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EFLtrainer
Joined: 04 May 2005
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 Posted: Fri Oct 13, 2006 1:17 am Post subject: |
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Your post begs the question, is it not hyperbole to pick at the semantics of a word and ignore the issues inherently and directly brought up in the OP?
It is the typical stance of too many on this board to attack the poster when they have nothing to add to the point of a topic. This is a good example. If the topic were about war crimes and defining the terms of offenses so that charges may be brought, fine, your post would be quite relevant. As it is, it's nothing more than avoiding the issue.
And, I think it could be argued that any death, and particularly any civilian death is a war crime when committed in an unjust, immoral and illegal war.
Thus, why don't we get on to what the topic really is: This war is and has been a disaster. One of the supposed aims was stop Saddam from killing so many of his own people. Yet, here we are with multiples more dying because of the history writ by the Bush cadre.
Then, isn't it time to end the insanity?
As to the math, I have taken stats classes, and their methods are pretty much impeccable, so far as I can tell. As it has been with global warming, where we have had a very small group of paid propagandists delaying world action for a very long time, we now have propagandists doing the same with war dead numbers. This is a problem. And to ahve the president say, without cause, justification or analysis that the numbers are not trustworthy is pure tripe. In stats, 12,000 is a HUGE sample. To have 80 percent supported by death certificates mean it can be off by no more than 20 percent. That sample size makes that large a mistake exceedingly unlikely. |
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Teufelswacht
Joined: 06 Sep 2004
Location: Land Of The Not Quite Right
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| Posted: Mon Oct 16, 2006 11:57 am Post subject: |
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A rebuttal by the people over at Iraq Body Count - not exactly a pro-war or pro-Bush group.
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Reality checks: some responses to the latest Lancet estimates
Hamit Dardagan, John Sloboda, and Josh Dougherty
Summary
A new study has been released by the Lancet medical journal estimating over 650,000 excess deaths in Iraq. The Iraqi mortality estimates published in the Lancet in October 2006 imply, among other things, that:
1. On average, a thousand Iraqis have been violently killed every single day in the first half of 2006, with less than a tenth of them being noticed by any public surveillance mechanisms;
2. Some 800,000 or more Iraqis suffered blast wounds and other serious conflict-related injuries in the past two years, but less than a tenth of them received any kind of hospital treatment;
3. Over 7% of the entire adult male population of Iraq has already been killed in violence, with no less than 10% in the worst affected areas covering most of central Iraq;
4. Half a million death certificates were received by families which were never officially recorded as having been issued;
5. The Coalition has killed far more Iraqis in the last year than in earlier years containing the initial massive "Shock and Awe" invasion and the major assaults on Falluja.
If these assertions are true, they further imply:
* incompetence and/or fraud on a truly massive scale by Iraqi officials in hospitals and ministries, on a local, regional and national level, perfectly coordinated from the moment the occupation began;
* bizarre and self-destructive behaviour on the part of all but a small minority of 800,000 injured, mostly non-combatant, Iraqis;
* the utter failure of local or external agencies to notice and respond to a decimation of the adult male population in key urban areas;
* an abject failure of the media, Iraqi as well as international, to observe that Coalition-caused events of the scale they reported during the three-week invasion in 2003 have been occurring every month for over a year.
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.
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http://www.iraqbodycount.org/press/pr14.php |
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