are many little fiefdoms and regions that are effectively independent, with very little coordination with the central government. It would be absolutely astounding if, with Iraq in the state it is now, there was any central government authority with a massive database of every single death certificate that had been issued by every local authority in the country. Only statistical methods, imprecise as they are, can hope to give even a vaguely accurate picture.
Iraq Body Count, a well-respected site that tracks the number of casualties in Iraq based upon media reports, lists the maximum number of casualties to date at 48,693.Can you please, just to ease the mental strain on the rest of us, acknowledge that you understand that the IBC is based on media reports, and not every single death in the country is reported by the media? You get that right? As the IBC themselves say:
Our maximum therefore refers to reported deaths - which can only be a sample of true deaths unless one assumes that every civilian death has been reported. It is likely that many if not most civilian casualties will go unreported by the media. That is the sad nature of war.
Posted by: Mat at October 12, 2006 10:03 AM (kVBtr)
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Can you please, just to ease the mental strain on the rest of us, acknowledge that you understand that the IBC is based on media reports...
You mean, like in the
exact section you quoted?
dee-dee-dee...
And I'm waiting on your explaination of why the Brookings and L.A.Times estiamtes are so off, and yet close to each other, and why every government leader in the free world, including the Iraqis themselves, think this report is utter bunk.
Do you really, honestly think that the earlier estimates were off by more casualties than were compiled in the the U.S Civil War, or those sustained by the German Military in World War II, and the entire world just fault
missed it?
Posted by: Confederate Yankee at October 12, 2006 10:19 AM (g5Nba)
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You mean, like in the exact section you quoted?What came after the ellipsis, dude? It was important, you know. The IBC is an
under-estimate.
The Brookings numbers are based on the IBC.
As to what's wrong with the LA Times numbers, it's right there in the link you provided:Many more Iraqis are believed to have been killed but not counted because of serious lapses in recording deaths in the chaotic first year after the invasion, when there was no functioning Iraqi government, and continued spotty reporting nationwide since.
...and why every government leader in the free world, including the Iraqis themselves, think this report is utter bunk.Every leader in the free world? You have a quote from the Prime Minister of Belgium?
The reason why the leaders of Iraq and the USA want to deny these numbers is that they're trying to keep control of a country on the verge of civil war, and bad news just makes this worse. And there's nothing even wrong with that. But they're hardly disinterested commentators.
Do you really, honestly think that the earlier estimates were off by more casualties than were compiled in the the U.S Civil War, or those sustained by the German Military in World War II, and the entire world just fault missed it?I believe that the earlier estimates were dramatic underestimates, mainly because the very people who compiled them claim... that they're dramatic underestimates. To be honest, I'm not entirely convinced that it's 655,000 myself, but this survey has by far the best methodology I've seen so far, so until a better survey comes along, that's what I'm going with.
And I don't know why you keep going on about this "and we just missed it" line. Which news are you watching? Every day we get news about an attack or a discovery of butchered victims. No-one's missing anything, except reliable overall statistics, and that's precisely what the John Hopkins study is supposed to correct.
Posted by: Mat at October 12, 2006 10:50 AM (KvK7c)
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So Iraq has almost the
same rate of population loss as Japan had during WWII? 550 Iraqi dead
per day? Give me a break. With the last study these folks did right before the 2004 election, this is beyond questionable methodology. It borders on election tampering.
G. Hamid
Posted by: G. Hamid at October 12, 2006 11:22 AM (Ej1ST)
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Could someone with more military knowledge than myself provide me with air strike figures from the period of June of 2005 to June of 2006 or tell me where I might be able to get such figures?
What I want to know specifically is how many actual targets were struck during this period?
Posted by: mike at October 12, 2006 01:41 PM (c5sWc)
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I see Mat has already corrected your misuse of Iraq Body Count. However, keep in mind that there's something else Mat missed.
IBC counts *only* violent, civilian deaths recorded by two English speaking sources.
It doesn't count military actions, terrorist actions, etc., and it only counts those that are dual reported.
If you said "if you could prove to me there were more than 40,000 innocent victims of this war, I'd agree it was wrong" (I can't imagine your actually saying that...), then I could send you to IBC, and you could see that there have certainly been many more than that.
The study tried to chase down all additional deaths, from all causes, regardless of whether or not they were reported.
So, it tried to grab deaths of civilians, military, police, insurgent, terrorist, or unknown, for any cause, and then subtracted the number of deaths we would have expected, had things stayed the way they did in the 14 months pre-invasion.
As for the big numbers of deaths, 833 deaths per day is one 30,000th of the Iraqi population per day. If there were 833 deaths per year, ten people handled each body, and they all took turns, in one year, a mere 1/8th of Iraq would have had to take a turn being one of the ten people on body duty for a single body. Yes, the large number of deaths could be swallowed up, especially when it quickly stopped being "news". Do you see it in the newspaper when someone mugs a person in the bad part of town?
The study, taken over completely different populations, provided greater support for the 2004 report, coming up with similar number, with greater precision. Instead of 8-192k, centered on 98k, we have about 60-160k, centered on 112k. If you study the same phenomenon twice, and get similar results, you're virtually certain to be on the right track. Sure, your methodology could be screwed up, but screwed up so as to skew the results to such a similar estimate?
Face it; you've got strong evidence that the invasion has killed hundreds of thousands of people. Your choice is to try to learn the truth, or to insist you don't like the truth and walk away.
But until you find a *real* problem with the evidence, something more than "Bush thinks it's wrong, and the Iraqi government thinks it's wrong and (some UK officials - I don't know if Blair commented or not) say its wrong!", you're refusing to accept the strongest evidence we have.
Of course Bush would refuse to accept the evidence; he doesn't want to be known as the man whose invasion caused 650,000 deaths. Ditto for the UK, who were in it from the start, in a big way. Iraq doesn't want to admit they can't keep their citizenry safe.
But what are the statisticians who have dug into the guts of the report saying?
One of them - me, though I'm not an expert on experimental design, I can check the numbers and assumptions, and they *do* add up - says that it's solid. Rock solid. It would just about require deliberate fraud to make this report inaccurate. And if you're going to claim deliberate fraud, you ought to have evidence, or, again, you'd be refusing to accept the strongest evidence we have.
Posted by: Longhairedweirdo at October 12, 2006 04:19 PM (cFBux)
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Face it; you've got strong evidence that the invasion has killed hundreds of thousands of people.
No, I do not. I have a bit of political agi-prop printed in a public health journal with a history of (a)sensationalism, and (b) publishing throughly debunked research (which I will further detail in my next post).
Again, it goes back to GIGO= Garbage in, Garbage Out.
I've read the report, and think I understand the methodolgy enough to know that it is a slightly larger sample size repeat of the same methodology used and dismissed in it's previous report of two years ago, that to date, not another single study or estimate has supported. Not
one.
ThE United Nations did not support the figures in the 2004 report, and is surprised at the figures shown now. The L.A .Time estimate released in June reported 50,000 and acknowledged it was probably underreported... but not by the outrageous factor of more than ten that this John Hokpins study suggests.
You lefties keep trying to win this argument saying that the methodology is sound, without acknowledging that the researcheven admits it is far from accurate. It is a guestimate, a number arrived at by visiting separate areas that may or may not be representative, by doctors that may or may not have political motivations (remember the Fallujah doctors that swore white phosphorous was used again and again, when the bodies they showed were completely inconsistent with WP wounds?), interviewing people who also may have motivations of their own. This is a house of cards built upon a scientific-sounding framework that falls apart under an absurd casualty claim more than a half million above any prior estimate.
According to you, there are 600,000 relatively fresh civilian graves in Iraq.
Funny how no one can find them.
Posted by: Confederate Yankee at October 12, 2006 05:01 PM (BTdrY)
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The Baghdad morgue received 30,204 bodies from 2003 through mid-2006, while the Health Ministry said it had documented 18,933 deaths from "military clashes" and "terrorist attacks" from April 5, 2004, to June 1, 2006. Together, the toll reaches 49,137.
The L.A. Times numbers only take into account the deaths that occured in Baghdad, what about the rest of the country, if 50,000 deaths occured in the capital, a number of 100,000 t0 150,000 is not that far fetched for the rest of the country (Baghdad has 1/6 of the whole Iraqi population, so maybe a number of 300,000 is not that far fetched)
Posted by: Mike Huntley at October 15, 2006 01:40 PM (Db6U5)
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October 11, 2006
Help You, Help Me: The First Blegburst (Bumped)
Update: A huge "thank you" is in order to all my fellow bloggers who linked this post (you know who you are), and to the readers who were kind enough to contribute so generously so far. Thanks to your donations, I am very close to being able to get a replacement PC for this old clunker. I couldn't do this without you, and I'm touched by all your support.
I guess I wasn't paying very close attention, but at some point yesterday I cracked a million visits on ye olde Sitemeter, a good chunk of which came from this post that took me longer to upload than create.
I think this a milestone of some sort, and so I'll do what bloggers often take this once-in-lifetime opportunity to do: bleg. But not just any bleg.
What's a bleg?
According to Samizdata:
Bleg verb. To use one's blog to beg for assistance (usually for information, occasionally for money). One who does so is a 'blegger'. Usually intended as humorous.
Yes, usually intended as humorous, and I think I would be quite tickled, neigh, giddy at the thought of those of you who have visited this humble blog over the past year and eleven months contributing just one small dime for each visit you've made.
Granted, Sally Struthers claims that for one dime a day that you can "give the gift of hope, the gift of life," to some small child in Africa, but does that starving urchin plop down in front of a keyboard several times each day to keep you entertained with wit and insight?
I think not.
Besides, as a social conservative, I'm pretty sure that's pretty much welfare, and how are we going to force them to get off their sickbeds and learn to provide for themselves if we make them reliant on charity? Help them learn self-sufficiency by giving me your money instead.
For unlike rudimentary every day supplies like "food" and "water" that the impoverished can get almost anywhere not devoured by famine and pestilence, I have more technical needs that must be satisfied so that I can to continue to bring you this dreck the high-quality content and occasional tomfoolery you've come to expect here at Confederate Yankee.
Specifically, I need a new computer.
The Dell Dimension L733R that I've held together since 2001 with spit and bailing wire is coming apart (and getting just a bit groady). And yes, I blegged for cash for a replacement almost a year ago, but you know, my drug problem came first, and the blegged cash went to paying that off. Damn doctors.
And so I implore you to use what you've gained from this record-breaking Republican Economy to help me ensure your blog-reading enjoyment. Help fund the equipment I need to continue bringing you both insightful conservative commentary, bias against media bias, and crude, sophomoric PhotoShops.
But wait, there's more!
And I will give something back to the blogging community in kind for your support, a new, powerful and practical concept: blegburst.
How do I know it's new? It's not here.
And itÂ’s imminently useful, especially to those of you in the blogging community.
But Bob, How does it work?
I'm so glad you asked.
Put simply, a blegburst is when you beg for money or some other sort of assistance online, and other bloggers link your plea. And the coolest thing is this: as blegbursts are brand page-spanking new, you can participate in the very first one.
Isn't that exciting?
Wow! What do I need to do to participate?
It's actually quite simple. Simply link this post in one of your own blog posts. It really is that simple.
Plus, no smelly, starving kids!
It's a win-win situation for all, and I and my new computer thank you for your support.
Posted by: Confederate Yankee at
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Congratulations, CY!!! Here's to many more!
Posted by: William Teach at October 10, 2006 07:25 PM (doAuV)
2
Congratulations!
This must have been a helluva moment for you. I still remember clearly when I went over 100k (adjusted) on my own humble blog.
And I just went over 100k (unadjusted) and even that felt good.
And you deserve the traffic and assistance, this has been a fantastic site to follow.
Posted by: David Earney at October 11, 2006 01:12 AM (ficDc)
3
How big a computer are you looking for? Google tells me a Dimension L733R is a PIII 733.
I have more than a few "extra" computers hanging around. I just got a P4 yesterday that I probably have nothing to do with.
If you want, I can probably find something and you can spend any cash you make to support your drug problem.
Paul from wizbang... you can figure out the email address.
BTW If you're itching for a new flatscreen, Office Depot has very highy reviewed 19" LCD's for ~100 bucks. I'll give you a link if you want.
Posted by: Paul at October 11, 2006 07:31 AM (Ms5q6)
4
For the record, and FYI, I believe that while the word "bleg" appears to have been formally codified by Samizdata, the original coiner of the term was The Corner's John Derbyshire on NRO.
Posted by: Charlie at October 11, 2006 10:13 AM (fEnUg)
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FYI- I got an email from someone who said I should reread my comment here because I was not clear. -- They're probably right.
I was offering to cut to chase and just mail you a computer.
It might not be a state of the art gaming machine, but it will take out a PIII I'm sure. ;-)
P
Posted by: Paul at October 11, 2006 11:31 AM (Ms5q6)
6
Paul,
It would be greatly appreciated if that is what you would like to do. I sent an email to the same email addy I've used in the past in communicating with you at wizbang... let me know if you got it.
Posted by: Confederate Yankee at October 11, 2006 11:39 AM (g5Nba)
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Does this mean I can beg for a new computer and Paul will give me one, too?
Posted by: SilverBubble at October 11, 2006 08:51 PM (5GfJ7)
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I hope you googlewhacked "blegburst." You deserve the immortality.
Posted by: Bleepless at October 11, 2006 09:38 PM (l73nU)
9
$100 for a 19" flatscreen? That is a deal.
Posted by: Jack at October 12, 2006 02:32 PM (S67uf)
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Small Plane Hits NYC Skyscraper
I hope this is just an
accident:
The aircraft struck the 20th floor of a building on East 72nd Street, said Fire Department spokeswoman Emily Rahimi. Witnesses said the crash caused a loud noise, and burning and falling debris was seen. Flames were seen shooting out of the windows.
"There's huge pieces of debris falling," said one witness who refused to give her full name. "There's so much falling now, I've got to get away."
The article goes on to say that this is a 50 story building, meaning that 30 stories of the building is above the site of the strike, which would likely make it difficult for people to escape through the elevators. The relatively low strike and small size of the plane might make a rooftop helicopter evacuation plausible, but I just don't have enough details to know.
It is too early to know how bad the fire may be or what the proximate cause was at this point. More as this develops...
Update From Allah's description, it does indeed sound like an accident and it appears that the NYFD will bring this under control, if they haven't already.
Update: NY Yankee's pitcher Cory Lidle and an instructor pilot were killed in the crash.
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Apparently it looks as if Yankee pitcher Cory Lidle was onboard and is feared dead.
Posted by: Nico at October 11, 2006 04:36 PM (059Fh)
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The Greatest Conspiracy Ever
Complete and
utter crap.
I'm frankly amazed that the same idiots who brought us the massively inflated body count study just before the 2004 election cycle would be stupid enough to try to float their same lies again, saying that as many as 650,000 Iraqis have died since the war began in 2003, 601,000 from violence.
Proving once again that there are "lies, damn lies, and statistics," this study overestimates the number of actual deaths by just a mere 600,000 or so, according to the widely-regarded anti-war Iraq Body Count which puts the maximum number of Iraqis killed at less than 50,000.
Even the basic premise of the study is dishonest, taking into account all Iraqi deaths over the past few years—car crashes, cancer, heart attacks, adverse drug reactions; anything will do—and including those non-war-related deaths along with the deaths of insurgents, Iraqi police, Iraqi military, and "legitimate" civilian combat-related deaths.
Now I'm not surprised that someone blatantly dishonest enough to use sockpuppets to protect his fragile ego is supporting this dreck, but I expect people with a modicum of common sense to realize, that as Blue Crab Boulevard notes, that for this study to be close to valid, that an additional 15,500 people are dying each month than every recognized government and private estimate of deaths has ever supported. That's 400-500 additional deaths per day than any media outlet on the planet has reported.
Let's use common sense for just a second: if this study was even third of what they claim (which would be almost 217,000 civilian deaths), don't you think that such a catastrophic loss of live would have been noticed by someone? al Jazeera, or al Manar, or maybe slightly larger and well-funded news organizations, such as the Associated Press, Reuters, or United Press International? Of course it would have. It is a mathematical impossibility to have hidden even this number of civilian combat deaths from a war zone so thoroughly saturated with media.
As a former President once said, you can fool all of the people some of the time, all of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time. It would have taken the greatest cover-up in human history to have been able to have covered up 217,000 civilian deaths as a result of the war, much less the massively inflated body count of 650,000.
As I just left in the comments at Matthew Yglesias' site:
...Where are the bodies?
The Iraq war is extremely well covered by the international news media and is of specific interest to the Arab media in particular, and yet not a single media outlet in the world will independently claim even ten-percent of what this study suggests. DonÂ’t it set off even the slightest alarm bells when a figure this greatly inflated comes across your radar?
A simple, cursory look at the well-respected anti-war site Iraq Body Count will reflect that the maximum number of civilian deaths is less than 50,000.
I know some are completely blinded by partisanship on both sides of this issue, but common sense has to tell you this study (once again timed for release before an election—how convenient, that) is patently absurd.
To buy these conclusions, you have to swallow the impossibility that Reuters, the Associated Press, UPI, the BBC, the New York Times, the Guardian, Robert Fisk, al Manar, al Jazeera, and every other news conglomeration in Iraq are a willful part of the largest cover-up in human history, hiding three times of the number of those killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined (214,000 according to wikipedia) over the course of three-plus years.
ItÂ’s patently absurd.
I know we disagree and disagree strongly over the Iraq war, but even the most rabidly anti-war bloggers should come out strongly against this politically-motivated farce, if for no other reason than to protect your own integrity.
This “study” is a blatant falsehood, and you know it.
So say so.
And yet, odds are neither Yglesias, nor Sock Puppet, nor Think Progress, nor Rising Hegemon, nor attytood, nor any other liberal blog likely have the integrity to challenge the study nor the world's media outlets.
It is quite simple: either all of the world's media organizations are involved with a massive conspiracy with the U.S., British, and Iraqi governments for more than three years to cover up massive civilian losses roughly triple the number of those killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki
--OR--
This study, like the one issued before it, is another statistical lie.
I'll let you and Occam figure out which is more likely.
Update: The Iraqis think this study is bogus as well h/t HotAir:
THE Iraqi Government described as "exaggerated" an independent US study which estimated that 655,000 Iraqis had died since the 2003 US invasion.
US President George W. Mr Bush had similarly called the report "not credible".
The study estimated that one Iraqi in 40 had died as a result of the conflict by comparing the death rates from the period before the war to the period from March 2003 to June 2006.
"This figure, which in reality has no basis, is exaggerated," said Iraqi government spokesman Ali Debbagh.
"It is a figure which flies in the face of the most obvious truths," he said, calling on research institutions to adopt precise and transparent criteria especially when the research concerns victim tolls.
The study has no basis in reality, and flies in the face of the most obvious truths.
Of course, that's just the Iraqis saying that, not the report of an anti-war Democrat researcher who has contributed money to anti-war candidates, so the Iraqis are assuredly wrong.
Update: One of the "Loose Changers" in the comments accidentally helped provide a good self-debunking point contained in the report:
If you'd bother to read the study before denouncing it, you'd find that they were able to produce Death Certificates to verify 90% of the reported deaths in the sampled households.
If that is indeed the case and the study results are validly extrapolated, then the Iraqi government should be able to produce 540,000 death certificates. Even if they can provide death certificates for just half of those that the study authors claim were killed by violence, then government morgues should be able to produce 300,000 death certificates, which again the media would have picked up very quickly as the media consistently uses the Iraqi morgues as a source for fatalities for their stories on a daily basis.
In short, the study provides the evidence—or lack thereof—debunking itself.
Update: Baghdad dentist Omar Fadil cuts loose:
When the statistics announced by hospitals and military here, or even by the UN, did not satisfy their lust for more deaths, they resorted to mathematics to get a fake number that satisfies their sadistic urges.
When I read the report I can only feel apathy and inhumanity from those who did the count towards the victims and towards our suffering as a whole. I can tell they were so pleased when the equations their twisted minds designed led to those numbers and nothing can convince me that they did their so called research out of compassion or care.
To me their motives are clear, all they want is to prove that our struggle for freedom was the wrong thing to do. And they shamelessly use lies to do thisÂ…when they did not find the death they wanted to see on the ground, they faked it on paper! They disgust meÂ…
This fake research is an insult to every man, woman and child who lost their lives.
As they say, read the whole thing.
Posted by: Confederate Yankee at
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The Iraq Body Count counts specific acts of violence as reported by the press. The maximum they report is achieved simply by adding up all the "up to X people were reported killed in the explosion" figures from all the reports. This is in no way intended to mean the maximum possible additional deaths caused by the war.
This study, as you say, counts all deaths, but, as you noticeably do
not say, it subtracts from that the number of deaths that you would expect over that period, extrapolated from the number of deaths that occured during the years before the war.
That is to say, during unstable times, people are poorer. Some poor people turn to crime. Sometimes the crime turns ugly and the victim gets shot. Sometimes the victim is armed and the criminal gets shot. This doesn't get reported in the media, and the only way to pick it up is to look at the statistics.
There's no conspiracy to hide these deaths, it's just that the vast majority of them are too mundane to make the news. We do indeed regularly see spectacular discoveries of 60 mutilated corpses here and 30 bodies there, but you can only get an overall impression with statistics.
Statistics are hard to collate in Iraq at the moment, so of course all these results should be taken with a grain of salt. But please, tell us what methodology you would prefer. Or would you rather just not know?
Posted by: Mat at October 11, 2006 11:38 AM (VkWIA)
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If you check Iraq body count, they say that they are listing only confirmed deaths, and, IIRC, deaths of *CIVILIANS*. Their "maximum" is not the maximum number of deaths possible... it's the maximum number of confirmed, verifiable deaths of civilians.
But don't believe me. Ask them.
As for how it could be happening, without someone reporting it, someone *did*. And when Lancet suggested 100,000 deaths, I reckon you complained about that, too.
But here's one thing to think about. How many Iraqi soldiers were killed in the initial invasion? How much "collateral damage" do you think was done during the invasion? Massive bombardment, and soldiers going in full force, are going to cause a lot of deaths... and the Pentagon tries to avoid body counts.
Posted by: Longhairedweirdo at October 11, 2006 12:23 PM (z9gCU)
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Wow, talk about an intellectually dishonest rant, Yankee. You don't bother to read the methodolgy used and just flat dismiss it out of hand because your gut tells you to. Bravo.
Consider this. How many people are dying violently in Baghdad alone these days? 100 a day are the reported figures. _Half_ that number extrapolated for 3 1/2 years is more than the entire Iraq Body Count figure, and that's just for the capital. There's another 90 or so good sized cities and towns, some of which have virtually no Allied forces present and the crazies are running things. You think they're all dutifully reporting any and all deaths to what passes for a government there?
You have an entire country of rather poor people invaded and occupied, their entire infrastructrue shattered, a total power vacuum created, sectarian battles playing out on the streets, basically civil war wherever American and British troops aren't, which is pretty much everywhere. You think that under those circumstances an extra 300-400 people could't disappear quietly into the night, every night?
Posted by: Jared at October 11, 2006 12:28 PM (pzwSt)
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Good lord, we've been invaded by Truthers.
You think that under those circumstances an extra 300-400 people could't disappear quietly into the night, every night?
Um,
no. People have friends and family, both near and far, who would notice these additional people disappearing were it actually occurring, and they would certainly find a very sympathetic media rather quickly if this was occurring. But it isn't, is it?
Beside where are the bodies?
Sunni and Shiite death squads don't bury bodies, they dump them. The bodies of those they torture and kill
always turn up within hours or days, and are taken to closely watched central morgues for identification.
According to your theory, there must be some ignored allyway in Baghdad with 600,000 dead people in it that nobody's stumbled across yet.
Folks, I can point you to the common sense answers that if the level of violence alleged was there it wold be widely reported in the media and the bodies would certainly turn up, but all I can do is ask you to use your brains, I can't force you too.
According to this study, we're short almost three times as many people in Iraq as died in both atomic bomb strikes, and yet nobody in Iraq, including the media, seems to know that entire cities worth of people are unaccounted for.
This is bull, and deep down, you know it.
Posted by: Confederate Yankee at October 11, 2006 12:47 PM (g5Nba)
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Beside where are the bodies?Some of them are
here:Officials at Baghdad mortuary say they received 1,855 bodies in July, as the capital remains gripped in a wave of violence which has beset it for months.Almost 2000 in one month! That's a plausible count of 50,000 over three years from
just one mortuary in Baghdad.
Posted by: Mat at October 11, 2006 12:59 PM (VkWIA)
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Almost 2000 in one month! That's a plausible count of 50,000 over three years from just one mortuary in Baghdad.
And yet, the outbreak of sectarian violnce is less than a year old, isn't it?
Your still more than a half million bodies short from even your sickest flights of "Loose Change" fancy.
Posted by: Confederate Yankee at October 11, 2006 01:05 PM (g5Nba)
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And yet, the outbreak of sectarian violnce is less than a year old, isn't it?
No.
Your still more than a half million bodies short from even your sickest flights of "Loose Change" fancy.
To make this clear, I don't know precisely how many people have died in Iraq because of the war. I'm very, very confident that it's more than shown on the Iraq Body Count, not least because the Iraq Body Count says it's more than shown on the Iraq Body Count. But the Baghdad morgue figures are another clue.
We can argue about what may or may not have happened in Baghdad until judgement day, but it's a complete waste of time. The only way to get a good overall picture is by the analysis of statistics. And the methodology used in this case seems as good as you're likely to get, given the limitations of conducting research in an environment like Iraq. Given the evidence we're seeing, from the media, from the Baghdad morgue, and other hints, a figure of about half a million doesn't seem implausible.
So you do in fact find it implausible. Fine. Can you explain what specifically is wrong with the methodology used here? What specifically would you change to come up with a more accurate figure? Because so far, all you've done is say "come on, it
can't be that bad, right?" Which isn't a very convincing argument.
Posted by: Mat at October 11, 2006 01:23 PM (VkWIA)
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If you'd bother to read the study before denouncing it, you'd find that they were able to produce Death Certificates to verify 90% of the reported deaths in the sampled households.
And to reiterate Jared's point, this is an estimate of EXCESS Mortality. Not occupation casualties. The mortality rate from all causes of death since the invasion are up by an estimated 650,000 from what would have occurred if the same mortality rate from the two years prior to the invasion had been maintained.
In other words, things might not have been so great under Saddam, but they sure as hell haven't gotten any better so far.
Posted by: Ed at October 11, 2006 02:08 PM (yfKhZ)
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Right. Occam's Razor clearly tells us that the simplest explanation for this study is that a team of researchers devoted years toward the development of reliable and widely-used statistical methods; hundreds of hours of labor to researching and writing an article that applies those methods to a current conflict; surreptitiously grooming peer-reviewers to approve the article for publication . . . all to make the previously-unheard-of observation that the Iraq War has delivered catastrophic consequences to the people of Iraq.
Posted by: d at October 11, 2006 02:22 PM (LHK5X)
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do you have anything more substantial to say than "i dont believe it so it cannot be so"? no? thank you. even the instapundit, who usually will link to just about anything, didn't link to it.
Posted by: g at October 11, 2006 02:59 PM (nVEt2)
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So in your world, it is more conceivable that a single academic study led by someone with a distinct and noted anti-war bias—who’s previous nearly identical study was widely panned and never replicated—is telling the capital "T" truth?
You have to believe the outlandish claim that 600,000 people—more than 2% of Iraq's population—was wiped out without anyone in the country
at all having any indication that a simply
massive genocide was occurring. And it would be a major genocide—twice the side of the Darfur Genocide, and approaching Rwandan Genocide levels—without the world’s media and the Iraqi government alike becoming unaware of such a slaughter right under their noses?
Or are they just part of the grand conspiracy?
YouÂ’ve got a screw loose.
Posted by: Confederate Yankee at October 11, 2006 03:02 PM (g5Nba)
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do you have anything more substantial to say than "i dont believe it so it cannot be so"?
You mean other than the governments of the two countries most involved claiming the study flies it the face of reality?
Posted by: Confederate Yankee at October 11, 2006 03:05 PM (g5Nba)
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Ed:
The whole point is that they extrapolated less than 600 deaths into 600,000. This is ridiculous. Wasn't it Orwell who said that some things are so stupid only an intellectual would believe them? I react to this the same way I react to a holocaust denier: You would have to be an idiot to believe that crap.
In five years of flying tens of thousands of missions over Germany the Allies managed to inflict 590,000 civilian German casualties...and even in that war with millions dead, people noticed the fire bombing of Dresden.
As for whether things have gotten better so far, 80% of the people of Iraq support their PM. That PM was elected to power. Niether he or his government would exist if not for the invasion.
This will be used as propaganda to help create more violence and more bloodshed. How does that help?
Posted by: Terrye at October 11, 2006 03:21 PM (bsvGC)
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Oh no, the idiots are back again.
Posted by: bri at October 11, 2006 03:55 PM (D6LRh)
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Right, CY. I can't imagine why a government who vowed to liberate the Iraqi people (and the weak, inept leadership installed by that government) would dispute a study that suggests their efforts coincided with a spike in that nation's mortality rate. It's baffling, really.
As for the matter of "genocide," I don't even know what to tell you, since you clearly haven't fully comprehended what the research is supposed to be suggesting. I do find it instructive, however, that you would throw such words around so carelessly on a blog that strives (or so you claim) for accuracy and clear thought.
Yes, Bri, the idiots are back -- but it seems, actually, that they've been here all along.
Posted by: d at October 11, 2006 04:33 PM (LHK5X)
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Those elected members in Congress that are connected, in anyway, to this lie should answer to www.PurgeCongress.com.
Posted by: cmunit at October 11, 2006 05:08 PM (1LxXM)
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I propose
a challenge to the most notorious Lancet-apologist of all, Tim Lambert:
Use the study itself to extrapolate the number of death certificates supposedly having been published by the Iraqi government since the invasion.
As you say, this should produce an insanely high number of death certificates, which will not match up with Iraqi records, thus debunking the entire basis for the survey.
Come on, everyone
go to Lambert's blog and persuade him into coming up with the number - just so we can watch his head explode at the thought he has been covering for these hacks for 2 years.
Posted by: Seixon at October 11, 2006 07:02 PM (tycOE)
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This was one pi** pore study by a professor. Asking around a few villages and then multiplying the result. Sounds more like a kindergarden guess. It was fully explained when the said the UK idiot Galloway was involved. Forget it, it's too lame to worry about. By the way the poster that "said" they had death records is as full of it as the professor. I hope your family doesn't let you out on the street alone. You are a danger to yourself. The soldiers job is to make sure the other guy dies, not die to prove a point to some left wing democratic coward in the U.S.
Posted by: Scrapiron at October 11, 2006 07:03 PM (vFS/o)
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According to the silly report more than 22,000 people have died every single month in Iraq since the invasion. They do not tell us who these people were or where their remains are. They should, they made the claim they should back it up with something other than a survey.
This is absurd on its face. Do I think these men spent years coming up with this for no good reason? No, they came up with it to create propaganda and feed antiAmericanism. If it inspires more hatred and paranoia and gets a few more people killed, that is just icing on the cake I guess.
Posted by: Terrye at October 11, 2006 07:26 PM (HwwKy)
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d doesn't like it when trolls come to his little unused teacher blog, but he's happy to come out from under the bridge himself, it seems.
Posted by: bri at October 11, 2006 07:45 PM (6gvKb)
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This was one pi** pore study by a professor. Asking around a few villages and then multiplying the result.
Your knowledge of statistics is astonishing, Scrapiron. And you, too, Terrye:
According to the silly report more than 22,000 people have died every single month in Iraq since the invasion. They do not tell us who these people were or where their remains are.
Because there's really no difference between statistical extrapolations and obituaries -- if we don't have
names and
burial locations, it must be phoney baloney! [Insert cliched quotation from Mark Twain about lies and statistics here].
Posted by: d at October 11, 2006 07:52 PM (LHK5X)
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d doesn't like it when trolls come to his little unused teacher blog, but he's happy to come out from under the bridge himself, it seems.
That's actually not my blog you're referring to, bri. Trolls can go wherever they want, as far as I'm concerned.
I happen to come here because I find Confederate Yankee to be an interesting, stimulating source of political debate and wise-crackery. And the comments. I can't get enough of the comments.
Posted by: d at October 11, 2006 07:57 PM (LHK5X)
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WTF?? This sounded like it was something. Until I followed the link, and found out you guys were arguing about a study that HASN'T EVEN BEEN PUBLISHED YET!
In words of one syllable, shee-it!
Posted by: dzho at October 11, 2006 08:20 PM (jb33V)
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WTF?? This sounded like it was something. Until I followed the link, and found out you guys were analyzing a study that HASN'T EVEN BEEN PUBLISHED YET!
In words of one syllable, shyee-it!
Posted by: dzho at October 11, 2006 08:21 PM (jb33V)
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According to the silly report more than 22,000 people have died every single month in Iraq since the invasion. They do not tell us who these people were or where their remains are. They should, they made the claim they should back it up with something other than a survey.
The WHO and the World Bank "estimate" 1.2 million traffic deaths each year. Obviously this "estimate" is also silly, since that number of auto deaths would surely fill the news programmes, that number of wrecked cars would clog any street in any city in the world, and no-one, NO-ONE has yet listed the names of those supposedly killed in cars each year. The WHO and the World Bank get money by raising the spectre of traffic casualties, and both of them are clearly anti-automobile simply for having made such unfounded "estimates".
Right?
Posted by: Phoenician in a time of Romans at October 11, 2006 09:24 PM (iYlrE)
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I also posted at the other web site (Yiglesias), and I'll repeat part of the post here. Given the difficulty with data collection asserted by one of the authors on CNN this morning (Malaysia time), does the data collected represent a random sample? Is it representative of the Iraqi population as a whole?
If not, the extrapolation is invalid, no matter that the study methodology (stratified sampling) is widely accepted. It is the application of the methodology that is the problem.
I would have not given a point estimate, especially of an extrapolated result.
Posted by: Dale at October 11, 2006 11:03 PM (jNkCV)
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Well, if you really disagree with this study so passionately I suggest you do the following:
1) Read it.
2) Examine the specific claims that it makes, the data that it relies on, the methodology used to gather that data and the analysis used to reach the conclusions.
3) Look at the degree to which they conform to accepted standards of statistical sampling.
4) Point out any mistakes, shortcomings or faulty reasoning that you find.
If you're really dedicated, go for:
5) Conduct your own study of pre-invasion versus post-invasion iraqi mortality and get it published in a relevant peer-edited journal.
Or I guess you could just whine about it on a blog because it doesn't fit your ideological agenda. It beats having to actually make a well reasoned argument.
Posted by: justaguy at October 12, 2006 12:11 AM (3g0SX)
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Let's say I took poll, ran an extrapolation, and came out with a conclusion that 80% of Americans are Republicans.
Now, my methodology looks good, i.e. I sampled "randomly" and I even got 92% of the respondees who claimed to be republican to produce a party membership card.
Hmmmmm, something doesn't pass the smell test, better check again. Maybe I should call up the GOP and see how many cards they've issued?
Nah, I'll just publish conveniently close to an election, and then wait for people to figure out where I went wrong. or not.
If 92% could produce a death certificate, but there aren't that many death certificates from the government records, what's the chances that they just happened to poll people who had certificates, but that most don't for some reason?
This survey could be correct - but if I had been the people doing this report, I would have had an independent team review my data and check the death certificate issue.
Also, if they are simply looking at mortality rates pre & post, yeah sure, Grandpa died a year earlier than he would have because medicine wasn't being imported in 2003 as compared to 2002.
But maybe it would have been better to compare the many other years of warfare and before food for oil program was in place, too.
Posted by: Aaron at October 12, 2006 03:09 AM (3kDfM)
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"Let's say I took poll, ran an extrapolation, and came out with a conclusion that 80% of Americans are Republicans."
It is perfectly possible to conduct a methodologically sound study that produces misleading results due to sampling error. Possible, but not probable. Even if there were no net increase of deaths as a result of the invasion, the study wouldn't be wrong per se. They aren't saying that there have been an increase in deaths of 600k with absolute certainty, they are saying that with 95% certainty the increase in deaths falls between 426,369 and 793,663. There would be, I believe, a 2.5% chance that there are less than 426,369 deaths, and 2.5% that there were more than 793,663.
So a) even if the results wind up being misleading, don't assume that it is due to dishonesty on behalf of the researchers. They did risk their lives going throughout Iraq conducting research on a vital question that I don't see anyone else tracking down. Unless you have specific evidence of dishonesty or sloppyness on their part (which will probably come out when the article is subject to review by actual statiticians), that's just an ad homenum attack on facts that you do not like.
And b) if you doubt the results, or question their accuracy go out and do your own methodologically sound study and get back to us with the evidence that disproves it. Of course, since you have shown that you have a preconcieved notion of what the answer should be you can't really do that (the whole objectivity thing with science) but you get my point...
Posted by: Justaguy at October 12, 2006 06:34 AM (3g0SX)
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Or better yet. There were 3 shooting deaths in hartford last night, 6 people killed in traffic accidents, 10 people died from heart attack, and 3 more from other disease. That is 22 deaths in one night. Now extrapolate that against the base population of the US. It says that there are thousands and thousands of deaths each day in the US. Especially shootings. But that isn't really the case is it? It is a mathematical illusion. Fluff. Nada.
Posted by: Specter at October 12, 2006 07:31 AM (ybfXM)
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And...you can knock 70K to 80K off their analysis just by the fact that they could only confirm 90% of the 554 deaths in the sample population.
Posted by: Specter at October 12, 2006 07:36 AM (ybfXM)
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700 bodies a day - not reported by the media..not likely, especially since the MSM is determined to only publish stories that make Bush look bad.
This 'study' by John Hopkins, was published in England, in a journal that has a poor reputation. (the 2004 attempt to affect the election)
this 'study' was not published in a respected US journal, why. I think the authors knew it would not pass a peer review in the US.
The researchers when down the street, stopped at each home where the family was there and willing to talk. I wonder how many of the deaths were double counted?
this is cheap politics not research.
Posted by: Marvin at October 12, 2006 07:58 AM (57AYn)
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"I happen to come here because I find Confederate Yankee to be an interesting, stimulating source of political debate and wise-crackery. And the comments. I can't get enough of the comments." d
Or maybe because nobody goes to your, er, sorry, the two other sites I've seen you at. But come on, you gotta admit, you just can't run with the big boys. Stick with bilbo and frodo. They're more your speed.
Posted by: bri at October 12, 2006 11:47 AM (SzXM0)
34
This 'study' by John Hopkins, was published in England, in a journal that has a poor reputation. (the 2004 attempt to affect the election) this 'study' was not published in a respected US journal, why. I think the authors knew it would not pass a peer review in the US.
Uh, actually, Marvin,
The Lancet is the most prestigious medical journal on the planet. But don't let that get in the way of your fantasy. Keep dreaming.
Posted by: d at October 12, 2006 01:30 PM (LHK5X)
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Let's say I took poll, ran an extrapolation, and came out with a conclusion that 80% of Americans are Republicans.
Are you were trained in making such studies, did you used the same techniques that were acceptable in other studies, and did it pass peer-review in the third most prestigious scientific journal in the world?
This 'study' by John Hopkins, was published in England, in a journal that has a poor reputation.
Top 10
Impact Factors, scientific journals (2006):
Nature 51.97
Science 48.78
New Eng. J. Med. 19.84
Cell 15.34
PNAS 14.88
J Biol. Chem. 10.62
JAMA 8.49
Lancet 7.78
Nat Genet. 7.56
Nat Med. 6.53
Posted by: Phoenician in a time of Romans at October 12, 2006 04:12 PM (iYlrE)
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This study is bogus because I don't like it and especially because it comes from the same group that determined the same thing 2 years ago.
I mean, they must be biased because I didn't like what their 2004 study said!
idiots. read the study first, then (and only if you actually understood it) criticize the methodology, sampling methods, etc...
The data is freely available to anyone who asks for it. I'm sure the expert statisticians among you can find all the problems and provide us with the "real" casualty rates (but you have to subject to peer-review and make your methodology public, as these guys have).
Until anybody does that, they have no basis whatsoever for criticizing this study's results.
Posted by: ME at October 12, 2006 04:18 PM (ZhBBw)
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The numbers do add up.
"There was a sample of 12,801 individuals in 1,849 households, in 47 geographical locations. That is a big sample, not a small one. The opinion polls from Mori and such which measure political support use a sample size of about 2,000 individuals, and they have a margin of error of +/- 3%." [...]
"That qualitative conclusion is this: things have got worse, and they have got a lot worse, not a little bit worse. Whatever detailed criticisms one might make of the methodology of the study (and I have searched assiduously for the last two years, with the assistance of a lot of partisans of the Iraq war who have tried to pick holes in the study, and not found any), the numbers are too big.
If you go out and ask 12,000 people whether a family member has died and get reports of 300 deaths from violence, then that is not consistent with there being only 60,000 deaths from violence in a country of 26 million. It is not even nearly consistent." [...]
"We can ensure that the people responsible for this outrage suffer the consequences of their actions. A particularly disgusting theme of some right-wing American critics of the study as been to impugn it by talking about it being "conveniently" released before the November congressional elections.
As if a war that doubled the death rate in Iraq was not the sort of thing that ought to be a political issue.
Nobody is doing anything about this disaster, and nobody will do until people start suffering some kind of consequences for their actions [...]"
Posted by: Phoenician in a time of Romans at October 12, 2006 04:35 PM (iYlrE)
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Welcoming my new Co-Blogger, Regan Teresa MacNeil
Um, you might notice that the site is acting a bit, well, possessed this morning, with the content inexplicably centered, the "Digg It" button missing and the "show comments" link going to Digg instead.
I have no earthly idea why this is happening as I have nott knowingly altered my templates in quite a while. Hopefully we can get this cleared up soon, and I apologize for the unexpected weirdness.
Update: Of course, now that I post this, everything looks fine. Oh well... Tech genius and dear brother Phin of Apothegm Designs cleared up the snafu within mere minutes.
Just a plug for him and his partner Sadie in case any of my fellow bloggers are thinking about a blog design, redesign, or platform change: they really know their stuff.
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"I have no earthly idea why this is happening as I have nott knowingly altered my templates in quite a while. Hopefully we can get this cleared up soon, and I apologize for the unexpected weirdness."
It also added an extra 't' in not, Spooky.
Posted by: Retired Navy at October 11, 2006 11:01 AM (8kQAc)
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October 10, 2006
The Other "Blue Dress Moment"
Things just keep getting worse for Bubba.
It was bad enough that his attempts to censor the recent "Road to 9/11" mini-series backfired and instead exposed his incompetence in dealing with al Qaeda, reminding the world that he allowed an attempted chemical weapons attack on Manhattan to go unchallenged militarily. Now the ripples of North Korea's nuclear (or not) blast have shown the 1994 Agreed Framework Clinton allowed Jimmy Carter to lead has led us to our present state of affairs. North Korea, a rogue state that has always sold every weapons system it has ever developed to the highest bidder is threatening to fire a nuclear-armed missile. Given their history, we might look at this as both nuclear gamesmanship and a product demonstration.
As time wears on and more failures are revealed, William Jefferson Clinton, the charismatic Man From Hope, is proving to be arguably the least competent foreign policy President of the twentieth century.
It must be said that every president since the early 1970s has failed in one way or another in dealing with terrorism. From Nixon and Ford, down through Carter and Reagan, to George H.W. Bush, Americans suffered through a string of terrorist attacks nearly unanswered.
Bill Clinton, however, established a new low point of inaction. He froze out his CIA Director, never meeting with him in two years, leading Woolsey to resign in disgust. Even though a new terror network was emerging to confront America directly, Clinton continued to treat the matter as a law enforcement issue. Clinton steadfastly refused to confront terrorism, as even his own top advisor Dick Morris noted:
The weekly strategy meetings at the White House throughout 1995 and 1996 featured an escalating drumbeat of advice to President Clinton to take decisive steps to crack down on terrorism. The polls gave these ideas a green light. But Clinton hesitated and failed to act, always finding a reason why some other concern was more important.
Clinton's unstated policy ignoring of the growing threat of al Qaeda emboldened them, leading to a plot that ultimately unfolded on the morning of September 11, 2001. Jumping office workers in Manhattan, a flaming facade in the Pentagon, and a rubble-strewn field in Pennsylvania are the legacy of President Clinton's decision to always find "some other concern" instead of acting against an increasingly bold al Qaeda terrorist network.
But what Clinton didn't accomplish against terrorism while he was in office may eventually pale in comparison to his incompetence in allowing rogue states to develop the technology to manufacture nuclear warheads and the weapons systems to deliver them.
On Clinton's watch, China successfully sold a conversion plant to Iran and the gas need to test the uranium enrichment process. In 1996, as Clinton froze out the CIA Director, Iran was busily constructing the Arak heavy water plant. Iran began the secret uranium enrichment facility at Natanz in 2000.
During the same time period, North Korea was secretly expanding it's nuclear weapons research and designing long-range multi-stage missiles, even as the gullible Clinton sent Secretary of State Madeline Albright to fulfill her own historical blue dress moment.
Bill Clinton left office in 2001, leaving us a world safe for terrorism instead of from it, and with two rogue nations developing nuclear weapons programs. Perhaps we cold have known of all of these programs far earlier, had he and Congressional Democrats not emasculated with constant calls for intelligence agency budget cuts.
Bill Clinton fundamentally misunderstood the threats posed by rouge nations aspiring to nuclear weapons capability and blinded American intelligence agencies that may have exposed them earlier. He fundamentally understood the causes of and how to confront Islamic terrorism.
Clinton's "do nothing" legacy is echoed today by Democratic Senators and Congressmen that rose through the ranks during his presidency. These Senators and Congressmen—Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi among them—still hold desperately to the same flawed misconceptions that led us to a point where are today. We now face not one, but two rouge nations on the cusp of being able to provide terrorist organizations with nuclear warheads.
President Clinton's "blue dress moment" with a White House intern led to the President being exposed as a distracted man with weak moral values who lied under oath.
President Clinton’s other "blue dress moment," —sending Madeline Albright to negotiate for a piece of paper that was never honored—now becomes emblematic of his failures on the nuclear proliferation front as well, and may ultimately be a far more damning part of his legacy of charismatic incompetence.
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http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/handshake300.jpg
Pictures are just pictures. Leaders shake hands with all kinds of people - left, right, good, evil. Interesting points made, a few of which I agree with.
I think talk is cheap in Washington. Do something or drop it. If you're into the business of freedom-fighting and saving a nation's people from an oppresive regime that starves and murders it's citizens for some small pathetic personal gain by its leader while threatening other countries, North Korea would be a much easier sell to the American people and the world than Iraq ever was or could be. Not to mention an open admission of WMD proliferation.
If that's not enough to invade a country for regime change and Iraq was/is, we have a problem.
Posted by: H! at October 10, 2006 05:05 PM (FUME3)
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H!,
In some ways true - Kim Jong Il has got to go. But on the other hand, with Japan and China now incensed over NorK, isn't it better to let them handle it? Especially China who openly rebuked NorK yesterday....Stability in the region is crucial to their economics.
The ME is completely different. State sponsors of terrorism with WMD and no other big boys on the block. People who have vowed to take war to the US and actually have (please don't make me list yet again all of the actual attacks that have happened since the early 1990s) An area crucial to our economics. There is a difference. It is simple.
Posted by: Specter at October 11, 2006 07:39 AM (ybfXM)
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North Korean Seppuku?
Can someone please tell me when the firing of an ICBM armed with a nuclear warhead was not universally recognized as an
act of war?
North Korea stepped up its threats aimed at Washington, saying it could fire a nuclear[sic] nuclear-tipped missile unless the United States acts to resolve its standoff with Pyongyang, the Yonhap news agency reported Tuesday from Beijing.
Even if Pyongyang is confirmed to have nuclear weapons, experts say it's unlikely the North has a bomb design small and light enough to be mounted atop a missile. Their long-range missile capability also remains in question, after a test rocket in July apparently fizzled out shortly after takeoff.
"We hope the situation will be resolved before an unfortunate incident of us firing a nuclear missile comes," Yonhap quoted an unidentified North Korean official as saying. "That depends on how the U.S. will act."
The official said the nuclear test was "an expression of our intention to face the United States across the negotiating table," reported Yonhap, which didn't say how or where it contacted the official, or why no name was given.
More after I have a chance to think about what this means...
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experts say it's unlikely the North has a bomb design small and light enough to be mounted atop a missile.
Almost 25 years ago, John Phillips designed such a bomb in a few months as a junior year physics project.
Posted by: Purple Avenger at October 10, 2006 08:59 AM (PNnHh)
Posted by: hdw at October 10, 2006 10:07 AM (nA9AR)
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Are you saying that the missile that fired and failed was an act of war? Or the threat of firing a missile with a nuclear warhead on it's tip is the same as doing it, thus being an act of war?
Claiming to have the technology and ability to launch "an ICBM armed with a nuclear warhead" and actually doing so are two totally different things. Scary stuff going on nonetheless, but I wouldn't call the latest North Korean test "an act of war."
Posted by: H! at October 10, 2006 10:54 AM (FUME3)
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H!,
Not sure I get your point. Are you just trying to say you don't like the turn of the phrase, or are you supporting NK's right to fire a nuclear tipped missile if they want?
Many now doubt that NK actually has nuclear capability - yet. And we know that the NoDong II was a failure.
However - just say that they had the technology - a nuke warhead, and a missile big enough to hit US territory. When a launch occurs, it takes a few minutes to determine where the bird is going. In many nuclear scenarios counter-launch has to happen early enough to get your own missiles away. In that type of scenario, would a NK launch constitute an act of war? Yes.
But, a few missiles, a few warheards - it would not seem that NK has enough to devastate the US and we could annihilate them in second strike. I suspect that first NK would try on a neighbor. Then you get into who are the allies of the neighbor and what are their capabilities. Japan, China, SK, etc. Now you open a real can of worms. Would that be an act of war? Yes.
What about a shot into the ocean? I don't think anyone would retaliate, but what concerns do we then need to think about with regards to nuclear contamination spreading through the ocean? That impacts quite a few lives. And yes - I know that the US conducted such tests in the early days - but I think you would agree that everybody knows a lot more about the effects now. Back then a lot was speculation....
Posted by: Specter at October 10, 2006 11:22 AM (ybfXM)
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Specter,
I'm doing neither. I'm just saying that North Korea didn't fire a nuclear-tipped missile at us, so to say that firing an ICBM with a nuclear warhead on it's tip is an act of war is totally agreeable, but not what actually happened.
The "test" I was referring to was the missile launch, not the recent (and apparently failed) nuke test underground.
I was just trying to figure out if the CY was claiming that North Korea had committed an act of war with it's missle test, or was he just stating that by putting a nuke in there, an act of war WOULD be committed... something even I would support.
Posted by: H! at October 10, 2006 04:40 PM (FUME3)
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I meant firing a missile
with a nucelar warhead attached, or one we suspected was attached. If they say they are going to fire a nuclear ICBM and a missile goes up and we return fire before it hits and is determined to be a dud or a fake, then I don't have any sympathy for them.
It's kinda like telling a cop that you have a gun in your pocket and then making a sudden move for your pocket. If the cop shoots you thinking you are armed, that is considered justifiable.
Posted by: Confederate Yankee at October 10, 2006 04:47 PM (BTdrY)
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Gotcha, thanks for clarifying. This liberal DEM agrees with that 110%.
Posted by: H! at October 10, 2006 05:12 PM (FUME3)
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Don't worry, Kim, you fire a missile at the US, and I
promise you we'll "act to resove [our] standoff" with you.
Of course, you'll be dead when we're finished.
Posted by: Greg D at October 11, 2006 11:58 AM (8viKe)
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NorK Dork Corked
And Bill Gertz agrees with that
initial speculation, just 24 short hours
later:
U.S. intelligence agencies say, based on preliminary indications, that North Korea did not produce its first nuclear blast yesterday.
U.S. officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that seismic readings show that the conventional high explosives used to create a chain reaction in a plutonium-based device went off, but that the blast's readings were shy of a typical nuclear detonation.
"We're still evaluating the data, and as more data comes in, we hope to develop a clearer picture," said one official familiar with intelligence reports.
"There was a seismic event that registered about 4 on the Richter scale, but it still isn't clear if it was a nuclear test. You can get that kind of seismic reading from high explosives."
It still remains, of course, to see if this assessment is correct. It could have been a faulty nuke, after all.
As ever, the sleepless Allah is on the case.
Update: Related thoughts at AoC.
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Who Do You Trust?
According to USAToday's
new poll, the pachyderms are toast:
A Capitol Hill sex scandal has reinforced public doubts about Republican leadership and pushed Democrats to a huge lead in the race for control of Congress four weeks before Election Day, the latest USA TODAY/Gallup Poll shows.
Democrats had a 23-point lead over Republicans in every group of people questioned — likely voters, registered voters and adults — on which party's House candidate would get their vote. That's double the lead Republicans had a month before they seized control of Congress in 1994 and the Democrats' largest advantage among registered voters since 1978.
Nearly three in 10 registered voters said their representative doesn't deserve re-election — the highest level since 1994. President Bush's approval rating was 37% in the new poll, down from 44% in a Sept. 15-17 poll. And for the first time since the question was asked in 2002, Democrats did better than Republicans on who would best handle terrorism, 46%-41%.
"It's hard to see how the climate is going to shift dramatically between now and Election Day," said John Pitney, a former GOP aide on Capitol Hill who now teaches at Claremont-McKenna College in California. He said Iraq remains the biggest problem for Republicans: "People just don't like inconclusive wars."
The plummeting GOP ratings in the poll of 1,007 adults, taken Friday through Sunday, come amid a series of events that have given Democrats ammunition to argue that the country needs a new direction.
Ah, the sounds of wishful thinking.
Now, it may very well come to pass that the Republicans have made enough mistakes to finally lose to a feckless Donkey, but I'll be among those surprised if that is the case. As I said in a previous post, "you can't beat something with nothing."
And what, precisely, do Democrats really have to offer the American voter other than "we aren't Republicans?"
If Democrats gain control of Congress, you can flush any pretense of border security down the drain. It will go from weak, to nonexistant.
As for Iraq, forget it: Speaker Pelosi will push to have the troops "redeployed" to some place useful like Guam, and faster than you can say "Rwanda," you'll see a nation of 26 million ripped completely to shreds. Think Iraq is bad with us there now? See what happens to it if the party of "cut and run" takes over and allows bin Laden his victory.
And allow bin Laden's victory they will. The Democrats have already shown they have no stomach for fighting in Iraq, so how long do you really think it would take for them to concoct a storyline saying that since bin Laden isn't in Afghanistan, than we shouldn't be either? Guam's going to get might crowded.
As for Mr. Kim and the NorKs, we've seen what happens when President Bush tried the preferred Democratic solution of multilateral talks. Expect it to get even worse as Dems push the same failed strategies in dealing with Iran. Oh, and kiss you missile defense goodbye.
Taxes? Going up if Democrats have their way.
Jobs? Going down because taxes are going up.
The current record-high stock market? Gone in the mist.
And don't even get me going on the endless poltically-driven investigations that will completely cripple the government. Think two weeks of Foleygate is bad? Try two years of the same shrill whine as they try to Get Bush.
But hopefuly, that unpleasantness won't come to pass. Between now and November 7, Foleygate will fade, along with the Democratic chance for victory. The Democrats won't win the House, but lose it by six, as I previously mentioned.
Interestingly enough, Scott Elliott's extremely accurate Election Projection currently has the Elephants taking the House by five (220-215), so I feel my SWAG has some merit. The Senate is closer and currently a dead heat, but once again, I predict that the election will come down to the all-but-forgotten Security Moms (and Dads) on November 7.
If the Democrats can convince them that by withdrawing from Iraq (and Afghanistan, which you know they will cry for next) is in this nation's best interests, and that allowing Iran to develop nuclear weapons uncontested is a smart strategy, then the Republicans deserve to lose.
I happen to think that the American voter is smarter than pollsters give them credit for. You can't beat something with nothing, even when the media is on your side.
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As I see it, bring on more and more of these polls announcing a Republican defeat. I'm quite certain that the only poll that matters is the one beind the curtain where people actually make their mark for someone with a D, an R or in some cases and I or L by their name.
CY, if no one else has done it here since the Foley event broke, let me do it:
I am confident that not only will the Republicans not lose seats in the House or Senate, but we (Republicans) will gain seats in both.
We'll see at election time won't we. I could be wrong, but I don't think I am, and I have no problem putting my name on that.
Bring on the polls showing Repubs behind, each one only brings more and more of us back to the voting booth to make a mark by R.
--Jason
Posted by: Jason Coleman at October 10, 2006 01:04 AM (As32a)
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