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Audacity of Truth
Whiner-in-Chief:
"[W]hether the grumbling is about Republicans on Fox or bloggers in pajamas, there's a word for what the president and his aides are doing. That word is "whining." And nothing [...] does more damage to Obama's credibility or authority than the sense that a popular president is becoming the whiner-in-chief."
- John Nichols, Nation Magazine - 10/12/09
Report on 655,000 alleged Iraqi civilian casualties since the beginning of the Iraq war: the latest October surprise
It’s all over the news – Memeorandum has it at the top of their page, so it’s getting a lot of play in the blogosphere as well. Here’s the Washington Post headline: Study Claims Iraq’s ‘Excess’ Death Toll Has Reached 655,000
Rick Moran has the definitive post up on this latest ’study’, which incidentally was conducted by the same group who conducted the last controversial Iraq civilian death count study, which claimed that 100,000 Iraqi civilians had been killed since the start of the Iraq war. That study, I should note and as Rick pointed out, was also released shortly before an election: October 29, 2004. This latest study is highly dubious, as Rick points out with various links, so treat the media hype for what it is: an October surprise.
Others blogging about this: Gateway Pundit, Outside The Beltway, Blue Crab Boulevard, Decision ‘08, Terry Trippany at Newsbusters
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One thing this report does is lump in every death for whatever cause of whatever group. It does not even attempt to distinguish between people who were killed while perpetrating violence on others, people who by and large are dead entirely because of their own actions, if they’d just stayed home and minded their own business they’d be alive. Insurgents, home grown or foreign, are treated the same way as their victims and added to the list. The proponents of this study may not be able to distinguish between the insurgents and their victims, but there is a difference. By their standards, if 100 insrugents go out and attack and kill 100 innocent victims, and get killed by the Iraqi police, that’s 200 “innocent” victims killed by the evil Americans. If the insurgents keep blowing up water treatment plants and 100 Iraqi children tragically die of dysentery, that’s again the fault of the Americans.
Add to that the fact that they do not differentiate between combat related deaths and natural causes, but seem to assume that natural causes are actually caused by the Americans, again. The purpose of this report is solely to attempt to influence US elections and paint the US as responsible for every single death in the country, and even then their methodology is suspect. Claiming that “this is how these studies are done” and proving that the study was done correctly from a mathematical and procedural view are two entirely different things.
Once again, we see the same complete lack of skepticism that the left uses on such things as global warming studies, if it supports their belief, they accept it without question, whereas if it doesn’t, they’ll disbelieve rational facts and analyses no matter how convincing the proof. Gullible is a good word to describe them.
You said it better Sev. I need to relax a little as these people just are pushing my buttons lately with their a) deliberate lying or b) denseness
I wonder if 2% of Americans died in the last 3 years. I’d venture to say EVERY country’s death rate is close to 2% in every 3 year period. I had my best friend and love of my life die July 8th this year. I blame Bush and the American soldiers!
Very sorry to hear about your loss Bak, my condolences and sympathy. It’s never easy to lose a friend or loved one. I can also fully understand your lack of tolerance for this kind of nonsense, I’m growing less and less tolerant of it. After 6 years of constant, non-stop lunacy and idiotic statements and theories and BS from the left my patience has worn very very thin.
If you use the US death rate from 1996 (latest statistic I could find easily on the US CDC site (872 per 100,000 people per year), and extrapolate that to a population of 25 million, over a period of 3 years, you get a total of 654,000 deaths. And that’s for a country that is at peace internally and has state of the art medical facilities and clean air and water. Even if this study is accurate, that means the Iraqi’s have double the death rate that the US has, which considering the medical and health challenges alone is hardly surprising, let alone if you add in the sectarian and insurgent based violence.
I hadn’t done this calculation before, but after doing it, even if the study is correct I get a big yawn “so what.” Tragic that so many die, but not what you’d call an unexpected number if you analyze it. But there’s the rub, the authors of this study undoubtedly know this, but they count on the usual hysterical liberal response to numbers and know no one will stop to examine this more thoroughly before screaming bloody murder and hopefully, from their perspective, voting against the Republicans.
It’s the same BS as when the speed limit/anti-car zealots shriek “40,000 people were killed on the highways last year, the speed limit being raised kills!” When you point out that that number of people, normalized to deaths per 100,000 vehicle miles driven, is the lowest rate ever on the US roads, and significantly lower than when the 55 mph speed limit was in effect, they come back with the same shriek “but 40,000 people were killed that’s 4000 more than last year!!!” When you point out that that’s a 10% increase, and 20% more vehicle miles were driven (not precise numbers but chosen for an example, the real numbers are similar) they come back with “But 40,000 people DIED!” It’s pure emotional bunk from people who have no capability to think rationally or logically, and yet they want to be in charge of government during what is arguably the most dangerous time in any of our lives.
To add, perhaps not double, I haven’t been able to find in all the bleating any estimate of how many were “supposed” to die in Iraq in 3 years so the figure may be even less dire than presented. If normal Iraqi predictions said 1.2 million would have died if nothing “bad” had happened, then the figure is even less surprising and less relevant. At any rate, when examined fully this is hardly a reason to whine and moan.
Sev severized me by writing, “If you use the US death rate from 1996 (latest statistic I could find easily on the US CDC site (872 per 100,000 people per year), and extrapolate that to a population of 25 million, over a period of 3 years, you get a total of 654,000 deaths. And that’s for a country that is at peace internally and has state of the art medical facilities and clean air and water.
Gosh darn statistics… Too bad the media can’t do their darn jobs and do what you just did. They become more IRRELEVANT everyday!!!!
HOWEVER, Sev wrote, “Even if this study is accurate, that means the Iraqi’s have double the death rate that the US has,”
Maybe I didn’t read things right but I thought the study was for a 3 year period. Your numbers are for a 1 year period. That means the U.S has a 50% higher death rate. No?
Oh. I just saw your second comment. You figured it out. Darn liberals and their methods of madness and accusations and attacks…. Us laymen can shred their arguments and trained journalists are snookered…
Sev wrote, “and yet they want to be in charge of government during what is arguably the most dangerous time in any of our lives. ”
Please don’t let that happen people. Vote for conservatives…. Conservatives are centrists on the political scale and have quite a bit more perspective than liberals.
No, if you take the US death rate and apply it over three years to a 25 million people population like Iraq, you’d expect 650K total deaths, more or less. Even if Iraq’s death rate was the same as the US, and as the authors of this study state an additional 650K people died, that would mean a doubling of the death rate, which is not that hard to imagine given the issues Iraq has. But, I haven’t managed to find in any article yet exactly how many Iraqi’s would have been expected to die in a “normal” 3 year period (if Iraq under Hussein could ever be qualified as being “normal” with the mass graves and such). It’s highly possible that the normal Iraqi death rate is significantly higher than ours, if it were double, that’d make the increase a 50% increase, even less of an increase. I also suspect that there are interesting things to be discovered in the death rates before and after the imposition of UN sanctions, were the death rates before, when Hussein was free to murder and kill at will higher or lower than after the sanctions and no-fly zones? The sanctions undoubtedly raised the death rate, as dictators care little or nothing about their people, and will divert humanitarian aid to building palaces instead of feeding people, but then the no-fly zones prevented him from killing the Shia and Kurdish populations using helicopters and aircraft and limited his ability to operate in these areas, so it’s hard to tell.
I’ve seen reference to this study being conducted in mid 05, which would make it 2 years, which by my initial calculations would result in about 420,000 expected deaths using the US rate, and before anyone starts screaming that 650 is higher than 420 take a look at the confidence bounds, and the lower one is around 450K.
This whole thing, like most of the things the left screams about, is a tempest in a teapot even if the study is accurate. And remember, the study lumps in all deaths, a dubious decision at best, and grossly overstates the deaths according to what the Iraqi’s themselves are saying.
In a country that is has massive insurgency, ongoing military operations, food and water distribution problems, no infrastructure (it had little enough before the war), and sweltering temperatures that promote disease, this all isn’t that surprising. Most countries out there outside the industrial world have significantly higher death rates than the US does.
Someone said:
“The descrepancy is that the Liberal lap dog press and SP’s like longz are lumping in the piles of mass graves uncovered since the days of Hussein. If you subtract those out, some graves with as many as 4000+ bodies, knowing how long it went on and on, the 400,000 figure doesn’t leave enough to count the few that we’ve been responsiple for in the war.”
This isn’t even close to reality. I suspect that this came directly out of the posters ass. I mean, you really have to be an idiot to just make something ilke that up and post it because you wish it were true.
READ THE STUDY, bother to understand it, and you’ll see they didn’t do what you describe but did do a very good job picking representative clusters and extrapolating with care.
If you wish to refute the numbers, produce your own peer-reviewed study with data freely available to the public, as these folks have, or provide a reasoned critique of, not the methods, but the collection of data. (the methods are solid…the only issue is whether the data used is statistically valid – and noone has shown any reason it isn’t)
Sister said:
“I don’t measure the success or failure of a war in terms of number of casualties.”
If your only remaining justification for war is to free the Iraqi people from the brutalities of their dictator, then I would expect that there are a certain number of casualties that would have made the war “not worth it” … at least in terms of trying to prevent suffering.
No one is saying that these numbers mean we should cut and run… they are just one more reason why our invasion has not been succuesful based on the stated goals of our invasion.
We all know Iraq is [edited - ST] at this point…how [edited - ST] is besides the point, because the basic disagreement comes down to whether the war is un-[edited - ST]. If there’s nothing we can do to fix things (or if our presence makes it worse), it’s hard to argue that we should stay.
So chill out righties, you’ve already admitted in this thread that it doesn’t matter to you that 655,000 are dead…why dispute the number then? Oh, because it shows what a mistake this was in the first place? you’re just going to have to deal with that reality becoming more and more apparent, with more and more revelations and studies…
You righties’ arguments keep betraying your lack of knowledge regarding this study.
Its 655,000 additional deaths. Determined by calculating the death rate before and after the invasion, in a study, not a survey.
The “confidence intervals you could drive a truck through” hold that the minimum # of deaths is ~400K, maximim ~800K. It would be disingenuous to quote a figure at the high or low end, so the quote the figure in the middle. Even if the numbers are at the low end, that’s still 400K. Nothing disingenuous here.
“The average leftist dolt on the street thinks now that we’ve killed or that we + insurgents have killed 655,000 Iraqi civilians. Why? Because leftism has a problem with reality. Clarity is the enemy of the left. So is perspective…..”
The average rightists dolt thinks mao killed 10 million…when it was really poverty and starvation due to his policies. But does it really matter? I think not.
If your only remaining justification for war is to free the Iraqi people from the brutalities of their dictator, then I would expect that there are a certain number of casualties that would have made the war “not worth it” … at least in terms of trying to prevent suffering.
You really should see a shrink about this amazing fetish you have for straw men.
BTW Aghast, if you get anywhere near finding a cogent point to make, send up a flare or smoke signal to let us know, it’ll be a red letter day for you and we want to be there and help you celebrate.
Aghast showed limited vocabulary skills by cussing saying, “We all know Iraq is f*cked at this point…how f*cked is besides the point,”
Limited Reading comprehension, vocabulary, perspective. It’s always the liberals on this site with those tendencies… and not just this site. Read Think backwards Pr*gress for a sampling of studity
Aghast twisted and lied by saying, “So chill out righties, you’ve already admitted in this thread that it doesn’t matter to you that 655,000 are dead…”
No. That’s not what we were saying. Please apologize for misstating what we’ve said. We have said repeatedly that every death is a tragedy, unfortunate, and we wish they didn’t happen. Utopia would be great. But the mark of a successful war is winning. This is why we consider WW2, WW1 and the civil war successes even though the very tragic loss of millions of lives. It is because we won. Good triumphed over evil. It’d be quite a different America and world if we said at a certain number of lives we give up and surrender. Now you can stop lying about us and stop cussing and start gaining perspective I hope.
Aghast you are so wrong. What kind of asinine stupidity is this comment.
The average rightists dolt thinks mao killed 10 million…when it was really poverty and starvation due to his policies. But does it really matter? I think not.
Soooo Bush is reponsible for all the evil in the world due to his policies, but Mao isn’t. LOL And you think we are idiots???
Then there is this from your 2 separate posts:
Its 655,000 additional deaths. Determined by calculating the death rate before and after the invasion, in a study, not a survey.
Additional as in Not War Casualties?? Or Additional as in Extra War Casualties??? Hello?? Didn’t Longz just tell us that this was not about the war??? Sooo why do you individuals continue to say these causualties are due to the war, or is it additional casualties?? I agree with Sev, when you get to a point let us know.
And now this:
We all know Iraq is [edited. --ST] at this point…how [edited - ST] is besides the point, because the basic disagreement comes down to whether the war is un-[edited--ST]. If there’s nothing we can do to fix things (or if our presence makes it worse), it’s hard to argue that we should stay.
You lowlifes have been saying that Iraq is in a civil war for a year now. We are still waiting. Or is it you just hoping it turns into a civil war. Yet we are the blood thirsty ones. Clue if you need some money let me know, and I can help you buy one. But then again, according to the “study” this isn’t about war deaths, just deaths in general. So why pick Iraq??? Why not pick Mexico? This whole study is a political hack job in the hopes to influence the elections.
The logic used by the left grows so tiresome. It’s not about the war, it’s about the deaths the war has caused. Drum Roll Please!!!! And the difference is???? You all come in here with your confused logic and blast out some stupidity then go look at me, I am so much smarter than everyone else. It is going to be so amazing to see your reaction once the Reps cement their majority come November. – Lorica
I see Aghast did not apologize for misstating what we’ve said.
Here’s one more post on the topic. Iraq the Model has spoken on the subject. Good Stuff.
The logic used by the left grows so tiresome. It’s not about the war, it’s about the deaths the war has caused. Drum Roll Please!!!! And the difference is????
The leftists are a trip aren’t they Lorica? The same people who want to parse everything negative to them to the point of splitting hairs with a laser, as in “Abramoff didn’t give money to Democrats, he only told others to give money to Democrats,” “I did not have sexual relations with that woman,” and “They only enriched uranium, we only told them not to enrich plutonium so they didn’t cheat!” are the ones who get all sloppy with their logic when it’s in their interest, “This isn’t about the war it’s about the deaths!”
Just more examples of the hypocrisy of the left, the people who believe in free speech for themselves but not for others. And these are the idiots who have the nerve to claim that the Republicans are bringing us closer to an Orwellian nightmare.
655,000? No! One more good analysis on this subject.
One of the money paragraphs:
OK. ONe more money paragraph:
My last post of the day. Got stuff to do!!!
I call BS on this entire study, particularly the rate of 5.5 per 1000 people as a death rate in Iraq. The statistics found here:
National Center for Health Statistics US Death Rate for 2004
Indicates a death rate for the US of 816.7 per 100,000, or 8.16 per 1000. Are we to grant any credibility to a purported death rate for Iraq of 5.5 per 1000, that would put the US at a 48% higher death rate than that in Iraq under the loving mercies of Saddam? If it really is 13.3 per 1000 in Iraq, that’s 64% higher than in the US, which even if it is true doesn’t sound that high for a country with little to no medical infrastructure in the middle of a violent insurgency. In reality it’s probably less, and even if it isn’t it’s not that huge a difference in rates even without the armed insurrection going on, and one that would be easily explained by population demographics and medical/health care differences.
The people pushing this story are counting on no one taking the time to look at this carefully, which when you’re dealing with the MSM is probably a safe assumption, but c’mon, don’t piss on our heads and tell us it’s raining!
Severian:
Iraq, being a significantly younger nation – that is, one with a younger populace – than the US is expected to have a much lower death rate. The death rate found – not assumed, but found – by the researchers was in line with CIA estimates, the previous study, and other estimates for similar nations under similar situations.
You’d have discovered this if you’d read the study, rather than making stuff up to use to try to discredit it.
As a side note, I do have to admit I found your claim that I didn’t understand the world because I saw Iraq as no significant threat to be amusing, though.
Before the war, we had 5,000 people in Saudi Arabia to keep the threat contained. Did we have more people over there, on aircraft carriers, maybe? Let’s say it was 20,000 people, just to be safe.
Now, in order to keep us safe, we need 150,000. No, wait… we have 150,000, but it doesn’t seem like it’s enough to bring about stability.
And you’re saying that then, the threat is greater than it is now.
Ah, never mind, I’m sure you’ll brush this off as more liberal lies. I’m sure we had more people, and were spending more money, patrolling the no-fly zones before we invaded than we have occupying Iraq now.
Long hairs got in the way of him reading my 10/13 4:37 post:
Let’s repeat a key paragraph:
—The Hopkins team calculated Iraq’s mortality rate in the year before the invasion at 5.5 deaths per 1,000 people, comparing it with their post-invasion average of 13.3 deaths per 1,000 people a year. The difference between these two rates is the rate of “excess deaths;” the deaths occurring from violence is how they get to the 600,000 number.
The entire “context” then, hinges on the validity of the pre-war mortality rate. If you accept this number, then I’m told you accept that pre-war Iraq had a better mortality rate than any other country in the Middle East, even Israel.
Call long haired duped I guess.
Also, Iraq Body Count themselves shredded the idiotic number.
So, yes… I feel comfortable calling the 655,000 number a big whopper…