[lit-ideas] Re: comments the DEMs must defend

  • From: JimKandJulieB@xxxxxxx
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Wed, 14 Feb 2007 00:26:57 EST

Not that anyone pays attention to the Washington Post or anything.   I'm sure 
Andreas must have pulled the bizarre numeric out of his magician's  hat.  I 
guess the WA Post got a couple decimal figures off.  Of  course, if it goes 
against your opinions, it must be a lie.  Please see the  quote below the 
excerpt, even if you don't read the excerpt.   Truth  matters.
 
_http://tinyurl.com/usq4x_ (http://tinyurl.com/usq4x) 
 
 
Study Claims Iraq's 'Excess' Death Toll Has Reached  655,000
By David Brown
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday,  October 11, 2006; A12
A team of American and Iraqi epidemiologists estimates that 655,000 more  
people have died in _Iraq_ 
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/world/countries/iraq.html?nav=el)  since 
coalition forces arrived in March 2003 than would 
have  died if the invasion had not occurred. 
The estimate, produced by interviewing residents during a random sampling of  
households throughout the country, is far higher than ones produced by other  
groups, including Iraq's government. 
It is more than 20 times the estimate of 30,000 civilian deaths that  
President Bush gave in a speech in December. It is more than 10 times the  
estimate 
of roughly 50,000 civilian deaths made by the British-based Iraq Body  Count 
research group. 
The surveyors said they found a steady increase in mortality since the  
invasion, with a steeper rise in the last year that appears to reflect a  
worsening 
of violence as reported by the U.S. military, the news media and  civilian 
groups. In the year ending in June, the team calculated Iraq's  mortality rate 
to be roughly four times what it was the year before the war. 
Of the total 655,000 estimated "excess deaths," 601,000 resulted from  
violence and the rest from disease and other causes, according to the study.  
This 
is about 500 unexpected violent deaths per day throughout the country. 
The survey was done by Iraqi physicians and overseen by epidemiologists at  
Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health. The findings are  
being published online today by the British medical journal the Lancet. 
The same group in 2004 published an estimate of roughly 100,000 deaths in the 
 first 18 months after the invasion. That figure was much higher than 
expected,  and was controversial. The new study estimates that about 500,000 
more 
Iraqis,  both civilian and military, have died since then -- a finding likely 
to 
be  equally controversial. 
Both this and the earlier study are the only ones to estimate mortality in  
Iraq using scientific methods. The technique, called "cluster sampling," is 
used  to estimate mortality in famines and after natural disasters. 
While acknowledging that the estimate is large, the researchers believe it is 
 sound for numerous reasons. The recent survey got the same estimate for  
immediate post-invasion deaths as the early survey, which gives the researchers 
 
confidence in the methods. The great majority of deaths were also 
substantiated  by death certificates. 
"We're very confident with the results," said Gilbert Burnham, a Johns  
Hopkins physician and epidemiologist. 
A Defense Department spokesman did not comment directly on the estimate. 
"The Department of Defense always regrets the loss of any innocent life in  
Iraq or anywhere else," said Lt. Col. Mark Ballesteros. "The coalition takes  
enormous precautions to prevent civilian deaths and injuries." 
He added that "it would be difficult for the U.S. to precisely determine the  
number of civilian deaths in Iraq as a result of insurgent activity. The 
Iraqi  Ministry of Health would be in a better position, with all of its 
records, 
to  provide more accurate information on deaths in Iraq." 
Ronald Waldman, an epidemiologist at Columbia University who worked at the  
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for many years, called the survey  
method "tried and true," and added that "this is the best estimate of mortality 
 we have." 
This viewed was echoed by Sarah Leah Whitson, an official of Human Rights  
Watch in New York, who said, "We have no reason to question the findings or the 
 
accuracy" of the survey. 
"I expect that people will be surprised by these figures," she said. "I think 
 it is very important that, rather than questioning them, people realize 
there is  very, very little reliable data coming out of Iraq." 
The survey was conducted between May 20 and July 10 by eight Iraqi physicians 
 organized through Mustansiriya University in Baghdad. They visited 1,849  
randomly selected households that had an average of seven members each. One  
person in each household was asked about deaths in the 14 months before the  
invasion and in the period after. 
The interviewers asked for death certificates 87 percent of the time; when  
they did, more than 90 percent of households produced certificates. 
According to the survey results, Iraq's mortality rate in the year before the 
 invasion was 5.5 deaths per 1,000 people; in the post-invasion period it was 
 13.3 deaths per 1,000 people per year. The difference between these rates 
was  used to calculate "excess deaths." 
Of the 629 deaths reported, 87 percent occurred after the invasion. A little  
more than 75 percent of the dead were men, with a greater male preponderance  
after the invasion. For violent post-invasion deaths, the male-to-female 
ratio  was 10-to-1, with most victims between 15 and 44 years old. 
Gunshot wounds caused 56 percent of violent deaths, with car bombs and other  
explosions causing 14 percent, according to the survey results. Of the 
violent  deaths that occurred after the invasion, 31 percent were caused by 
coalition  forces or airstrikes, the respondents said. 
Burnham said that the estimate of Iraq's pre-invasion death rate -- 5.5  
deaths per 1,000 people -- found in both of the Hopkins surveys was roughly the 
 
same estimate used by the CIA and the U.S. Census Bureau. He said he believes  
that attests to the accuracy of his team's results. 
He thinks further evidence of the survey's robustness is that the steepness  
of the upward trend it found in excess deaths in the last two years is roughly 
 the same tendency found by other groups -- even though the actual numbers 
differ  greatly. 
An independent group of researchers and biostatisticians based in England  
produces the Iraq Body Count. It estimates that there have been 44,000 to 
49,000 
 civilian deaths since the invasion. An Iraqi nongovernmental organization  
estimated 128,000 deaths between the invasion and July 2005. 
What makes it so plausible to assume that hypocrisy is the vice of vices is  
that integrity can indeed exist under the cover of all other vices except this 
 one. Only crime and the criminal, it is true, confront us with the 
perplexity of  radical evil; but only the hypocrite is really rotten to the 
core: 
Hannah Arendt  - Political philosopher, was born in Hanover, Germany, in 1906

=
"When  a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind,as 
to  suscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe;he has 
prepared  himself for the commission of every other crime."~Thomas Paine"The 
Age 
of  Reason" 1793 

=
"The simple step of a courageous individual is not to  take part in the lie. 
One word of truth outweighs the world.": Alexander  Solzhenitsyn
(1918- ) Russian writer, Soviet dissident, imprisoned for 8  years for 
critizing Stalin in a personal letter, Nobel Prize for Literature,  1970  



========Original Message========
Subj: [lit-ideas] Re: comments the DEMs must defend  Date: 2/13/2007 6:43:56 
P.M. Central Standard Time  From: _lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 
(mailto:lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxx)   To: _lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
(mailto:lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx)   Sent on:    

Hah!  I was  wondering if some logically challenged Leftist was going to do 
that.  I  accuse Andreas of lying because he uses the false figure of 600,000 
Iraqi  dead.  Simon jumps in with the illogical “maybe even just 30,000, and 
that  amount of innocent Iraqis surely doesn’t matter at all,” he says  
ironically.  Since he doesn’t believe in Logic he will have no idea what  
I’m 
talking about, but I’ll explain just for the record.  If I say Andreas  has 
lied by 
using the false number 600,000 as the number of Iraqis killed since  the 
beginning of the invasion and Simon disputes that by saying even 30,000  killed 
would be a bad thing, he has said nothing to dispute my assertion that  Andreas 
has lied.  His response does not relate to my assertion that anyone  claiming 
that 600,000 have been killed since the invasion is lying.    
Here, I’ll help.   A legitimate response might be, “Andreas meant 60,000 
and 
misplaced the decimal;  therefore he wasn’t lying.  I would have to accept 
that.  Another  legitimate response would be Andreas was just confused.  He 
heard 600,000  some place and didn’t bother to check it out.  But now he 
stands 
corrected.  I would accept that as well.  I can’t of course accept Simon’s  
irrelevancy. 
Simon expresses  befuddlement about what I mean when I accuse Leftist of 
Lying by using the false  figure of 600,000.  I’ll demonstrate by accusing 
Simon 
of lying.   Notice in his note that he implies that all the Iraqi dead are “
innocent.”   Simon’s implication is that none were enemies of American or 
the 
Iraqi  government.  None were Baathist holdouts.  None were Saddam supporters  
with no place else to go and nothing to lose.  All were innocent  civilians.  
This is false.  This is a lie.  Simon is lying.    
Yes, some innocent  people are in that 30,000 number: those killed by the 
insurgents; the Iraqi  policemen, and the civilians and soldiers blown up by 
IEDs 
and suicide  bombers.  But the larger number I suspect are of the guilty, 
those who  supported Saddam Hussein and now support Al Quada’s attempt to 
disrupt 
the Iraqi  government, throw Iraq into turmoil, incite civil war and perhaps 
acquire a new  Islamist state or region from which to launch terrorist attacks 
– perhaps even a  new home for Osama bin Laden himself.   Leftist arguments 
are in  support of bin Landen’s goals for Iraq, and that’s no  lie! 
Lawrence 
 
  
____________________________________

From:  lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] 
On Behalf Of Simon Ward
Sent: Tuesday, February 13, 2007 2:37  PM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: comments the DEMs  must defend
 
"You can strongly disapprove of Bush without all this  hyperbole. It 
undermines your  arguments."
 

 
A mantra that surely should be applied to what ever  political crede you're 
attacking or indeed whoever is doing the  attacking.
 

 
Take this from Lawrence (recently back from the land of  allegory): 
 

 
"Do Leftists just like to lie?  Is that behind  their preoccupation with 
lying?  Is lying for a good (i.e. Leftist) cause  okay?"
 

 
Just whether Lawrence's vision of Leftists like to lie  we should leave to 
Lawrence to sort out, he's the [only] authority on just what  makes up his 
fiction, but we should perhaps dwell on whether those on the right  need to 
lie. 
Certainly, Bush  et al (surely representitive of that political faction) could 
only get the  US to war by deceiving Congress and  the people. Whatever they 
knew about what weapons Saddam had, they knew that the  '45 minute claim' was a 
lie and they knew that what intelligence they had need  to be 'sexed up' 
before it could approach what was necessary to make a case for  a war that was 
never reliant upon intelligence, never reliant upon the UN, never  reliant upon 
the actions of Saddam, but was always the fruit of the Bush  administration's 
desire to wage war in Iraq. And didn't the right (doesn't it  still) just love 
it. You can hear it in the tone of their ranting. They just  love meating out a 
bit of death and destruction where it's easy and they just  love shouting 
down whoever tries to tell them that it isn't right. 
 

 
And the justification? Well that's only just coming out.  It was so they 
could gather all the nasty people in one place and vaporize them.  And perhaps 
a 
few hundred innocents might get vaporized at the same time, but  what does it 
matter, after all, we're not talking about 600,000 are we. Just a  couple of 
hundred thousand, maybe even just 30,000, and that amount of innocent  Iraqis 
surely doesn't matter at all. So that's alright then. What a relief, for  a 
moment I thought the US government had done something  really bad. 
 

 
See Eric, absolutely no hyperbole. None at all. 
 

 
Seriously though what's the point. If the right can't  accept as fact the 
views of 2,500 scientists from 130 countries, what hope is  there in 
establishing 
facts elsewhere. We might as well all just mythologise and  enjoy it.
 

 
----- Original Message -----   
 
From: "Eric" <_mr.eric.yost@xxxxxxxxxx (mailto:mr.eric.yost@xxxxxxxxx) >
 
To: <_lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx (mailto:lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx) >
 
Sent: Tuesday, February 13, 2007 7:42  PM
 
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: comments the DEMs must  defend

 

> Andreas: 600,000 Iraqi will still be dead because  of lies.
> 4,000 Americans will still be dead because of lies.
> The  US economy will still be wrecked  because of lies.
> 
> 
> 
> If we cannot agree on basic  facts, we won't be able to fix the blame. 
> (Granted it's better to fix  the problem than the blame.)
> 
> The major cause of Iraqi deaths is  not American force, but you want to 
> blame Bush so you do so with  dubious numbers. The major cause of 
> American deaths is the action of  the groups we collectively label 
> "insurgents," but you want to blame  Bush so you ignore the actual 
> murderers. The US economy is far from wrecked* but you want to  blame 
> Bush, so you pin the economy to his war policy, rather than, say,  
> Clinton's ridiculous trade deals with  China, current oil prices, or  the 
> nearsighted US automotive sector.**
>  
> You can strongly disapprove of Bush without all this hyperbole. It  
> undermines your arguments.
> 
> 
> 
> 
>  ____
> * _http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D8N8BQR02.htm_ 
(http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D8N8BQR02.htm) 
>  The Treasury Department reported Monday that the deficit for the budget 
>  year that began Oct. 1 totals $42.2 billion, down 57.2 percent from the 
>  same period a year ago.
> 
> 
>  
**http://www.finfacts.com/irelandbusinessnews/publish/article_10009069.shtml
>  Petroleum,  China and  automotive products account for about 85 percent of 
> the trade deficit,  and no solution is possible without addressing issues 
> particular to  these segments.
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